Children’s Food Trust: Feeding the Family for Pennies Not Pounds

My daughter cooking the Speedy Biryani recipe from The Children’s Food Trust

Earlier this year, I was asked to do a guest blog for the Children’s Food Trust on the topic of “Feeding the Family for Pennies Not Pounds”.

(This was the link before the charity lost funding: http://www.childrensfoodtrust.org.uk/lets-get-cooking-at-home/feeding-the-family-for-pennies-not-pounds/ )

The post includes details on my top 10 tips on feeding children healthy food for less:

1. Try tinned and frozen, not just fresh
2. Check the price per unit
3. Buy big (if you can!)
4. Switch to value brands
5. Look for cheaper alternatives
6. Go veggie
7. Make your own snacks
8. Take your own food
9. Beware of pester power
10. Waste not, want not

Part of my suggestion about cheaper alternatives, which didn’t make it onto the website, was adding extra veg to stretch more expensive meat, like carrots, onion and broccoli to a stir fry, or baked beans to the mince in cottage pie.

If you’d like the recipe for cottage pie that stretches the mince with extra veg, you can find it here:

I really support the aims of The Children’s Food Trust, in encouraging people to cook at home and help their children learn how to cook. The website itself has some great tips, recipes and videos.

Originally I came across the Children’s Food Trust when we registered to take part in the Big Cookathon 2015, and joined loads of other families, schools, clubs and workplaces in cooking Speedy Biryani during the weekend of March 6 to 9.

I’m always keen to encourage the kids to cook, and the chance of winning a share of £15,000 in prizes was a definite incentive!

My daughter and I prepared for it by watching  a “Ben’s Beginners” video, and came away with some top advice about shaking our eggs to make sure the yolk stayed in the middle, making bridges with our hands to chop safely, and the mantra “if it rocks, it’s wrong” when putting food on the chopping board. My daughter and I then cooked the Speedy Biryani, and my son and husband helped hoover up the results.

Even better, we filled in a form and sent some photos afterwards, and were delighted to win one of the Family & Friends prizes of £200. Many cheers!

So check out the website if you might be vaguely interested, and watch out for the Big Cookathon next year, as it really is worth giving it a whirl.

(Although I can’t promise that you won’t end up with a hamster, after we used some of the prize money to buy my daughter her longed-for pet.)

Ginger the Houdini hamster