Two months ago, Sainsbury’s launched a “value” marketing drive, with TV and press campaigns, promising to feed recession-hit families for just £50 a week. The first menu was depressing with its pseudo-bargains, unlikely extravagances (a £5 bunch of grapes) and lots of tinned and frozen food. These included some sausages at 10p each: beige and tasteless, just 45 per cent pork, they were the most revolting things that have ever been in my frying pan. All this was mocked on these pages and elsewhere, especially when the company was pushed to admit that in nutritional terms the menu would in fact provide only 85 per cent of what a family would need. Unsurprisingly, the promotion has now disappeared from Sainsbury’s stores and website.
“Marketing froth” was one trade analyst’s verdict: that rang true in this house. When I tried to send my kids off to school on the budget breakfast of toast and jam, they were as appalled as if I’d attempted to ban the TV. What is wrong with porridge, many of you asked.
Times readers — wise and thrifty cooks, most of you — were quick to offer their own bargain-basement family feast ideas. And some of them were very enticing. My favourite was Jane Skinner’s adaptation of a liver and mushrooms dish from a 1960 Elizabeth David recipe; but offal, sadly, is hard to find now in supermarkets. Of course, many of you pointed out something quite obvious, which is that good, budget-conscious meal planning should work around one good, large chunk of protein (a joint of meat, a chicken) and then using it in different ways for two or three main courses.
Why roast one small chicken when you can do a big one or even two? Then you get a roast chicken supper, some cold meat for sandwiches or salads, and a stir-fry using the remains. And of course it needn’t stop there (there’s a lovely piece on thetimes.co.uk by Fiona Sims on how to make six meals out of one bird). But two is pretty good; leave something on the carcass to simmer for a couple of hours, strain, chuck in some veg, some beans or some lentils to make a fine, full-bodied soup. But such old-fashioned practices do not do much for supermarket sales.
Here are reader Carole Chapman’s wise words: Put your oven on once a week, ideally when the electricity is on low tariff. Roast a large chicken, make cakes and bread and do any other oven baking all at the same time. Make home-made meringues with leftover egg whites to dry out in the oven when it is switched off.
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Freeze home-made soup and casseroles; you know what has gone into it and it will work out cheaper than ready meals by a mile. Buy fruit and veg in the market. Look for meat bargains just as shops are closing for a Bank Holiday, and put them in your freezer. Go to all the supermarkets and buy just bogofs and special offers, especially on non-perishables. I despair when I look at other people’s trolleys full of processed food, biscuits full of transfats, fizzy drinks and empty calories. Bring back the cookery classes in schools.
So, can you feed a family of four for £50 a week? Of course you can, and I’m sure that in Britain there are people who need to, though most of us would be very happy to take four people for one meal at Pizza Express and get out for so little. It is eternally intriguing how supermarkets — Waitrose has been at it these past weeks — feel bound to offer amazing bargains to people who can’t really need them. Do the retailers think there is a real risk that the entire British middle class will rush off to Aldi? And when will they start to realise that for many of us “value” is not synonymous with cheap?
I asked readers to send me their favourite thrifty-but-tasty meals, and lots of you came up with the goods. Nothing flashy, but lots of pleasing, well-balanced, filling real cookery: pies, risottos, hotpots, pastas, curries, toad-in- the-hole. I’ve chosen seven of the best, a week’s menu, if you like, all of which will feed four for under a fiver. Click here to see the 7 Family recipes from less than £3.