School’s back, purses have taken a pounding, once again there aren’t enough hours in the day, and the tyranny of the school lunchbox awaits. It’s a familiar scenario, so if you were offered a magic tool that would make getting a nutritious dinner on the table at the end of each day easier, and also save you money, you’d would grab it with both hands, wouldn’t you?
Sian Breslin is a Welsh-born, Donegal-based home economics teacher, cookery tutor and guest house proprietor who had an idea: “Let’s make it as easy as possible for families to eat healthily.” Her business, Sian’s Plan, is an online menu-planning tool aimed a families. You choose recipes from a family-friendly selection of 75 meals, the website generates a shopping list and you either take it with you to the shops, or have the items delivered to your home.
Sian’s Plan launched last year and now has almost 5,000 subscribers in 49 countries, most of them in the UK, who pay a monthly fee of between £3.75 (€4.32) and £7.50 (€8.64) to access the recipe library, plan their menus, place their shopping orders online and create their own recipe “books” of their families’ favourite meals.
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“ It took me about a year to create the concept of Sian’s Plan and during that process it became clear that the most effective route was digital,” says the entrepreneur, who says she is not tech-savvy and didn’t even have a smart phone until a few months ago. Two of Breslin’s three sons, Vincent and Michael, now run the company with her, with Vincent looking after product development and securing investment. “The company was self-financed until January when it was offered grant assistance from Invest Northern Ireland,” he says. Sian is the recipe creator and content writer and Michael is data analyst for the company, which is based between Belfast and Donegal.
So how does it actually work, and how will it save busy families time, and money? To find out, I sign up for the free trial of the five-day “plan” (there is also a seven-day version), offered on the company’s website.
The idea is that you plan weekly menus that include days when you batch cook, days when you cook from scratch, days when you use up leftovers or create a meal from what’s in the fridge, and days when you don’t cook at all. The recipe choice is good, but there is no nutritional information given, and it is assumed the user will make choices that add up to a balanced diet. This is something the company is addressing .
“We are working hard on providing nutritional information and intend to do that in a few ways. The first will be a breakdown of each meal, just like any other recipe provider. We’ll also show you a breakdown of your weekly meal plan, compared to a recommended balanced diet, ” Vincent says.
Once I have picked my five meals, which each serve four people, and dragged and dropped the recipe cards into the personalised plan on my laptop, it’s time to go shopping, online. The grocery list is very detailed, requiring one single potato (variety not specified), as well as four “waxy” potatoes. It separates store-cupboard ingredients, which you can eliminate from your order, if you have them, from fresh produce.
Once my list is finalised, I can choose between two retailers that have direct links with Sian’s Plan – Tesco and SuperValu – and have my order delivered, or I can print the list and do the shopping myself. Why these two particular retailers?
“This is down to the functionality on the third-party sites. Tesco and SuperValu have ‘multi-ingredient search’ boxes. We make it simple for online shoppers to copy their grocery list over and choose their ingredients. As far as we are aware, others don’t have that functionality but if they did we’d add them to Sian’s Plan,” Vincent says. “We don’t promote products and we don’t promote supermarkets. Tesco offer us a very small fee per transaction but SuperValu do not.”
My SuperValu order, which when combined with my store-cupboard ingredients will make five dinners for four people, costing €41.24 including €5 for delivery. Fresh white fish is unavailable on the website, so I get this from a fish shop at an additional cost of €8 for fresh hake.
So, what did I cook, was it good, and did it save me time and money?
MONDAY
Chicken and vegetable pasties
Prep time: 10 mins; cook time: 35 mins
The recipe calls for 150g shortcrust pastry, and as it appears on my shopping list, I buy it (€3.65) rather than make it, which is just as well as I have enough of the filling (rather bland: chicken, carrots and potato) to use up most of the 640g of pastry in the frozen pack. Prep takes far longer than 10 minutes, but there is enough for lunch the next day.
TUESDAY
Spicy lamb mince tacos
Prep time: 15 mins; cook time: 15 mins
Tasty, not a lot of filling , but enough for two tacos each. Would maybe bulk this one out with a tin of kidney beans. Added some non-specified salt; felt guilty.
WEDNESDAY
Chicken and prawn laksa
Prep time: 15 mins; cook time: 20 mins
Even quicker to make than suggested, and very good to eat, with noodles added to the chicken, prawn, onion and mixed peppers in a coconut milk broth.
THURSDAY
Fish goujons with chipped potatoes
Prep time: 10 mins; cook time 20 mins
I could have chosen the breaded, oven-cooked fish finger recipe instead, but I was intrigued by the turmeric in the batter, which did give it a lovely golden glow.
Oven-cooked wedges might have been a better accompaniment, but if you’ve got that vat of boiling oil on the go . . .
FRIDAY
Green pea and red onion pasta
Prep time: 7 mins; cook time: 20 mins
As this is my "green" day when I am supposed to cook from leftovers or storecupboard ingredients, I add some leftover chopped chicken breast, frozen sweetcorn and broad beans, and a little bit of grated cheddar. And it's the nicest meal of the week, some salted butter amalgamating the pasta and the veg, and the melted cheese adding extra flavour.
THE VERDICT
Initially, I can't see what subscribing to Sian's Plan can offer me that my collection of cookbooks and online shopping account cannot. But then I read a line on the website that begins to make sense of the programme, for me: "Reverse the way you cook."
I am encouraged to “think about when and what to cook” before I shop. So no more impulse buying and no more filling the fridge with random ingredients, often far too many of them.
The week after doing Sian’s Plan, I find myself filling a trolley in my local supermarket, and regretting that I cannot avail of those tempting three for two offers – because both, yes both, of my freezers are full to bursting point. I empty the trolly, pick up some bread and milk and leave the shop. There is a lesson there, and I may have begun to learn it.
siansplan.com
Feeding a family of two on £10 a week
Jack Monroe is a mother of one living in Southend in the UK, who has become known internationally for writing about feeding herself and her three-year-old son on a weekly budget of just £10. She campaigns for Oxfam and Child Poverty Action Group, has spoken in parliament, and was invited to the G8 Summit as part of the Enough Food If campaign. She has a book of her recipes, A Girl Called Jack (also the title of her blog) coming out next February, published by Michael Joseph.
Monroe says she shops “vegetables first, protein second – buying tinned and frozen vegetables, and tinned kidney beans and fish as my staple foods”, always buying from the own-brand value ranges, and manages to create tasty and wholesome meals for herself and her son, Johnny, whose favourite thing is her soda bread with raisins, while she likes to eat stews, hotpots and casseroles. In most instances these are vegetarian dishes, for reasons of economy rather than choice.
Monroe says the frugal recipe she is most proud of creating is her 9p burger. “It’s a carrot, cumin and kidney bean burger made from a value can of kidney beans and a sad looking carrot at the bottom of the fridge. It’s quick, spicy and versatile.”
“Red kidney beans, canned chopped tomatoes, frozen spinach, tinned potatoes, tinned carrots, and natural yoghurt are all staple ingredients in my cupboard and fridge – as well as a window box of home grown herbs – parsley, thyme, mint, chillies and coriander.”
After a period of unemployment and serious financial hardship, Monroe is now working as a trainee reporter, but still sticks to her £10 weekly budget, while learning to deal with the attention that comes with fame. “I get stopped in the supermarket a lot by people who have seen me in the news or that read my blog. I like talking to people – its nice to be reminded that you’re not just shouting into cyber space.”
agirlcalledjack.com
'Eating on a small budget needs time'
Caitriona Redmond lives in Balbriggan, Co Dublin, and cooks for five people on a weekly budget of €70 (including cleaning products). She has a book coming out in spring 2014. “I’ve written and shot it by myself within our weekly grocery budget. Every single item has been made then photographed before we all tuck in.”
Redmond says the biggest challenge in feeding a family on a restricted budget is not eating convenience foods. “It is so easy to go to the supermarket and buy a pizza to feed the family for less than €2.50. Eating on a small budget needs time. It’s just as cheap to make a soup or a stew but I have to set time aside to prepare and cook it.”
So, she plans her shopping and her menus. “I have a large whiteboard in the kitchen and we use this to plan the week around our activities. Then I figure out which days I need a quick meal, and when I can be at home for a slower cooked meal.
“When I get to the supermarket I check out the discount ‘yellow sticker’ sections. Depending on what I get there, I organise the rest of my list around it. Discount vouchers from pigsback.ie and tips and tricks from the boards.ie bargain alert forum help, too.”
Redmond’s blog is a useful resource for budgetary planning.
“The tools you pay for on other websites you can find for free on mine – meal-planning templates, store cupboard stocktake sheets, tips and tricks, recipes. If I make something very expensive then I warn the reader. I want people to make my recipes because they taste good, the price is a peripheral benefit.”
wholesomeireland.com
