Redbrick Food&Drink are introducing a new section, Budget Bites, with food duo Rosie and Liv. Although their articles will be predominantly online, we thought we’d give them a proper introduction here, explaining what they’re all about and why you should be keeping an eye out for their delish recipes and student-friendly tips and tricks.

What is Budget Bites?

Budget Bites is a new column that we have started in order to document our favourite recipes, and show you how to make your weekly shop frugal, but still filled with flavour. If you’re looking for inspiration, hopefully we can provide it! This time last year, we admittedly could only cook pasta, whereas now we enjoy cooking together several nights a week. Budget Bites is the place to share our failures and successes on our cooking journey.

What gave you the idea to start it?

We sometimes struggle to think of meal ideas ourselves, and so thought that our idea could be a good idea to help other students in our situation. After looking on the Redbrick food page, we felt that Budget Bites could slot neatly into the other food and drink articles. It also is an opportunity for us to be more creative, and produce content we are interested in.

What do you hope to achieve by writing these articles? What do you want to share with your readers?

We hope that our articles may prove useful for others that are struggling for meal ideas, or struggling for ways to shop frugally. We also hope that now we are part of the Food&Drink community, we can learn things from other writers that we haven’t thought of ourselves, and expand our culinary experience of Birmingham based on others’ reviews.

What’s your favourite student-friendly meal to cook?

It is hard for us to pick one, but our favourite student-friendly meal has to be spaghetti bolognese. We cook it all from scratch, so the ingredients are super cheap, super healthy, and one batch can make multiple meals. 

Our new snack obsession has led to the discovery of Chinese style salt and spicy chips, but to save money, we have found a way to make our own. It may not be that healthy, but it is certainly healthier than buying them from the takeaway!

What’s your go-to supermarket that sells good ingredients and is friendly on student wallets?

Our favourite go-to supermarket, as we’re sure most students in Selly will agree, definitely has to be Aldi. We think that the ingredients are tasty and good quality, but at a much cheaper price compared to other supermarkets in the area. Having said this, we admittedly do quite like branded condiments, such as Heinz, Hellmann’s, and Blue Dragon, so we go to Sainsbury’s every now and then to stock up on these essentials.

Any secret shopping tips you’d like to share?

One of our biggest tips has to be: don’t be drawn in by that middle aisle in Aldi, where they sell every type of kit and packet (such as the fajita kits we mentioned last week) that will supposedly make your life easier. Despite the advertising on the box, they don’t really save you much time, but they do make a deeper hole in your pocket.

Also, always go with all of your meals planned for the week, and a shopping list that is specific to your meal plan. Therefore, you won’t buy anything that will go unused, and also means you won’t mindlessly add things to your basket, so saving you money.

What’s in store for Budget Bites?

There are lots more recipes that we are wanting to share, regardless of whether or not they end up being successful. Having briefly mentioned our Chinese chips, these are such a favourite of ours that we will definitely be sharing our recipe. We hope that others will enjoy the articles we produce, so look out for some more from Budget Bites next time you are scrolling through the Redbrick page!