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The last week before payday is when food spending tends to go wrong. The fridge is half empty, the shop is a short walk away and every small top-up looks affordable by itself. The payday countdown gives you a number for the week: put in what you have left, and it divides that by the days remaining. This article is about making that number cover food, using what is already in the cupboard and freezer and cooking in batches.
Start from the daily figure
Say you have £63 left across a bank account and a purse, and payday is seven days away. The calculator gives £9 a day. Assume the bills that leave by direct debit before payday are already covered, so £9 is for everything else, and food is one of several things in it. Decide how much of the £9 is for food before the week starts. If food is £6 of it, that is £42 for the week, and the question becomes what £42 can cover once the cupboard is counted.
The figures are an example. Use your own: what matters is the order, which is to count the money first and the food second, then plan meals to fit.
Count what you already have
Before buying anything, take a look in the cupboard, the fridge and the freezer and write down what is there. Pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, pulses, frozen vegetables, eggs, bread, a half bag of potatoes. That is often enough for several meals with very little added.
The Food Standards Agency says you can freeze food up to midnight on its use-by date. That is useful at the start of the week: bread, meat or anything close to its date can go in the freezer on the day instead of in the bin. Freeze it in portions so you can defrost only what you need.
Cook once, eat several times
A batch is one large meal that becomes several portions. Chilli, curry, soup, a pasta sauce, a stew and a tray bake all work, and each one makes four to six portions from one cooking session. The saving comes from shopping for one recipe, and from cooking once instead of several times.
A Ad slow cooker suits this, because a stew or a curry cooks while you are out. Check the capacity against the number of portions you want, and the freezer space for the ones you will not eat that week.
Cool, portion, label
Food safety is the part of batch cooking that cannot be skipped. The FSA's guidance is specific:
- Do not put hot or warm food straight into the fridge. Let cooked food cool at room temperature, then refrigerate it within one to two hours.
- Divide it into smaller portions in containers or freezer bags, which cools it faster.
- Eat refrigerated leftovers within 48 hours, or freeze them.
- Freeze leftovers and homemade food as soon as possible once cool.
- Label what you freeze.
A set of Ad freezer-safe containers with lids in two sizes covers most meals: a larger size for sauces and soups, a smaller one for single portions. Flat Ad freezer bags with a write-on panel take up less room than boxes and cool faster. A roll of Ad freezer labels and a marker mean the date and the dish go on every portion, because a frozen block of brown sauce looks the same as another one a month later.
The FSA also gives rough quality guidance: meat within about two to three months, and baked goods, fruit and vegetables within three to four months. Freezer burn affects the quality of food, not its safety.
Defrosting and reheating
Defrost in the fridge, in a container to catch drips, so the food does not sit in the temperature range where bacteria grow quickly. The FSA gives that range as 8 to 63°C. Defrosted food should be used within 24 hours. If there is no time to defrost in the fridge, the microwave defrost setting works, followed by cooking straight away. Make sure the centre is fully thawed first, because partly frozen food may not cook evenly.
You can freeze food again once it has been cooked, but you can only reheat it once after that. So reheat only what you will eat.
Check the appliances
A fridge that is too warm and a freezer that is not cold enough undo the work. The FSA says the fridge should be between 0 and 5°C, and recommends checking it weekly with a thermometer. The freezer should be at about -18°C. An Ad appliance thermometer for fridge and freezer costs very little and removes the guesswork.
A sample week
This is a pattern, not a recipe list. Adapt it to what is in your cupboard.
- Day one. Count the stock, set the food budget from the daily figure, and cook the first large batch. Portion it and freeze what you will not eat in the next two days.
- Day two to three. Eat from the first batch. Top up only what the plan needs, such as bread or milk.
- Day four. Cook a second batch of something different, so the week does not repeat itself.
- Day five to seven. Defrost in the fridge the night before. Eat from both batches and use up the odds and ends from the cupboard.
Leave a day or two of margin. If payday slips by a day, which can happen when it falls on a weekend or a bank holiday, a frozen portion in reserve covers the gap, and the countdown will show the new number as soon as you change the date.
What to do with what is left
On payday, restock the staples that ran down, such as rice, pasta and tins, before anything else. A cupboard with a few meals in it is the starting point for next month's last week, and the daily figure on the next countdown has less to cover.