Do you think you could feed a family of four a three course meal for under five pounds? Here’s my menu….
Starter – Potato skins with garlic mayo (15p)
I really love potato skins as a starter when we go out for a meal but it never occurred to me just how frugal it was for the restaurant serving it as the dish is literally made with potato peelings that would otherwise be thrown in the bin!
I was planning to do mashed potato for our main course so I used a sharp knife to peel the potatoes which meant I got a little more potato on the peeling if that makes sense. 😉 I then just tossed the potato peelings in a little olive oil, seasoned with some salt and pepper and then cooked them in the airfryer until they were starting to crisp up a little bit.
They’re so yummy on their own but even more so with some garlic mayo which we bought from the pound shop a couple of weeks ago. It’s quite a big bottle and we only used a little bit.
This is a big portion for a starter but it served two – I made two big platefuls and we just shared them between us all.
Alternatives – I was planning on making spicy sweet potato and butternut squash soup with homemade bread rolls. I do make my own when I need to but actually, I often find packs of the ingredients I need for this soup pre-prepared in the reduced sections at the end of the day at our local supermarket for between 50p and 8op which is great value considering I just whack it in my soupmaker and lunch for the four of us is done in 20 minutes. It’s not quite as nice as my version but it’s a close second!
Main course – Posh bangers and mash with Yorkshire puddings (£3.01)
I have loads of meals that I can cook on a budget but I bought some sausages reduced to 59p in the reduced section when I went to pick up the bits to make the pasta bake that I was vaguely planning for this post. In my head, it was going to be something using my homemade tomato sauce with some sort of peppers, onion and maybe tuna but then I saw the reduced sausages and went from pasta bake to bangers and mash. 😉
There as the costings for our main course:
Potatoes – £1.29
Red onion – 23p
Reduced pack of sausages – 59p
Flour for Yorkshire Puds – 10p
2 free range eggs – 30p
300ml milk – 15p
Bisto gravy granules – 15p
Green beans (frozen) – 20p
This is a super-simple meal – I made Yorkshire puddings using our fail-proof recipe, fried the onions in a little olive oil, boiled the potatoes and made mashed potato, boiled some frozen green beans that we love.
Obviously, I did use reduced price sausages for this meal but I thought that would be OK as I often see reduced price sausages in our reduced section. I prefer good quality sausages and would rather not have them than buy the cheap ones personally so when I see them on offer then I buy a couple of packs and pop them in the freezer but I do also have quorn sausages in for meals like this and I think they’re quite good value. I think you get about three packs for £4 when you catch them on offer so they would work out around 75p more for the meal overall.
Alternatives: I was planning some sort of pasta bake because pasta is a great staple but I did consider a couple of other options from this post which is filled with cheap family meal ideas.
Chocolate traybake – £1.80
For dessert, we decided to go for a family favourite which we know we love and also gives us enough to make a dessert along with enough cake leftover to last us the next few days! Not only that but our chocolate tray bake is actually Master Frugal’s speciality so he makes it with very little supervision which gives me some time to play on Instagram.
I know it’s more expensive than you’d expect for a budget meal but we ate less than half for pudding so really, it only cost 90p ish for the amount we ate for pudding and even if you count the whole cost then we’re still under budget so all is good. 😉
You just can’t beat chocolate cake and this one is our favourite chocolate cake ever.
Alternatives: I considered a lemon cake, milk jelly or even just good old Angel Delight!
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