Jordan Hammond shares her tips for feeding your whānau for $40 per person per week.
When it comes to meal planning, 21-year-old student nurse Jordan Hammond takes thrift to the next level.
She’s in her final year of study and has a part-time job, but is on a limited income and manages to feed her household of two on $80 week. She’s sharing her tips in the second episode of RNZ’s new podcast ‘‘Thrift’’.
It helps that she loves to cook, inherited some good housekeeping skills from her parents, and honed her budgetary skills flatting with three blokes at university.
‘‘They ate like horses, and I got a knack for being able to meal plan on a really low budget.’’
Now she shares her tips on a blog where she posts sample weekly shops for budgets of $40, $70 and $80.
Recipes are part of the mix too - Hammond lists the ingredients she uses and includes before and after shots.
She strings out the vegetables, sometimes only using one or two in a dish. The meals are things like beef Stroganoff, red Thai curry, and chicken and bean tacos.
Here’s how she does it
A lot of us have had a repertoire of regular meals, but now more people are starting with the specials, adapting how they shop to use what’s cheap.
Hammond uses online shopping to hunt down the deals.
‘‘I look at what’s on sale. So, for this week, it was broccoli for 99 cents.’’
She searches broccoli recipes online and checks out Uber Eats so she can find tasty dishes and then make them much more cheaply herself.
‘‘All the food on Uber Eats looks so good and so yum, but you don’t want to pay like $30.’’
To make her salads and other meals go a bit further, Hammond bulks them up with beans and lentils, because they’re a good source of protein that keeps you fuller for longer.
She uses the online shopping order form as a budgeting check list.
‘‘I’m over my budget for this week, what can I cut out and what can I substitute?’’ is a question she asks herself.
‘‘Let’s say I had fast-fry beef, and then I thought ‘OK, stew would be good’.’’
She’ll spread the beef across a couple of meals to make it go further.
‘‘I’ve got pasta, so what can I make with pasta and beef steaks? Stroganoff. I can use yoghurt instead of sour cream. So basically, all I need is maybe a couple of mushrooms.’’
Her weekly shopping list is ever-changing - the only thing she buys every week is milk and bread.
‘‘Always, because then you can make toasted sandwiches, you can have a coffee.’’
Budget cooking needn’t be bland
‘‘If you season anything well enough, it’ll taste good. You can make a pretty basic meal and have it taste really luxurious.’’
Hammond’s top thrifty tips
• Find the specials and plan your shop around them.
• Stick to your budget using an online shopping tool.
• Use fresh foods early in the week and save your cans until later, spicing them up to keep it interesting.
• Find substitutes for anything you don’t have.
• Top up your pantry basics, possibly a different one each week to keep the cost down.
