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Low Carb on a budget

Places like Poundland, 99p Stores, Home Bargains, Family Bargains, B&M and Poundstretcher often have cheap canned wild fish, eggs, milk and nuts. You may find cheap dried herbs and othe useful things like 6 kitchen rolls for 99p and lidded foil dishes so you can batch cook and freeze.

The yellow-stickered scrum is often just reduced price ready meals and sugary fruit yogurts but if you can get cheap veg, they make great stews and soups. Stir fry veg packs can be really cheap, I've seen them for 10p. Reduced price growing herbs can often be saved with a bit of a trim, water and a sunny windowsill.

Frozen veg can be cheap and more nutritious than fresh. Canned though, can be very salty.

At markets you can often get bargains if you go at the end of the day. I got a box of tomatoes for £1 and made tomato sauce.

Many libraries will have books on foraging and if you check with your local adult education centre, you might be able to get a concession to go on a foraging course/day. Sometimes you'll find nature and wildlife organisations doing foraging walks too. There's a lot of free food out there - eg sorrel, nettles, chestnuts, damsons, sloes, crab apples, apples, blackberries, beech nuts, rosehips, mushrooms, fennel, blueberries, bilberries, elderflowers, elderberries, wild garlic.

If you live near a clean beach or estuary, no license is needed for seafishing and you can sometimes get seafood too e.g. crabs and eels. Plus you may find cockles, winkles, shrimps, samphire and seaweed.

In the UK it's really difficult to get a license to shoot, but elsewhere non-vegetarians may be able to hunt rabbits, pigeons, hares, squirrels, foxes, pheasants, deer etc. In the UK, to fish on inland waters, you need a license.

If you're lucky, you may be able to get an allotment or get on a garden share scheme to grow your own veg. Having done that, my tip is to buy seeds from Lidl and grow the more expensive vegetables. You don't need a garden or allotment to grow herbs in pots on windowsills. A sunny but sheltered balcony and a grow bag would do fine for tomatoes.

Village fetes, boot fairs and jumble sales - anything with a produce stall, can get you cheap surplus veg from gardens in spring and summer and in date canned food.
 
If you live near any ethnic shops they are great for things like nuts our Asian shop sells large bags of nuts for the same price as stores such as Holland and Barett sell small ones They are also good for fresh veg and fruit and as it is usually loose you can get just what you need
CAROL
 
OK, my two pennorth now ... what is your greatest asset atm? Time, I think. What don't you have much of ? Dosh. So think about taking money out of the problem and using your time. As @Celeriac suggests, become a forager.
Do you like reading? Try The Moneyless Man by Mark Boyle (library?). Or pm me your address and I'll send you my copy.
Become an expert in alternatives.
 

If you could do as @DeejayR Suggests maybe you could pass on your knowledge too, I'm sure people would pay a small contribution if you could put a course/ some materials together about the best alternatives/some recipes
 
Just a thought, my local Allotments Association sell allotment grown veg really cheaply for an hour or two on each Saturday morning. The garden holders donate their surplus and money raised goes to improving facilities on the allotment site. You can buy most fruit and veg that is in season plus some pretty amazing eggs for rock bottom prices.
 
I didn't have any LIDL rolls left, will have to go there tomorrow. I had a couple of slices of toasted Burgen bread with smoked duck pate from Morrisons: 180kcal: 6g carbs: 13g fat: 10g protein: 4g sugar.
A bit high on the carbs and sugar, but thought I would try it. I do prefer the Ardennes pate though.
 
Just back from shopping ,bought 1-5 kilos of pork loin steaks (15steaks) for £3 -39 at Asda in the reduced section !
CAROL
 
I am vegetarian and will shop at the supermarket on their reduce price times, Some own brand cheese are very good and inexpensive .. I have hens so my eggs are expensive .. Frozen berries can sometimes work our cheeper than fresh. The wife used to know a greengrocer who would pass on veg trimmings .. markets are also a good place for damaged veg at give away prices. My food bill has reduced since going LCHF
 
dannyw said:
Eggs, vegetables, chicken, fish, bacon, sausages.....
Yes, some ****** carbs can be cheaper but how much is your health worth to you ?
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Irrespective of how much her health is worth to her she only has a limited budget as she is on ESA, therefore was asking how she could do low carb on that budget
 
PerfectStorm said:
Irrespective of how much her health is worth to her she only has a limited budget as she is on ESA, therefore was asking how she could do low carb on that budget
Click to expand...
So are you saying she can't eat eggs, veg, sausages, chicken on ESA ?
 
You could make a crustless quiche using whatever veg, cheese, meat you have in. It's also a good way to use up any bits of yoghurt, cream, milk or creme fraiche you might have in.

Home made soup is good and cheap - Stilton or cauli cheese.

Cooked chicken thighs from Aldi are pretty cheap. Cooking yourself would be cheaper but I buy the cooked ones for convenience for lunches during the week.

You could always make pasta type sauces like bolognese or tuna tomato but serve yours with green beans instead of pasta. That's what I do as it's cheap, easy and it's as close to my old diet as possible. I'm not a meat or fish and two veg fan, apart from once or twice a week max, and always loved pasta dishes.

Pizza made with cauliflower base is pretty cheap although does use quite a bit of mozzarella which can add up. It does make it quite filling and rich though so does me for a couple of meals.

Cauliflower cheese

Belly pork slices are cheap and are delicious.

Sausages with roasted veg - i do butternut squash, pepper, mushrooms, courgette but you're best checking what effect your levels but also buying what's on offer

Savoury mince served with cabbage. I haven't tried a low carb shepherds pie yet but have one for a cauliflower topping I'm going to try.
 
Another way of saving money is to buy tetrapaks of long life milk and buy a case or so if on offer. MrCeleriac and I worked on 1 litre per day for two people.

If veg starts looking wrinkly or dried out, rather than throwing it away and wasting money, get a bowl of cold water and soak the veg in it for a few hours. Won't work for everything, but you can usually perk up aubergines and carrots.

If you have more than a tiny icebox, have a plastic tub and chuck clean fresh vegetable feelings and 'offcuts' in it and just keep adding and putting back in the freezer.

When you have a good amount, chuck them in a large saucepan with plenty of water and either fresh herbs or a bouquet garni. Bring up to the boil, then turn down the heat and leave them to get soft. Drain the liquid into another saucepan and throw the veg into compost. Bring liquid up to boil and reduce by a third to a half so more concentrated. Strain if you want, cool and freeze in another tub.

When you want stock for soup or stew, you can use an ice cream scoop to remove some. Don't add salt to the stock you make, add that to your recipe if you want. Freezing is likely to concentrate flavours and you can't take the salt out, but can always taste and add to the dish.

If you manage to get reduced price really cheap seafood e.g. prawns,, I would suggest boiling it up as stock, rather than attempting to eat it and risking food poisoning.

ASDA has this horrible habit of putting yellow-stickered food on the edges of the chilled cabinets. Some of these metal surfaces can be quite warm. Having had food poisoning from sausages left like that I would suggest giving it a miss. Chilled food, regardless of price, should be in chillers !
 
dannyw said:
So are you saying she can't eat eggs, veg, sausages, chicken on ESA ?
Click to expand...

Of course I'm not, they were good suggestions. I was replying to the part of your post which was implying she should prioritise a larger amount of her income to food as her health is important.
 
@dannyw @PerfectStorm I agree with both of you.

My ophthalmologist and the DSN I saw, both lamented that too many people throw any old stuff in their bodies and don't look after their health at all, even when diagnosed T2DM.

I'm not sure that moving public health initiatives out of the NHS into councils, is a good idea. I think that it's bound to dilute the message.

Kids haven't been given lessons in nutrition for so long, that there may be three generations in a family, who have no idea what's healthy or how to cook veg other than boiled or microwaved peas and spuds. My DSN said she routinely saw people who never ate green vegetables.

So, it can be ignorance, and believing that the ready meal manufacturers know their stuff so it doesn't matter i.e. food is food and that what matters is price. And it's true, that real food, can be more expensive than the ready meal stuff.

There are other people, who eat cheap food because they deliberately prioritise other things.

There are also people out there, particularly young single people without children, living on benefits in a bedsit or B&B, who really really struggle, just to keep themselves fed.

MrCeleriac and I were skint for five years, had an allotment and cooked from scratch. We ate carbs to fill up round the edges. After five years, we were able to cut the carbs. I started losing weight, went to the gym - and still developed T2DM. If we hadn't upped the carbs, it's likely that I wouldn't have diabetes. But when I look back, I know we did the absolute best we could.

I reckon that's all anyone can do.
 
I've written before on another thread and my point was that I don't spend as much now as I did before going LCHF, because of all the things I'm not buying!! Ready meals, cereal,rice, pasta, bread,potatoes, fruit (I bought and ate loads before, now I stick to small portions of berries ,frozen if cheaper) chocolate (bit of a chocoholic), biscuits, cake, ice cream, crisps, crackers,milk, sugar, flour,jam, marmalade, caned soup, sauces e.g. ketchup etc. So take all that lot out and I can buy cheese, butter,cream, eggs, meat and above ground veg. I can also afford nuts but then I shop at Aldi. I would like to buy organic...but it ups the bill. Money hasn't been quite as tight since I went LCHF which as I'm on the basic state pension (for two of us) is brilliant!! If you're on ESA then like me (full time carer for my husband) you are timerich,so more time to make meals from scratch. I make lots of homemade soups they're brilliant fillers and cheaper. I saute all the veg in lots of butter, plenty of garlic then usually blend it when cooked. Sometimes I add cream when serving. All the fat makes it tasty and filling.
 

I'm living the idea of that garlicky creamy veg soup. I've definitely got to make some. What veg do you recommend?
 
Blummin predictive Kindle keyboard - should have said 'loving' not 'living'.
 
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