How much does your evening meal cost?

[SandysMam]

After a few years of VERY frugal living, we have finally brought our flat which means we can relax a tiny bit and start to actually eat what I would consider to be normal meals.

However...I just called into the shop to grab some dinner and four fish fillets (lightly dusted basa type things), some new potato’s and green beans and it set me back £9!! This is to feed a family of four.
After years of pasta dinners and cheap cuts I struggle to believe a normal, regular family on a public sector type wage can afford to eat like this!! How much does your evening meal usually cost?

2.50£ a head is cheap.

I spend about 6-8£ a head I think. But don't really count. But if I pop into shops on way home from work to get dinner will generally spend between 30£ and 40£ (there's 5 of us)

I think we've got in bad habits of eating steak on a Monday night etc

Approx £7 for family of nine eg chicken curry, spag Bol, chilli and rice. Beans on toast or jackets etc about £2.50 for the whole family but that not often maybe once every ten days.

£5

£3 if struggling
£10-£15 on a treat

People who claim to spend anything less than £2 a head are not eating enough fresh veg.

That’s exactly my point though reded...good food really is becoming out of reach for normal people. It’s a ticking time bomb!

There is nothing wrong with frozen veg. The only fresh I buy other than salad is broccoli , carrots and potatoes , buy fruit as well.

Fresh veg isn't expensive I don't think. It just depends what you buy. We eat a lot of carrots/parsnips and things this time of year, they only cost about 10p each!

I'm a single mum to one DS and my week's food shop costs in the region of £50, that includes toiletries and cleaning products.

This is why I have to meal plan! If I go into the shop to buy one meal for the 4 of us it can cost £8-10.

If I meal plan it's so much cheaper on the fish/ meat front eg roast chicken one night then make chicken and veg pie for next day. Spaghetti Bol one day and use the leftover Bol to make lasagne. Sausage and mash then use the leftover cooked sausages, eggs and all the leftover bits in my fridge to do stir fry rice.

Fish is expensive. Some nights we will have a tea that costs around £10 other nights are cheaper e.g jacket potatoes with various fillings like tuna. We eat meat or fish pretty much every night though so out food shopping bill is big. We probably spend around £600 a month on supermarket shopping and take aways combined.

We had a delicious sausage (nice ones!) pasta thing today. Probably about £2 pp.

We easily spend £2 to £3 per head, but I do make sure we eat a lot of veg. I think that’s what a good nutritious meal costs!

It varies. 3 of us (DD is 13). Tonight we had a bag of chicken goujons from Iceland - fed us all easily and I think they are £3, tin of beans (supermarket brand), say 50p and half a smallest size you get bag of frozen chips (the bag is 750 grams so I used say 400 grams) so another £1. Lets’s call tonights a fiver.
Tomorrow I’m doing a homemade lasagne, a large one to feed 6 plus hopefully leftovers for 1 or 2. That will set me back over a tenner easily.

We're about a pound a head so £5 for 5 of us. We eat plenty of fresh vegetables for that. Tonight we had lots of carrots and broccoli which cost about 50p.

So Maddie, I'm two evening meals you have had zero veg? No greens? Chicken nuggets? Adults eating processed meat?

Bernie, a bag of carrots is about 60p and a stem of broccoli about 60/70p. That would be enough for 2 people. So for 4 people that's £3. So you buy fresh fish or meat for 4 people for £1?

We wouldn't eat a bag of carrots in one go or a whole thing of broccoli. Bag of carrots 60p, broccoli with 2 heads 60p. Carrots would do 3 nights, broccoli 2 nights. So 50p.

Tonight we had roast chicken (£2.50? Not a whole chicken), jacket spuds (70p) and salad (£1?).

I find convenience food like pizza, nuggets, breaded fish more expensive as people eat more of it as it's less filling.

God i’m definitely not getting enough veg! I would say a bag of carrots and a head of broccoli would be enough for 5 for one meal!!

For five people we’d eat a bag of carrots and two lots of broccoli!

I’d say we probably spend around £10 pound a day on a meal, for a family of 4, with all fresh ingredients.

NHS website says 2 broccoli spears count as one portion of veg. Me and DS wouldn't eat a whole broccoli in one meal. We had cottage pie tonight with about half a head of broccoli and probably about 2 carrots each at no more than 10p. Half a broccoli = 30p, 2 carrots 20p max.

I live alone. Sometimes I just have a Tesco ready meal which £0.65. not amazingly nutritious I know.

Other times I will make sausage, mash, veg and gravy and that usually works about £1 a meal.

I learnt a long time ago how to be savvy

I had pinch of nom Cajun beef dirty rice for dinner tonight and I toted up the ingredients at Tesco and it came to 11.45 but that includes spices and stock cubes and a full packet of bacon medallions and a full packet of rice - obvs those things aren't used as a whole in the recipe so the whole meal probably worked out about 7/8 (if even)

I can do a roast chicken dinner for my family of four for less than a fiver thanks to lidl...a whole small chicken is about £2...it's just enough for us although no leftovers...half a big bag of potatoes...about 60p...a whole head of broccoli and some frozen peas....about 80p. Sometimes I add yorkshires...they are cheap to make.

Oh god I massively overeat brocolli in this house, I use one whole brocolli for me hubby and 2yo