The cost of living climbs, and Caitríona Redmond has your weekly budget-busters

Let’s talk about shopping lists and budgets, without me sounding like a mathematician (because I certainly am not).

The €1 meals are certainly attracting a lot of attention from those who read this column and online. 

There are the usual detractors such as the person who proclaimed that they would go hungry if they ate only one chicken thigh for their main meal (spoiler you won’t), the person who is sure I burnt the dinner (I didn’t), and also those who can’t get their head around a shopping list/receipt that costs more than €1 per person.

This leads me to ‘pro rata’ pricing. Most of us don’t go to the shops to buy enough food for a single meal. Let’s face it, we’d have a rake of unused ingredients at the side and we all know that unused is a step away from food waste and losing money on your grocery budget. We shop for several days, or even a week in advance.

My trusty 1kg bag of carrots, which is priced at 99c in most supermarkets at the moment, is a superb example of where an ingredient that is bought will be used in 2 dinners plus snacks in this house. When setting the shopping list, I’m going to allow the carrots to carry over to other meals, which keeps my costs down.

If my meal plan says carrots are an ingredient in 2 main meals this week, I’m going to buy 1 bag of carrots and share the cost across the entire shopping budget (and not buy 2 bags). Likewise, onions, because a bag of onions will be used for the whole week and possibly next week.

When calculating the cost per portion of a meal, I will then allow for about 60% of the cost of the bag of carrots to be carried over to another meal. My meal cost (for the carrots) is 40c and the carried-over value is 60c which is allocated elsewhere.

There are a number of benefits to thinking about your food budget in this way.

You place a value on even a portion of the food you have bought. For many people, food bought is paid for and has lost its value. However, even if you’ve already paid for the food you have in your cupboard or in your fridge it still has value, you used your money to pay for it.

Once you start placing a value on your food you are less likely to have food waste. If you end up throwing out food because you didn’t use it in time then that’s your money being thrown into the bin, compost or otherwise.

Finally, allocating bulk ingredients to several meals it is a clear way to keep your meal costs down, making it easier to achieve a lower cost per portion for your meals. There you have it, if you aren’t doing this already, I highly recommend you start thinking about multi-use ingredients.

We’re smack bang in the middle of a heatwave this week so cook the sausages on the barbecue if you like and use this as a cold pasta dish instead of a hot supper. This week I shopped in SuperValu and the total cost of the ingredients was €4.76 but as before I’m not using all the ingredients in full, and the cost per portion works out at 88c per portion. That’s another meal on budget.

Garlicky Sausage Pasta recipe by:Caitriona Redmond  Quick and simple Italian food, without sacrificing style or substance! Servings 4 Preparation Time 10 mins Cooking Time 25 mins Total Time 35 mins Course Main Cuisine Italian Ingredients 454g (1lb) pork sausages 1 tbsp oil 3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped (or more) 175g of broccoli, chopped 1 tin of red kidney beans, drained 300g pasta Method Get your water on to boil while you prepare the speedy sauce. Using a sharp knife remove the skin from the sausages and fry them in a little oil on a medium frying pan. Use the back of your spoon or break up the sausage meat into chunks. Once browned, add the chopped garlic and stir before adding the broccoli. Stir. Put the pasta into boiling salted water. After five minutes add a ladleful of the pasta water to the frying pan and this will cook the broccoli and add a sauce. Finally, add the kidney beans and simmer. Strain the pasta and add to the sauce and serve.

Quick and simple Italian food, without sacrificing style or substance!

3 cloves of garlic, peeled and chopped (or more)

1 tin of red kidney beans, drained

Get your water on to boil while you prepare the speedy sauce.

Using a sharp knife remove the skin from the sausages and fry them in a little oil on a medium frying pan. Use the back of your spoon or break up the sausage meat into chunks. Once browned, add the chopped garlic and stir before adding the broccoli. Stir.

Put the pasta into boiling salted water. After five minutes add a ladleful of the pasta water to the frying pan and this will cook the broccoli and add a sauce. Finally, add the kidney beans and simmer.

Strain the pasta and add to the sauce and serve.

Raspberry Brownies recipe by:Caitriona Redmond  An all-time classic - the tart, bitter nature of raspberries meets soft and comfy chocolate brownie! Servings 9 Preparation Time 25 mins Cooking Time 25 mins Total Time 50 mins Course Dessert Cuisine American Ingredients 125g butter 50g dark cocoa (but drinking chocolate powder will work fine here) 200g caster sugar 3 medium eggs 200g plain flour 1 tsp baking powder 100g frozen raspberries Method Preheat your (fan) oven to 180°C. Line a square baking dish well. In a large, microwaveable bowl, melt the butter in the microwave. It should only take 30 seconds x 2 on the high setting. Stir in the cocoa powder until blended with the melted butter. In a second large bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar until creamy and frothy. While whisking, pour in the butter & cocoa powder mixture. Keep on whisking until completely combined. Stop whisking and fold in the flour and baking powder. Once all the flour and baking powder has been combined, pour half the mixture into the lined baking dish. Stud the mixture with the whole raspberries then pour the remaining mixture on top. Bake in the oven for 25 minutes. Turn off the oven, remove the brownie and leave to cool before serving.

An all-time classic - the tart, bitter nature of raspberries meets soft and comfy chocolate brownie!

50g dark cocoa (but drinking chocolate powder will work fine here)

Preheat your (fan) oven to 180°C. Line a square baking dish well.

In a large, microwaveable bowl, melt the butter in the microwave. It should only take 30 seconds x 2 on the high setting. Stir in the cocoa powder until blended with the melted butter.

In a second large bowl whisk together the eggs and sugar until creamy and frothy. While whisking, pour in the butter & cocoa powder mixture. Keep on whisking until completely combined.

Stop whisking and fold in the flour and baking powder. Once all the flour and baking powder has been combined, pour half the mixture into the lined baking dish. Stud the mixture with the whole raspberries then pour the remaining mixture on top.

Bake in the oven for 25 minutes. Turn off the oven, remove the brownie and leave to cool before serving.

Grocery shopping can be a stressful experience, particularly if you have to slot it in around your busy lifestyle so it can be helpful to know exactly when the supermarket is quieter so that you can get in and out with less hassle. We are more likely not to stick to the shopping list and impulse buy when we are stressed.

The Lidl Plus app has a handy feature on the front section which they call their ‘live feed’. This is where you can predict how busy your local store is providing you’ve shared your preference details with the app.

You can access this feature for all shops, not just Lidl, by opening google and searching for a shop in a particular location. Not only will you be able to see how busy your local supermarket is at a particular time, but you should also be able to predict how crowded it might be if you’re intending to head to the shops straightway.

If you don’t fancy going down the technology route to figure out how busy your chosen retailer is, all shops are quieter first thing in the morning and last thing in the evening, but you might not be able to find exactly what you’re looking for in the evening if the shelves have to be restocked.

All of the supermarkets have their back-to-school offers in stock with big-name brands on discount, similar to when you’re looking at foodstuffs. 

In exactly the same spirit as this column, the own label stationery and uniforms can be just as good as the big brand names and this is an area where you can save a fortune.

On the topic of lunchboxes though it’s worth investing in a quality lunchbox with a good liquid-tight seal to prevent spillages. 

When the boxes are not used in school you can use them for food storage. If you have an infant starting school this year don’t buy any lunchboxes without making sure they can open and close their lunchbox and drinks bottle with ease.

Read MoreTop 8: The best healthy snack foods for school lunches 

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