Chapter 1: How can you prepare a nutritious dinner for a family of four for under a tenner?
Dinner for a family of four for less than a tenner.
That's the challenge for my next guest, author and chef Lou Robbie. Lou is joining us from our Galway studio this morning. Morning, Lou. Hi, David. How are you doing? I'm very good. I'm interested in this now. A nutritious dinner for a family of four for less than 10 euro. It might seem challenging, but you say it can be done.
It can be done. Definitely. Definitely.
OK, so what do we need to do? Do we need to plan in advance?
We do, we do, we do need to plan. We need to look in the cupboards to see what we have first and check your store cupboard, you know, your spices and things like that, your dry goods, your pasta, your rice, your potatoes, your vegetables and check in the fridge too to see what you have and the freezer before and then come up with a plan for the week.
Because I think, you know, especially the last few weeks and the fuel prices going up and people are really feeling the pinch. And I just felt, you know, the only way we can kind of save a bit of money is probably on our weekly shopping bill.
And do you plan the week in advance, do you? And write down everything you need and go in and buy everything you need and no more than what you need. Is that the deal?
I try to. Yeah, yeah. I was thinking back, actually, back in the pandemic, I think we were all amazing at doing it. And then you let it slip. But it's all about habits. It's all about good habits. And planning is key if you do want to save a few quid on your weekly shopping bill. So, yeah, I would definitely recommend sitting down and getting a piece of paper.
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Chapter 2: What planning strategies help save money on weekly grocery bills?
You don't need a fancy meal planning book or anything like that. Just write down Monday to Friday or the full seven days. I usually just do the five days. So it's not too overwhelming. And then we can see what we have for leftovers for the weekend, maybe our takeaway or something. But yeah, you can start with your Monday. And a nice thing to do too is to think of themes.
So you might do a meat free Monday or a taco Tuesday or leftover Wednesday. And then if you have those days or maybe fish on Friday or a fake away, if you have those kind of in place, then it's easier to fill in rather than starting on a blank every single week.
I mean, variety is nice, but it's good to have the staple recipes that the family all like as well.
Absolutely, yeah, yeah. And you would definitely start there, yeah.
Absolutely. So you mentioned the store cupboard and I think that's really important. I mean, what do you think you absolutely have to have in the cupboard? The staple ingredients that you're going to build your meals out of and obviously that you replace as you use them up.
It's really important. And also, I want to say that budget doesn't mean boring because we don't want plain pasta, plain potatoes, plain rice. You know, it won't last if you do that. So in your store cupboard, you want to have a few exciting spices. It might be like a Cajun spice mix.
or a barbecue spice mix, or even if you have children and you don't want it too spicy, paprika and cumin and coriander, those kind of spices that are not really spicy, but they add lots of flavour. And things like garlic salt or herbs, even dried herbs are good as well and stock. And then you might have soya sauce and sweet chilli sauce.
Those kind of things in store cupboard are brilliant just to add a bit of flavour. Yeah, absolutely. And just enhance the dish. And they'll sit for months, you know, so you don't have to, you know, you don't have to be buying them every week. And, you know, they're not fresh foods like the stuff in the fridge.
The other thing, I suppose, is time as well. Families are time poor as well as everything else at the moment, particularly midweek. And it's a bit of a rush. But again, planning comes into it.
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Chapter 3: What essential ingredients should be in your store cupboard for budget meals?
So yeah, it's beef again. The beef costs the most in this dish, but all the flavour is in there. So it's cooked like a chilli, similar enough as well to a bolognese. It's not too far away from it with a tin of tomatoes and a tin of kidney beans. But you can use any beans you want. If you have black beans in the cupboard or...
cannellini beans or anything or white beans you can put them in too and then served with I bought a bag of baby potatoes I think they were 89 cent or something and then just cooked them in the air fryer as cubes with a bit of spice on them as well so really tasty and sour cream as well because I don't want to miss out on the good stuff And to make it more like a taco bowl.
But you could serve that with rice as well. You can double up. You could freeze half of it. You could serve it with a baked potato. So you're always just thinking of other ways to have it. You could have it in a wrap for lunch the next day. So nothing goes to waste. And it's really nice and tasty for the week.
Yeah, sounds lovely. And I presume your family are all fantastic eaters. But any advice for people who have maybe fussy eaters in the house?
Oh, no, I have one myself. So, no, what we do is, you know, I'm always encouraging him to try new food. So we try family style. You know, we lay out things separately on the table so he can help himself and eat.
Yeah, I don't have any, you know, I don't know the true answer to getting kids to eat, but I think exposing them all the time, maybe getting them to smell and lick and taste, you know, it's all just encouraging them. And they see us eating too. So hopefully anybody with fussy eaters out there, just keep going and keep offering and hopefully one day they'll try to.
Absolutely. And I suppose if you have things on the side, it means they can try a little bit of it if they reject it. If it's in the meal, you've got a big problem.
That's right. Yeah. Yeah. And I was saying, I was telling somebody recently, I make a pasta salad, like a pesto pasta salad. And I chop the vegetables like peppers and cucumbers and tomatoes, quite big, chunky. So if they want to, they can take them out. But, you know, they see them there and it's important that it's included in the meal and you're not limiting their exposure to it.
Yeah, OK, well, I'm starving now, but luckily one of the advantages of getting up early is you can have your lunch early, so thank you very much for that. Lou Robbie, author and chef, and those recipes, obviously you can get them on Lou's Instagram account. We'll also post the recipes on Today with David McCullough page on the RT website after the show. But Lou Robbie, thank you very much.
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