money saving Archives - Mami To Five

Frugal tips for feeding a family on a budget

Feeding a family can be expensive. When that family is larger than average costs can quickly escalate! Because we have teenagers it means that I am now basically feeding five adults and two children at every single meal. I also try and make extra so there are leftovers for lunches etc too.

We have been trying to make our finances look a bit healthier this year and I am trying to be a bit more frugal. For the last month I have also been keeping a closer eye on our weekly budget.

At the moment, our weekly shop averages around £120. Which at first glance sounds a lot, but when you break it down it only equates to just over £17 per person for the week, so less than £2.50 each a day. I’m not usually one to toot my own horn, but when you take into consideration that our youngest has to have the more expensive gluten/wheat, dairy and soya free foods I’m actually quite impressed with myself!

From what I’ve seen online, lot’s of people seem to want to be trying to be frugal and save some money this year so I thought I would share some tips on how I shop to try and help save you some pennies too!

Frugal Tips for Feeding a Family on a Budget

Crunchy Potato Skin Crisps Recipe

If you hate food waste as much as I do and also want to save yourself some money this recipe is perfect for you.

These potato skin crisps are not only super simple to make, they are using up potato peelings that you would be otherwise throwing away. The fact that most of the nutrients of a potato are found just under the skin is purely a bonus!

These make a great little snack on their own or you could even serve them as a starter with salsa or any type of dip you fancy. We make ours with garlic and onion salt and smoked paprika but they are just as nice simply with salt.

Here’s how to make these delicious potato skin crisps.

Ingredients:

Potato peelings
1 tablespoons of oil (any type)
seasoning of your choice

Method:

Preheat your oven to around gas mark 5, 190 centigrade, 375 fahrenheit if you are already cooking something at a different temperature these will cope just fine but remember to keep an eye on them if its much hotter as they will burn quickly.

Collect your potato peelings into a bowl and add the oil. Mix up with your hands until the skins are evenly coated with the oil.

Add your seasoning, we add onion salt, garlic salt and smoked paprika, I can’t give you exact amounts as your quantity of potatoes will be different every time but keep in mind you don’t want to add loads, just a good shake. Remember you can always add more after they are cooked.

Lay onto a baking sheet and spread out as much you can manage, don’t fret too much if they overlap but they may take a little longer to cook.

Flip over and move around every 10 minutes or so to avoid burning. The potato skin crisps will be ready when when they have puffed up and are nice and crispy.

For extra flavour: When they are cooked, pile into the middle of the baking tray and sprinkle with grated cheese, leave for another 5 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

I hope you enjoy this recipe, let me know if you try it 🙂

A happy kitchen accident

Today I had one of those days where most things went wrong or didn’t quite go according to plan. Not to the point where I want to curl up and cry with a bucket of melted chocolate and a spoon (admit it, you would!) No, today was filled with mini annoyances like not being able to find even one pair of trousers in the shop that wasn’t too long, or O falling asleep 15 minutes before it was time to leave to pick the kids up from school.

I also had a kitchen disaster which I managed to turn around into something, actually two things, which were much more exciting than the original item!

I have been trying to save a bit of money this week and empty our cupboards at the same time by using mostly only things that we already had in the house. So after entering a few random ingredients into Google (my favourite recipe book!) I came across this recipe for chocolate cornbread.

I expect if you follow the recipe properly it would turn out lovely but I wanted to make muffins so I had something easier to pack in lunchboxes tomorrow and I had seen a few cornbread muffin recipes(not chocolate) so I figured it was doable.

Maybe the muffins would have turned out great if I hadn’t used a mini muffin tray, without cases.

And maybe they wouldn’t have stuck to the tray (and risen) if I had added the sugar and didn’t have to take the mixture back out of the pan to add the forgotten ingredient.

I may or may not have added too much sugar in my attempt at pouring into the measuring cup over the mixing bowl.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have missed out the sugar if I didn’t have a grumpy, clingy baby and rowdy kids hitting a balloon around in the background.

But hey these things happened and I still managed to make these:

and these:

So what did I do? After I got over the disappointment of flat muffins that were completely stuck to the pan and had a few quiet minutes while the kids were watching Glee, with the baby, I had an idea.

I sliced off the top of each muffin putting them on a cooling rack. I then spooned out what was left over into a bowl.

After they had all cooled, about the time it takes to feed a baby, I rummaged around for some extra ingredients:

White chocolate and Betty Crocker Vanilla Icing

They were both left over from the cakes E&Ff made for O’s christening a few weeks ago.

I spooned some of the icing into the cake crumbs mixing it all in well(it didn’t take much icing at all) and formed into truffle sized balls. I then dipped each one into some cooled melted chocolate and put each one onto a mini muffin case to set.

With the lids I just spread one half with some of the icing and sandwiched them together. They had dried quite crispy so held their shape perfectly.

In all I am very pleased with what we eventually got. The cake balls especially, are really scrummy! I may even consider making these again on purpose, perhaps in different flavours!

I will definitely be making the chocolate cornbread again too. It tasted really nice and the texture was lovely. I added white chocolate chips just to give it that bit of an edge but it didn’t need it. I would also make it in a baking dish and follow the recipe to the letter lol.

Do you have any funny kitchen accident stories? What would you have done with some destroyed muffins? Let me know below 🙂

Pizza for Dessert?

I had to go to the local shop today as I had been too disorganised to arrange for our shopping to be delivered yesterday and we had nothing in the cupboards that I could make quickly. Loath to spend the higher prices compared to the supermarket shop I always head for the bargain shelves. And there, for only 45p each were three packs of the ready rolled puff pastry. So for £1.35 plus some other random ingredients like cheese and ketchup that are already in the house I figured I’d just find the kids some fruit for dessert and we were set.

My kids on the other hand had a different idea!

A few years ago, we’d had a takeaway menu pushed through the letterbox for a pizza place that had opened (and since closed without us ever ordering from them). One of their pizzas was a sweet pizza with m&m’s and skittles and some other random sweeties. *Apparently* at the time I had promised my darling children that we would make one “soon” and being as we didn’t really need three boring cheese, hotdog sausage and sweetcorn pizzas why couldn’t we make a dessert one now? Thus allowing me to finally fulfil my promise as every good parent should!

Well they made a compelling argument and I told them if they found enough stuff to go on it we would give it a go. Here is our result:

What did we eventually end up with as toppings after a rummage through the cupboards full of half empty packets?

condensed milk (for the sauce)
grated marzipan
chocolate chips
sliced snickers bars
grated banana(because I had to spoil it with something healthy)
marshmallow fluff
raspberry jam

It tasted lovely, the kids were trying to eat it before it had even cooled down! I think next time I would use a tart jam as the sauce to break up the full on sweetness, or add some sour candy. Win for me though, the banana was an all round favourite. The only one who may complain is Dadi, he’s not that fussy on pizza anyway and doesn’t have that much of a sweet tooth. Shame, I’ll just have to eat his slice too 🙂

Two courses for only £1.35 out of my pocket and I got to use up some leftover bits, not bad if I say so myself!

Have you ever made pizza for dessert? Did you like it? I’d love to hear some different recipes.