Tuesday, August 27, 2013

Saved my Bacon!!

Feeding a family on a budget doesn't have to mean mince meat everything or tuna casserole every night (although once in a while its great).
I have a great money saver traditional Irish dinner for you here that feeds a family of four!!

Every Irish family knows and probably loves bacon. I don't mean streaky rashers (although there great too)
I mean a lump of pork bacon.
To get enough bacon for a family of four in aldi costs about 4.99 for 400g that's enough for one dinner and that doesn't even include potatoes, cabbage,carrots, peas and the rest so all in all you would be spending about 10 euro to feed a family of four.
I can do a bacon dinner for four for under 5 euro.
The secret is BACON OFFCUTS. Don't be scared its OK... most people see the word offcuts and think eww gross eww!! You couldn't be more wrong!! Its just the ends of the bacon that don't look as ascetically pleasing as one lump of bacon.
In aldi you can get 1kg of bacon offcuts for 1.99. This amount of bacon after trimming does a family of  four 2 big dinners that's less than 1 euro per dinner. Now it does mean you have to trim off a Lil fat but when your saving that much its worth it! It also means you don't have to spend an hour boiling a lump of bacon as the offcuts are in smaller bits it takes about 20-30 min to cook.
Potatoes you can shop around and get a good price. I got 10kg of new potatoes for 3.68 in dunnes this will do you a week of potato dinners so one dinner would be about 70 cent.
A bag of carrots for 2 euro in aldi will do a week so one dinner is 30 cent.
A tin of peas in aldi is 53cent and they are better than batchelors.
If your proper Irish you can get a cabbage for 2 euro which is 1 euro a dinner
You can make white sauce with a tablespoon of butter, a tablespoon of flour, a cup of milk, salt and pepper (and a bit of parsley if you want parsley sauce) is it even worth adding how much that costs? Lets say 50 cent
So that is just 4 euro and 3 cent for a dinner for 4 people!!!

And the next day you can use the rest of the bacon for a carbonara or casserole!!