To spend £30 a month on ALL food and drink?

@Jumell you need to portion up the chicken and freeze or cook then freeze
so whole chicken
take legs off and freeze
roast crown
Strip meat from crown- eat, keep in fridge 3 days or freeze- or make into something else and keep 3 days or freeze- like a pie base

£30 a month??? What decade are you referring to??? 70's??? And to include eating out too??? I went into Greggs today, one pastie, one sausage roll and a mocha and it was just over £6. So probably no eating out for you.

That aside, its potentially do able. You'll have to be extremely thrifty and eat repetitive foods and possibly not very healthy foodstuff as well. Fresh veggies are out, get canned veg..

You'll need to be the first to bag yellow sticker labelled items.

So, a bag of potatoes (jacket spuds), value cheese, value beans etc..

Pasta, spaghetti bol etc.. make it last for a few meals add tinned veg.

Lots of toast and cheap jam. Scrambled eggs and toast. Use value bread.

Savers range porridge (although my other half says oats all taste about the same to him).

Make a chicken meal last about 5 days or more. Use chicken wings, (about £1.99 for about 15) or thighs (£3.79 for i think 8).

I would eat chicken up to 4 or 5 days after it had been cooked (assuming within use by period)

However (and I don't mean this unkindly) I'm surprised OP is talking about how long a roast chicken might last when the idea of buying ingredients, cooking and preparing food seems quite alien to them. There are obviously reasons for this, (maybe practical or psychological) but not much info to go on. Lots of people have given pretty detailed advice, or shopping lists but there must be a reason why OP hadn't bought more heathy or substantial food or made meals themselves, instead of buying biscuits and crisps.

At least they are getting the attention they crave 🙄

NO! Your chicken will go bad or become dangerous. You need to eat opened chicken within 24 hours, or freeze it before then.

If you want to live off super noodles, beans on toast, soup, sandwiches and maybe the occasional bowl of pasta then maybe. But I wouldn't!

Jamie Oliver Ministry of Food is the book I mean. It's really good for basics. I'm sure you could find a copy in your library + the recipes are online

OP I think if you really want to focus on curbing your reliance on convenience / junk food you'll need to step up with the homecooking.

And to do that you'll need to break it down into manageable steps and to realise that if you live alone, you need to ensure that you're looking after yourself properly so you stay well & healthy.

I think your first step is to think about the sort of food you would like to be eating on a daily / weekly basis. What sort of things do you think you could manage ti cook easily? Start simple & work your way up to more ambitious dishes.

Do you have a cooker? An oven? A microwave? Cooking utensils? You'll struggle without these.

Start with only concentrating on one week at a time. Plan out what meals you would like to eat..3 x meals a day + snack.

For instance:

Breakfast: weetabix with milk + banana & tea or coffee x 7 mornings

Lunch: cheese sandwich x 2 days, soup & brown bread x 2 days, scrambled eggs on toast x 2 days, Gregg's pizza slice x 1 day

Dinners: buy a pack of mince & make bolognaise x 2 dinners with pasta & sprinkle of cheese. Freeze the rest for another week. Buy some chicken thighs & jar of curry sauce & pack of rice - chicken curry x 2 dinners & freeze the remainder. Baked potatoes x 2 nights with cheese & beans. Supermarket pizza on 7th night.

This way you end the week having eaten proper food & starting the next week with some meals already in the freezer ready to go. You keep rotating these each week.

But if all you have in stock is tea & coffee you'll have to build up a basic store cupboard. This will make making & planning meals far easier.

You'll need stuff like

Oil
Butter
Seasoning - salt & pepper
Herbs - mixed Italian is a very versatile one
Spices - you can build these week by week
Soy sauce
Honey
Jam
Rice
Pasta
Stock cubes
Tinned tomatoes
Tins of beans
Tins of fruit
Frozen peas
Frozen veg (if you've space you can get peppers, onions, broccoli etc which totally prevents waste as you only use what you need)

I think what you're looking to do is overhaul both your spending & eating habits & you can 100% do this.

I recommend looking at Jamie Olivers book online on how to cook as it gives a basic recipe for lots of favourite dishes + ways to tweak them to use up leftovers. I think it's an excellent resource

Good luck op!

Have you cooked meals before OP? Do you have your own kitchen and pans etc?
I only ask because its unusual for you to have nothing at all in the house except tea and coffee, when you started your budget challenge
And all the things you bought needed no preparing or cooking, but we're basically snacks.

When asked what you ate before you have been a bit vague with "too much junk/takeaways etc"

Fairly basic suggestions you've thought were a good idea...but it didn't occur to you to make any actual meals at all? Even things like beans on toast, jacket potatoes or noodles (minimal prep and no particular skills required, but do requite some cooking) Buying a whole pizza from a supermarket and cooking it for 2 meals would likely be cheaper than buying 1 slice of pizza from Greggs.

It might be worth looking at books or websites aimed at students with basic store cupboard "set up" and easy and cheap meals to make using basic equipment

No. Greggs cost more than £1 which is your budget for that day. Ok it be just over a £1 but still you blown your budget and where's your fresh veg and fruit. Maybe £30 per week not month.

I have to say I am impressed.

Have you got things in already lime a good stock cupboard of essentials and things in the freezer? If so, it may be doable

I use mine in 4 days max

No 😂
I do a lazy roast dinner once a week (frozen yorkshires, frozen roast potatoes… you get the idea) and use the rest for wraps for lunch 😋

I’m sure I read somewhere that beans and pulses aren’t a complete protein (as in, they don’t contain all 12 amino acids - only animal products and tofu do) but if you pair them with rice, then you do get a complete protein?
I love beans and pulses but have become
much more of a meat eater and worship the MN weekly roast chicken 😂

OP, I think you have disordered eating. I have a friend who lived in food poverty as a teenager, and this is the sort of challenge she used to set herself as a student/young adult. I wasn’t old/experienced enough then to realise why she was doing it - just spent a lot of time feeling bad that I couldn’t keep my food bill as low as hers. It is not a good idea. Even then, though, my friend would focus on porridge/lentil soup (alongside Haribo and custard creams). She still doesn’t have the healthiest relationship with food (lived on steamed veg for a month to lose weight) but has more of a focus on nutrition these days. Do you know why your reaction to losing your job was to decide to reduce food to this extent?

If you look at "Feed Your Family for £20 a week" she has some emergency meal plans for people who are really short of money, but they're not intended to be used long term. (And I think even the cheapest is £10 a week.)

In future, buy frozen fruit (very good in porridge IMO) and frozen veg (sometimes as a student I'd eat pasta and frozen veg, with cheese grated on top).

If you have a freezer you could get some mince and bulk it out with lentils and grated carrot, make a load of spag bol (well the bol part)! and freeze.

Emphatically not getting involved in this 90% batshit thread! I have a useful contribution to make, though - was extremely poor from 2010-2022 and did an exhaustive (and exhausting) analysis of food values. Biggest finding:

You can't beat sardines, eggs and soya for nutrition per penny. Other things come close (I ate a fuckton of mince). Family bags of chicken pieces aren't great nutritionally, but very handy for cheap & quick dinners.

I can't digest beans & pulses, but they aren't complete foods in any case. Good fillers if you can stomach them, otherwise use brown rice and wholewheat pasta.

Frozen fruit & veg are just as good as fresh, often more economical, and don't go off which is an issue when you live alone.

Only buy bakery goods when they're yellow-stickered.