Student Survival - Shopping Tips

I am making a sort of personal cookbook for my son in the fervent hope he gets his grades and starts at university next year. The thought struck me while starting on that that shopping tips would be even more useful, given he can do quite a few dishes already, but has never yet done a supermarket (or other) shopping run.

So for what they are worth, and in no particularly logical order, my top tips for student shopping survival:

1. In supermarkets check out the 'ethnic' food shelves. You'll find rice, coconut milk, spices and plenty more that is appreciably cheaper than the same foods (different brands) on the next aisle.
2. Recipe bacon aka cooking bacon is a wonderful deal - the ends, off-cuts and errors not suitable for pretty packets. Same bacon, and often with big chunks perfect for stews. And who cares if their bacon butty is made up of mis-shapes?
3. Tinned tomatoes - buy the cheapest - basic, value, whatever they call them in your store. Some colour variation, maybe a tiny bit of skin, but no difference in taste or standard. Which price sounds better, 31p or £1?
4. Don't be put off by Aldi and Lidl's lack of fancy decor, they do good food and at low prices. Lidl's Parmesan is the best supermarket one I've found, and it is between 35% and 50% cheaper than the stuff from certain other big name places.
5. Markets can be brilliant for fruit and veg, much cheaper than supermarkets and ethically often great as veg tends to be local.
6. Chinese supermarkets are another source of good and cheaper ingredients. When I get the chance I buy noodles in them for about a quarter of the Sainsbury's price, and tins of bamboo shoots and water chestnuts for 60p to 65p compared with 90p.
7. 'Basic' peppers again are a bargain, just more interesting shapes than the dearer ones. They don't come from bad plants. They are not 'off'. 
8. If you buy veg etc in supermarkets, a quick glance at the bagged up price and the loose price per kilo is worthwhile. Mushrooms you pick and put in a paper bag are a good 10% cheaper than the plastic boxes. 
9. For meat if you can find a butcher's shop (or stall on the market) use it. They will do small bags of mince (ragu, chilli con carne, etc) where supermarkets tend to do 250g minimum. Meat as spice in a ragu needs 100g or less.
10. Don't buy the cheapest bread. Bread should be a pleasure, and the crappiest sliced rubbish is not. Same thing with 'mild' cheddar - and with the latter you need twice as much to get the same flavour as you have with strong stuff, so it's a false economy.
11. Buy in season, when gluts mean cheap prices. The other side of this is don't buy stuff flown half-way round the world - food-mile guilt and the freight adds to the price. 
12. Some 'specials' are worth going for, others not. BOGOF fresh foods risks the 'free' one (not free) going off, so you wasted money and resources. Tins, however, are good value as they keep.
13. Own brand works for simple things like rice, pasta and bread. A brand's price includes a hefty proportion of advertising spend and something for sharper packaging. Who cares?
14. Protein isn't just found in meat. Mushrooms, tofu, Quorn, and beans are good alternatives, and a lot cheaper.  

Any other suggestions?

One Flame Super Student Soup

That's a soup for students, not made from, to be clear.

At a university visit with SC on Saturday the guided tour took in accommodation and a shared kitchen. I loved the community of the kitchen at my alma mater, though the very occasional disappearance of food from the fridge was annoying. As with my experience so today as regards the cooker - electric hob, doubtless to avoid yoots blowing themselves and others to bits.

A wonderful and easy shared meal if students band together to share cooking duties is a fish soup, easy, quick, nutritious and more than a bit virtuous. We had a version last week made with proper ham stock, but a chicken or ham stock cube (I avoid the fish and veg ones) is an OK substitute. Again this is really cheapo for four people, and there's just one pan to wash up.

In a large saucepan gently fry two chopped onions in oil. Don't let this brown. Chop the veg finely, they cook quickly and keep their flavour better. Add a selection of veg chopped finely: carrots are cheap and flavorful, so are turnips, maybe a Basics pepper or a courgette if there's a glut and they're cheap, plus two or three garlic cloves sliced thinly, and sweat them for two minutes. Boil 1.25l of water in a kettle and add this with two crumbled cubes (I like Knorr best), to the pan and up the heat until it reaches a bubbling simmer, then turn the heat down to maintain that simmer (easy with gas, a bugger tbh with electric hobs). Add either (or both) a couple of potatoes cut into small dice, or 100g spaghetti broken into very short lengths, and cook until they are just about done - about 10 minutes. At this point add your fish - cheapest in frozen packs of whitefish fillets or those bricks of pollock. When they are defrosted and cooked through, adjust seasoning and break up the fish into smaller chunks, then serve with bread and butter.

The economics: 520g pack of frozen whitefish fillets £1.75; vegetables if using Basics red pepper £1.25; spag 20p;  stock cubes 20p. Bread and butter according to hunger, but you can get excellent bread from Morrison's really cheaply - two small loaves for £1 so you can have white for most of us and brown for the saintly. Even with a ton of butter that's still going to be well below a fiver for four people.

If you want to push the boat out or play tunes with the idea a pack of smoked salmon bits for £1.50 added at the very end of cooking, or frozen prawns £2.25 for a 400g bag bunged in with the fish make this into a feast (that would actually feed six with another turnip, carrot and spud and half a litre more water). Or cube some 'cooking bacon' and add with the veg. Or throw in a few frozen peas or sweetcorn. This is more an idea/method than a recipe.

I wondered about mentioning that a dash of leftover cider would be good, then I remembered that this is meant to be for students, who tend not to leave much cider.

One Flame Student Survival - Curry for Pennies

The one flame idea partly comes out of my experience living in France for a year as an assistant, when I had a single Calor Gas burner on which to cook, and partly from the fact that the less washing up there is the more likely people are to make their own food, which means eating better than you would from the chippie, and brings a social aspect with it. So how about this for a student meal for three, a common number in shared houses?

Fish curry in 30 minutes, with the cost well below £1.50 each again. This hits the protein spot too, not easy for budget meals. It's not authentic, but it is tasty.

Use a large and deep frying pan, heated quite high. In a couple of spoonfuls of vegetable oil fry three sliced onions until they start to brown a little - don't turn your back - then add a red chilli cut fine (stand clear, it's pepper spray time), and an inch or so of root ginger cut into teenie strips, and turn the heat down to medium. After a minute for these to cook through add two cloves of garlic chopped fine, then pour in a tin of chopped tomatoes and a tsp of sugar, plus a tin of coconut milk. When this is bubbling gently add a pack of frozen whitefish fillets (cheapo and they're good, it's pollock - no honestly). Cook till they are beyond defrosted and into cooked, and gently break them up. At the end season with salt, pepper, and spices - buy a plastic packet of garam masala - nicer than 'curry powder' and it costs less - from the ethnic shelves for about 60p and it will last all year, this only needs a tsp. When it is all cooked through serve with basics pitta bread in place of far more expensive naan.

The economics: (all Sainsbury's unless stated, so Morrison's would generally be cheaper still) 520g frozen whitefish fillets £1.75; tinned toms (Lidl) 31p; coconut milk on offer now 50p; 3 onions 15p; garlic 8p; chilli 15p; ginger about 10p; 6-pack of Basics pittas 22p. Spices 3p. The lot for £3.29 give or take a few pence. And the fish alone gives you about three quarters of your protein GDA. A veggie version of this can be made easily and more cheaply still, substituting two 69p tins of chick peas for the fish (so for three that's less than £1 each).

Mean beast that I am I buy Lidl chopped toms in bulk - they won an Observer taste test a while back (or one of the other Sundays) and at 31p each are maybe 40 per cent cheaper than own brand elsewhere, and 1/3 the price of advertised stuff - and I dare you to find a difference in quality.

Half the World's Food Wasted

The Institute of Mechanical Engineers has garnered headlines with its report stating that up to half the world's food goes to waste. Some of the causes are beyond ordinary households to fix, but there are plenty of actions we can take to make some difference.

1: Buy local fruit and vegetables from local markets, where how a potato looks, or the size of a turnip, or  a little blemish on an apple, are not regarded as vital. If you buy from supermarkets, make a point of buying stuff like the 'basic' bags of peppers, which are misshapes and 'the wrong size' (what utter bureaucratic idiocy, wherever it comes from). They, like market produce, are cheaper and taste no damn different.

2: If you grow your own, use it. Either side of us neighbours have perfectly good fruit trees that over the years have been little picked if at all. Happily we have been allowed to harvest the damsons from a tree on one side and mirabelles from a much neglected tree on the other. New occupants of the damson side so I hope they make the best of what they have available fresh and free.

And strangely I have noticed how some fellow allotment growers don't harvest some of their crops, either because they are grown out of habit though not liked, or too much of something is grown (so gift them), or a touch of the can't be bothereds sets in.

3: Learn to use leftovers. All it takes is a little imagination: yesterday I was making a big omelette for our evening meal, into which cubed went three stovie potatoes left from the previous day, bulking out the onion, yellow pepper (yes, basics range) and Parmesan.

4: Don't buy on automatic. I wonder how internet grocery purchases are affecting wastage - we all tend to laziness, and not changing a list even if you go off something, or have plenty already, is going to lead to waste.

5: Learn to preserve stuff better. That may be simply keeping certain fruits and veggies in the fridge, or actually making pickles and jams. Last year was rubbish for apples, strawberries and raspberries here, what we got was eaten fresh or made into ice cream as regards soft fruit, so no jams or jellies made for once. But we have some from 2011 still good.

6: In a country where obesity is a major problem, think about portion size.

The economic benefits will be immediate if the shopping bill is reduced, as it can be for most of us. But longer term as demand drops here so should prices, and the developing world will get a better share of food resources. It won't cure the planet's ills, but every little helps.

Another action, not for everybody though: get chickens (who love leftover spuds, greens, stale bread, cucumber skin if you don't use it, any toms that have got mould, etc etc). One fine day we'd love to have a pig or two, though as our deeds say we can't that has to wait until we move sometime in the future.

Homemade Pizza

Homemade pizza is not supermarket bought then heated in the oven, nor even your own toppings on a readymade base. It is made from scratch, which with a breadmaker is simple. My recipe for enough dough for three thin pizzas is a cup of water, 2.75 cups of strong white flour, 2.5 tbsps of olive oil, a tsp of sugar, 3tbsps of milk powder, 4tbsps of sugar, 1 tsp dried yeast. Dough setting, wait for 90 minutes and then knock back, knead, roll into circles (that is the bit I struggle with, mine look like the outlines of Rohrschach blots), leave to rise for at least 15 minutes then add toppings and cook at or near your oven's max temperature till done - about 15 minutes.

We love a fishy version, made with a tin of sardines (backbones removed) and half a tin of anchovies, plus lightly fried onions and peppers (back to the Basics range) and a cheap Basics mozarella, so about £1.50 for that one.

Cheaper and still great is a version of Napoletana (I think) with half a tin of toms (JS Basics again, or Lidl's are excellent for all of 33p) cooked down to a paste with a teaspoon of sugar added, spread on the base followed by more of the onions and pepper, the rest of the anchovies, and some halved pitted black olives from a jar in the fridge that lasts a week or more of salads and suchlike.

The third uses slices of salami - I buy the JS £1 Try Me packs as they are enough for a whole pizza, or for a starter with crudites etc - the onions and pepper, sliced garlic and another cheapo mozarella, plus a few Parmesan shavings made with a potato peeler.

It's important to cook them on metal pizza plates or at a pinch a metal griddle sheet so they don't end up soggy (as they would with pot or glass carriers). So three pizzas for about £3.50 worth of ingredients, the cost of one from the shop or half a (decent) takeaway pizza. For us a Thursday night treat eaten in front of the TV - it's Big Bang Theory Night - instead of the usual family gathering round the dining table. It's a particular treat for me as I love making them and my careful side likes thinking about how much Pizza Express versions (which are admittedly good) would have cost.