A mother-of-three has revealed how she cooks healthy meals for as little as 97p per head – spending just over £50 for eight meals a week for her family.
Emma Bradley, 43, from Gloucester, left her teaching job four years ago so that she could spend more time with her children Chloe, 19, Dylan, 15, and Erin, 9 and started blogging full time.
Using around £27 worth of meat and just over £24 of store cupboard essentials, Emma serves eight hearty yet balanced meals like shepherd’s pie, sausage casserole and meatballs for her husband and two youngest children.
While she would once regularly bulk-cook and freeze meals, she now has more time to cook from scratch each day and get her youngest children Erin, 9 and Dylan, 15 involved in the kitchen.
Now, she cooks up fresh and filling meals for her family each evening, but cooks in bulk on occasion for her eldest daughter Chloe, 19, to take back to uni with her.
Emma Bradley, 43, from Gloucester, spends just over £50 for eight meals a week to feed her husband and their children Chloe, 19, Dylan, 15, and Erin, 9 (seen clockwise) – just 97p per head
Using around £27 worth of meat and just over £24 of store cupboard essentials, Emma serves eight hearty yet balanced meals like shepherd’s pie, sausage casserole and meatballs for her husband and two youngest children
Dishes like bolognese and filled jacket potatoes are ideal for cooking, portioning up and freezing ready to take out and reheat when Chloe is busy studying.
Emma, from Gloucester, said: ‘I’ve found that it’s actually harder to cook for my children now than when they were smaller. When they were really young, I used to bulk-cook a lot of meals as it was easy to just get them out of the freezer and serve them up whenever we’d all sit down to eat.
‘Now we have to get kids to and from extra-curricular activities like football practice and swimming lessons, and my husband works long hours as an assistant head teacher, so it’d be easy to find excuses not to sit down together every evening.
‘This is part of the reason I like to cook fresh from day to day now – it gets the kids into the kitchen as soon as they smell something cooking, so they’re generally more involved and interested in the cooking process.
‘Not to mention I have more time as I’m no longer working long, stressful hours as a teacher.
Her chicken with potato rosti, tomatoes and green beans (serves 4) and costs just £8.92 for Emma to make – that’s a per person: cost of £2.23
Another of Emma’s favourite dishes is turkey and mushroom mince with leeky potatoes (serves 4) Total: £5.49 Per person: £1.37
Using around £27 worth of meat and just over £24 of store cupboard essentials, Emma serves eight hearty yet balanced meals like casserole
‘Saying that, I do still bulk cook for my eldest daughter who is at uni. The stuffed jacket potatoes are perfect for this – you can just pop them out of the freezer and heat them up in the microwave if you want a quick meal or snack.’
When eldest daughter Chloe is back from university, Emma usually find it quite hard cooking for a family of five as most supermarket products are packaged for four.
But she says that bulk buying high quality musclefood.com meat means she can pull out the right quantities from the freezer, and it saved on unnecessary packaging too.
While she would once regularly bulk-cook and freeze meals, she now has more time to cook from scratch each day and get her youngest children Erin, 9 and Dylan, 15 involved in the kitchen – and Chloe (right) when she is home
She says that bulk buying high quality musclefood.com meat means she can pull out the right quantities from the freezer, and it saved on unnecessary packaging too
Emma said: ‘I’d never really thought about using an online retailer for meat, but I can’t fault the process at all. The meat is great quality and goes a lot further than some supermarket alternatives – particularly the chicken breasts which were really chunky and filling.
‘It’s important that my family eats fresh and nutritious food every day, so I try to squeeze extra veggies into dishes where possible.
‘Sweetcorn might not seem like a natural go-to for meatballs and pasta, for example, but my kids love it, so I just throw some in to pack out the meal a bit more.
‘By showing them how to cook healthy meals every day, I hope they’ll be learning about basic nutrition and how to eat a balanced diet as they get older.’
When eldest daughter Chloe (right) is back from university, Emma usually find it quite hard cooking for a family of five as most supermarket products are packaged for four
Pictured: Pasta and meatballs (serves 4) Pasta 49p Passata 40p Tinned sweetcorn 39p Musclefood meatballs (packet of 20) £2.63 Total: £3.91 Per person: 97p
Pasta and meatballs is one of Emma’s favourite dishes