Reducing the cost of your meal plan

People seem to think that they have to buy lots of different ingredients to make a meal  plan for the week that is not boring. This is not true.  In order to save money I buy or make a few key ingredients each week but use them in different ways.  This also reduces waste.  I stretch them out with cheaper ingredients to make them go further, mostly home grown vegetables.

I cook for two of us, and base all of my meals around those 4 or 5 different ingredients each week.  The trick is to switch them up, or change them slightly. so that no one realises that you are using the same ingredient.  Your menu is still interesting and varied but it reduces the cost of your meal plan.

Here are some examples.

1.  Sausages I can make toad in the hole using half a pack of sausages cut into small chunks and use the other half to make meat balls by squeezing the sausage meat out of the skins and grating onion and carrots and bread crumbs into it.  Some times I have even stretched a pack of sausages to make 3 meals by cutting a sausage up thinly and using it as a topping for a pizza, or in an omelette with veg for lunch.
2. Yoghurt.  Every other week I make a slow cooker full of yoghurt.  I will put it into our overnight oats, make flat breads out of it, serve it with compote as a pudding or breakfast, make yoghurt based dressings for spicy food, use it to make Tandoori chicken drum sticks, etc.
3. Chicken.  If I buy a chicken I usually cook it, or butcher it, and freeze half of it. That week we will eat half  a chicken and put it in things like a chicken and vegetable pie, eat a chicken and salad sandwich, make a chicken salad, or have chicken strips with chips, for example.  Chicken is also great for pasta dishes, to put a bit on a pizza, in a curry, in a stir fry, in a savoury rice dish etc, in fajitas, a burrito bowl, and you can make a soup with the bones.  There are so many different ways to stretch a chicken without the meals seeming the same.
4. Minced Beef.  If I am cooking with raw mince I will spice some of it up and put it on skewers like kebabs, and make burgers or meat balls by stretching them with vegetables for another meal.  Sometimes I fry it and will put it in pasties or a pie with potatoes and vegetables or baked beans, or make a cottage pie.  Another thing I do with mince is to make a big batch of mince cooked with onions in a tomato sauce in the slow cooker.  I then will serve some with pasta, add some chilli powder to some and serve with rice or make potato nachos, or put a cheesy mash on top of the chilli.  Other things that I like to make with mince are Moroccan flavoured mince or a keema curry.
5. Lemons.  I rarely buy lemons but sometimes I get them from the community fridge.  If we have lemons I will make a lemon chicken dish, use the rind in baking to make some lemon buns or I might make a cheese cake,  some lemon curd, a risotto, and also use the rinds in cleaning products.
6. Cheese.  A block of cheese helps me make lots of tasty meals and I buy one every 2 or 3 weeks.  A cheese sauce will stretch fish in a pie or can be used as a sauce between a dish of sliced potatoes with sweated leeks in between.  A bit of ham can be added to the latter if you have it.  Other examples are that it is great sprinkled on a pizza, on nachos, in a sandwich with chutney or apple, in toasties, in quiche, on baked potatoes, in a cheese, onion and potato pie, cheese tarts, in scones, and in cheesy courgette bites.
7. Compote.  We always have lots of frozen berries that have been foraged or grown in the garden.  Every week I make compote.  Some of the ways I use it  is with rice pudding to make pot rice, as a filling for pasties, with yoghurt for breakfast, or with custard for a pudding, on top of a pastry case with meringue on top, or in overnight oats.
8. Eggs.  We make omelettes, scrambled egg on toast, hard boiled egg salads, egg fried rice, French toast, quiche, and many more things.  Here are 21 Frugal egg dishes
9. Bread.  Some weeks during the winter we have had to survive on bread being a main ingredient as it was what we could get free from a waste food project.  That week we used it to make fridge gravel pizza, to use as a topping with grated cheese and herbs in a vegetarian stuffed marrow, to make a bread and butter pudding, to make bread crumbs to make some vegetable croquettes, and to have things like beans on toast and cheese on toast.
   

   This pudding was made from bread crusts alone after we had made an afternoon tea for family

10. Rice. If money is tight and you can not afford to buy many ingredients, rice is a good ingredient to buy.  In the same week I have used it to stuff vegetables eg peppers or courgettes with grated cheese on top, made rice pudding with it, made spicy rice with fridge gravel, made a Biriyani, used in burritos, made egg fried rice with vegetable stir fry, and made Jambalaya.  Mr S didn’t even notice that he had rice every day, or that I was mainly using fridge gravel for most of the meals!

These are just examples of how you can make lots of different meals using the same ingredient.  If you add spices, use different sauces, or use the ingredients a different way using your imagination, your meal plan will seem varied, but you are only having to invest in a few basic ingredients.  Using a few key ingredients in your weekly plan is a great way of making sure that you don’t spend more than you need to on food each week.

Which would be the main few ingredients that you would buy?  Do you do this to reduce the cost of your meal plan?