Home Economics

This lovely lady is called Jane Ashley and she has a good blog called "Eat not Spend". I sometimes have a look on the blog for recipe ideas and then dismiss them as being too expensive, but then I heard that she had published a book called " Home Economics. How to eat like a king on a budget." I ordered it from the library as it said it contained recipes that meant you could feed your family of 4 for £35 a week. That figure would just about fit into my monthly budget with a bit of tweaking to allow for school lunches, so I thought that it was worth a look.

The book is arranged very well with lots of basic information at the front like essential store cupboard supplies and kitchen equipment. Then it has basic recipes such as bread, including gluten-free and homemade pasta. I'm never sure whether it is worth making your own pasta or if it would be cheaper to buy your own, but apparently the taste makes it worth it and the homemade ravioli does look great !

There is just a small section about breakfasts and lunches at home, which was a bit disappointing but there are whole pages on making your own stock, jointing a chicken, making soup etc. so I suspect there are plenty of ideas for those things throughout the book.

Then the main part of the book is devoted to weekly meal plans of different types such as vegan, low carbohydrate, gluten free etc. The meal plans do include lunch ideas and have simple suggestions for breakfasts such as porridge and toast and jam. The meal plans are costed showing a week's shopping at the start of the section and they all add up to less than £35. However, a few of the prices are already out of date, I can't buy butter for £1.09 anymore for instance, but I expect that you can knock a few pence off somewhere else to make up for it.

Since we follow a few special diet plans some of the meal plans would need adapting for us, but reading the menu plans gave me lots of ideas for new recipes and a growing realisation that buying 'luxury' ingredients, such as limes, might not break the bank !

For comparison, I looked at the budget recipe book " A Girl called Jack" which I got when it came out. I think the recipes in "Home Economics" are more family-friendly and it would be an interesting challenge in March to see if I can tweak some of the menu plans so that they will fit our dietary requirements and budget !

It's certainly worth getting from the library and I'm going to try a menu plan week from the book to see if it would be worth buying !