Keeping your preps stocked due to cost of living

[Arzosah]

Hope you're feeling and doing better Arzosah, it's bad enough now without illness pulling us down.
I'm with you on the preps timmyt - simplifying, cutting back to basics, cutting out all the frills and eating old style. For years in the hard times we lived on porridge for breakfast, soup and puddings for dinner, and eggs/bread/butter & jam for tea. It works fine

Thanks Lil! Yes, basics - though I'm rubbish at cooking rice, it has to be said but dried beans that I cook in the slow cooker and then use in different ways, that's a godsend.

Food as a child - cereal for breakfast, sandwiches for lunch (meat paste ) boiled potatoes and overcooked veg with some sort of meat, then more bread to fill you up. On Sunday evening we had "salad" - 3 pieces of lettuce, half a tomato, a spring onion (too strong for me as a child!) and half a hard boiled egg. No wonder I was always hungry

[diamond lil]

You can do wonders with soup, many choices there, use up the bottom of the fridge or the leftovers from last night. Just throw in dried veg if that's all you've got. With HM bread it's all good. And pudding is the filler-upper - for me it's semolina/creamed rice/custard, with apple sponge cake/syrup sponge cake/light sultana cake - and now I want some

[Arzosah]

Apple crumble. Just saying.

I've picked about 2-3 lbs of apples from council land this year, there was a formal Apple Day, but there's still loads left. Going to pick some tomorrow - even if I have to chop them up to get rid of the bad bits, that's still a lot of free food lying about.

[GillyBee]

Remember the Marmite if you are cutting your meat/eggs/cheese right down. Adds flavour and more importantly vit B12 which is missing from vegan diets. Deficiency can make you feel pretty rough - and can mimic some problems that come with age but is easily fixed.

[Frnc]

Remember the Marmite if you are cutting your meat/eggs/cheese right down. Adds flavour and more importantly vit B12 which is missing from vegan diets. Deficiency can make you feel pretty rough - and can mimic some problems that come with age but is easily fixed.

I have Sainsburys reduced salt yeast extract. Tates the same. But I take a B complex tablet every other day anyway.

B12 is very low absorbtion, so my tablets contain 600% of RI. GPT says this is completely safe. Same with some others, eg B1 and B6. Taking 15µg B12 ensures you absorb 1-2µg. (µg = microgrammes = 1/1000th of a mg).

[NBK2000]

Unless you’ve been told by a dietitian/medical professional, taking multivitamins is just making expensive piss.

[diamond lil]

NBK not at all - health professionals are not always good re nutrition, they aren't taught more than the basics. For instance if you are diabetic and follow NHS advice you will def regret it. People should google reputatable websites and authors and do their own research.

[GillyBee]

I ran into problems after my son was born. My brain was just not working right. I even managed to crash the car and forgot to pay for stuff in the supermarket so often that I made a habit of paying for it at customer service the following week in case I was picked up by security. Several months in I realised it was worse each month and did some research using a book called "Beat PMT through diet" They recommended some high dose vitamins that I could only just afford - but had stories of people just like me who had benefitted'

3 days later I started to feel normal again. My husband noticed and so did work. I was working at a GP practice at the time and discussed this all with the GP. She started to suggest general multivitamins to her other post natal patients and saw similar turn arounds.

This was NOT covered in medical school. In the end, one of the GPs went on to study nutrition for a year - his medical school education on nutrition had amounted to 3 days study and he realised how inadequate this was.

[itsybitsy]

Unless you’ve been told by a dietitian/medical professional, taking multivitamins is just making expensive piss.

That's extremely disparaging to other members of this community - check your tone, please.

[NBK2000]

I don’t mean to come across as abrasive or rude. But I stand by the statement. Unless you’ve been to see a medical professional who says you’re lacking in xyz, whatever it may be. Then take them as needed.

But ultimately you’re taking something (at your own expense no less) something that your body doesn’t need and will ultimately excrete.

That’s my opinion on the issue anyway.