To think it’s actually hard to live off this for the rest of the month?!

This has to be a joke. Dishwasher tablets are "essential"? You would cut down on your elec. bill too if you washed dishes by hand.

Own brand shampoo and conditioner at Tesco is something like 89p per bottle. We use it and it’s absolutely fine.

Chicken in a sauce - why not buy chicken and make sauce?
Potatoes - why do they need to he prepped? Buy a big bag and prep yourself.
Freezer - frozen veg can be good value but what else do you buy that's for the freezer?
You don't need chocolate or fruit juice. Do you buy the cheapest bread?
£3 is a lot. You could spend £3 on a tiny portion of spaghetti bolognaise or make your own and have enough for the week for that price. Also, I know ready meals are easy but at 2 they should really be eating the same as you.
Pasta £1 rice £1 2 tinned tomatoes £1 stock cubes £1 frozen veg £1 mince £2 cheese £2
3 toddler meals or pasta bake and veggie rice and bolognaise and chilli assuming you have herbs and spices, is it 'only £3' now do you think?

You should be able to make a main meal for £5.
That leaves £9 for the other food.

You can get shampoo for next to nothing (own brands) and you mine lasts me months.

Breakfast- porridge oats are £1 a kilo.
Milk
Eggs are cheap
Bread for toast

Lunch-eggs, jacket spuds, tuna, pasta, baked beans, homemade soup and bread rolls/ cheese

Dinner- loads of options as others have said.

You should have enough left over for an apple a day, bananas, oranges, and some veg.

Tesco has recipes on their website for budget meals

Well it is going to be hard to live off if you are buying duck breasts and expensive ready meals, yes. 🙄

It should be doable and you should not need to compromise as much as people are suggesting if one looks at food plan ideas like "a bag of own brand crisps for lunch". The latter would likely cost you more in medical bills later.

But let's go through and price that up:

Ready meals at £3 each - £9
Fruit juice 1L - £2 - running total £11
Bread - £2 - running total £13
Milk 4pts - £1.50 - running total £14.50
Chocolate - £2- running total £16.50
Prepared potatoes are £1 for 2 portions at my supermarket so let's call that £2 - running total £18.50
Veg, about the same so let's make that another £4 if you like a lot of veg, so that's £22.50

Which leaves you with £47.50 for a couple of freezer bits and some chicken in sauce and some duck breasts. That just doesn't feel right to me, cost wise.

Could there be anything you've missed?

Obviously separately from that it would be a lot cheaper overall to cook from scratch, but I can see if you don't cook currently that might be hard. I really like Jamie's ministry of food as a set of learn to cook recipes.

Batch cook when you have the time, and put labels on. Shepard's Pie, Cottage Pie, etc. Look at the link its a great site for batch cooking too.

You are going wrong in that your entire shop is convenience food. All ready made pop in the oven stuff. Fabulous if you can afford, you can't.

I suggest finding some easy to cook recipes and batch cooking. Spaghetti Bolognese is really easy, you could even use a jar sauce if you wanted to make it easier and it would easily make 4 portions for around £6/7

Meal plan for the month. Shop all the non perishables then you have small amount each week to buy fruit, veg, milk and bread

It sounds like you're like me and shy away from cooking - I too buy pre chopped veg, fish in sauce, sweet potato fries etc. But it is a much more expensive way to eat so probably not doable on this month's budget. What's your barrier to cooking? Is it time/tiredness/lack of ability/lack of equipment? And what type of things do you like to eat? It sounds like you might be a protein, carb and veg person? I'm sure MN can come up with some ideas of things you could make.

Are you shopping little bits at a time at small shops like Tesco Metro? Before kids when I lived alone and had longer work days I used to do this and not meal plan and end up with lots of food waste and impulse buying expensive and quick food because I was tired and hungry. Now I have two kids and a partner at home and work part time, I make sure to meal plan for the week and do a weekly ‘big shop’ and click and collect. It does take time and energy but I have found it a game changer in what I spend. And you don’t have to reinvent the wheel every week. You could even plan a week of meals and just repeat them weekly so you can just press ‘order again’ on the online shop to save yourself time and headspace. I reckon that way you can get costs down where that amount shouldn’t be too hard to cover everything. I did an in store ‘big shop’ the other day and spent about £40 more than I would on my online shop as I couldn’t see the price going up as I put stuff in the trolley x

Easily doable for 1 adult and 1 toddler - and that's with planning good meals rather than cutting back and having beans on toast all week - nowt wrong with beans on toast at all though!

Plan your meals
Don't buy convenience meals
Make and freeze your own toddler "ready meals"

Big mince - you'll probably get 3 meals out of that for you both.
Chicken thigh - make a pasta sauce.
Stir fry
Omelette with cheese and ham.

Just prep your week rather than shopping blind or shopping daily.

It's very doable. I don't budget that carefully and would mange fine on that. A few ideas:

Shop in Lidl and Aldi. You'll be amazed at how much cheaper they are. Eg an Aldi malted bloomer loaf and a 4 pack of their beans would cost about £4. Both delicious (search old threads, Aldi are way better than Heinz beans) and for under a fiver you have lunches or breakfasts for both of you from Monday to Friday of beans and toast. Box of eggs and another loaf and you've got French toast or scrambled eggs to mix it up a bit.

Here is a recipe for chilli as an example of a healthy, filling recipe that you could get ingredients for, for well under a tenner, including a pack of rice or couple of sachets of cooked rice from the above discount supermarkets. Cheap higher fat beef mince will be fine, maybe even tastier. That's dinner for 2 nights taken care of. I like it with the 80p tortilla chips from Lidl and maybe some grated cheese to mix things up as a treat weekend dinner.

Porridge oats £1ish a bag for the cheap ones (no different imo). Make with water or milk in the microwave for breakfast or a snack.

Lentil soup - couple of leeks and carrots (£1.40 and 70p a pack iirc from Lidl), couple of stock cubes, mug of lentils (not more than £1.50 a bag) boiled up. Fling in a potato and onion if you have them. Mash with a potato masher to break down. Delicious dinner with bread or maybe a cheese toasties. You'll get 4 portions for well under a pound a serving.

Use some of the lentils left from your soup to make daal. Add a couple of supermarket naans to dip.

Get the Lidl phone app. This month you get a free bakery item every time you shop. I got a couple of donuts and a baguette so far. The baguette goes well with lentil soup.

It’s hard to know what to do with a “sack of potatoes” if you’re using to cooking or have limited time to cook.

Duck breasts in sauce, blimey

Is this a legit piss take? 😂

Are you taking the piss?

'Only three pounds' is an insane amount to spend on a tiny toddler sized ready meal.

You could batch cook and freeze equivalent meals for her for about a quarter of the price, or if you don't want to spend a lot of time cooking, give her scrambled egg on toast and a few cherry tomatoes, total cost well under £1.

Of course you're struggling to make your quite generous grocery budget last if you're buying the most expensive things you can find.

It’s easy to say “learn to cook”, it’s not something that happens overnight and often people have other priorities in their life which means they don’t have time to focus on learning to cook.

When you're buying things in sauces and prepped and ready made meals, you're going to be spending a lot more. Make it yourself and portion it in the freezer.

I think duck breasts and prepped potatoes are not what you buy on a tight budget!! Ready meals for toddlers is madness except for the odd occasion when you're really pressed for time. Can you not cook batch cook basics and freeze??

Its fine?

Start by looking in your cupboards. What have you already got in eg the makings of a meal that just needs an extra ingredient or two, old bottles of shampoo or hotel soaps you could use to get you through?

You can't actually be serious. You are buying ready meals at £3 a time.for.a toddler.

Just learn to cook.

Make a shepherd's pie, will feed both of you for £1 a portion

Yeah that's a crazy shopping list

Lasagna - will last two nights
Chile con carne - again, two nights
Pizza
Pasta
Sausage and veg

Done. Your daughter has the same or a sandwich and a banana.