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?

So do we 😂 One broccoli between 2 people

One broccoli 70p is two people and at least half a bag of carrots between 2 so 30p worth. But that's only 2 portions of veg, so you'd need frozen peas or something too. So for 2 people that's £1.40 worth of veg, so 4 people £2.40 if you're talking 2 being kids. So you've £1.60 left for meat and a carb for 4 if people are claiming to make a meal at £1 a head? Read anyone claiming they can. It's lasagna, spag bol, pasta, pizza etc, no one is stating 3 veg, a carb and a protein. Yes you can eat cheap but you're eating shite. I don't feel like claiming you feed your kids and partner frozen chicken nuggets, chips and beans is anything to boast about.

You don't know what they've eaten the rest of the day though. 5 a day not 5 every mealtime, judgypants! And a child portion of veg is what they can fit in their hand. Not a head of broccoli. Be nice.

For 2 meals this week, for 2 adults and 2 children (beef stew with mash and veg on Sunday, then leftover stew put into a pie tonight, again served with veg) I know I spent £9.66 across both as I still have the receipt - though I did divide the cost of the stock cubes to reflect using just one. I will also have used seasonings, mustard, cooking oil etc, don't know how much extra that costs.

But basically about £4.80 per meal, £1.20 per person. I got quality meat from the butcher counter but a cheap cut, and not much of it, I bulked my stew out with carrots and onions.

Other cheap meals this week were homemade soup and bread, and jacket potatoes with cheese/tuna and homemade coleslaw.

But we also had pizza one night which was more expensive.

I am aware of it, and do try to balance more expensive and meals out during the week - and I try to make leftovers last for another meal, and to only buy veg in season as they are cheaper.

Ours vary massively, from dhal or soup type dishes at under £1 a portion to chicken/fish and pre-sliced veg at £5+.

And my pasta sauce is celery, carrots, onions, tomatoes as a minimum. With a carb and a dairy and a protein. In sensible amounts. With a salad that also has tomatoes, carrot, onions and peppers and, clutch pearls, sometimes fruit. It wasn't a post about your version of a healthy meal.

You don't need to eat a whole broccoli head between 2 to get your 5 a day though. Like I said, NHS guidelines say 2 florets count as one portion. That's 4 florets between 2 people, not a whole head

bitchqueen exactly. It can be done. I wasn't aiming that at you!

I know user

You don't need to eat it all in one meal either. We don't eat 3 portions of veg with our evening meal, we have 2. Then we have things like cucumber sticks or other salad stuff at lunch time. Then the rest of our 5 a day comes from fruit.

Ooh good question! We had Thai coconut chicken with noodles and veg tonight (2 adults, 3 primary aged kids) so I'd hazard a guess at around £10 maybe?

A lot of fruit and veg can be as cheap or expensive as you make it so there are some people being a bit disingenious by claiming that those that spend less than they consider acceptable must have a shit diet devoid of fruit and veg.

Because that really doesn't have to be the case and many veg heavy meals are extremely cheap, eg if frozen veg are used alongside pulses.

Asda sells 360g fresh broccoli for 58 pence or a kilo of frozen for 95 pence, so the latter is 12 portions of veg for about 8 pence per portion - an official portion is 80 g for an adult and 40 g for a small child, not half a whole head of brocolli.

A kilo of fresh carrots is about 60 pence, so there you can have 2 portions of veg to go with fish, a roast, sausages etc for about 15 pence.

Cabbage, swede, bananas and apples plus canned tomatoes, pulses and other things are also very cheap for anyone wanting lots of veg for not much money.

It's not particularly helpful to perpetuate the myth that healthy food is expensive, when it doesn't have to be that way at all.

But 7 main meals x £9 would be £63, and plenty of main meals cost a lot less than that, or £9 of food would produce leftovers.

The average spend on food for a family of 4 is around £80-100 pw so the rest would be plenty for eggs, porridge or toast for breakfast and things like sandwiches, soups, beans on toast, leftovers, salads of all sorts of things for lunch.

We just had spinach, feta and tomato tarts with rocket salad and potato. Not sure how much it cost really. Estimate

potato £1
Half a tub lidl cream cheese 40p
packet puff pastry £1.50ish
baby spinach £1
half a tub cherry tomatos 50p
feta (lidl) 90pish
rocket £1

a bit of veg oil and red wine vinegar for dressing - no idea

So maybe about £6.50 for the 4 of us

Last night was lamb byriani

Lamb mince - very reduced £1
curry powder 15p
onions 20p
rice maybe 30p
stock cube 10p
green beans £1
sultanas (30g) 15p

So about £2.90 (lamb was originally £4 though and was going to make it anyway just lucky with reduced shelf)

Spices etc don't have to cost much. You can get decent sized packets of basic spices for under a pound each so a fiver spent on that would give you a good few months worth of curries, chillis and other spiced foods.

We had jacket spuds with beans and cheese for dinner, that's about £1 a head (food from aldi)

If we have fish it tends to be salmon, two fillets in aldi £3, portion of rice and veg that would probably come in around £2.50 each. Hence why we only eat salmon once a week!!

I don’t mean to be one of those people who says a chicken lasts a week or somesuch but a head of broccoli feeds seven of us as part of our roast dinner, I slice the florets into several smaller ones rather than breaking them off the stem. I was finding people grab for example three stems, without regarding size. So I made them smaller. They cook faster too.

Before anyone pearl clutches about our lack of vegetables, we usually have four types of vegetable with that dinner. Not counting the potatoes. But it is our most expensive dinner of the week. Chicken is £3. Potatoes maybe 60p, carrots probably the same. I often do onions though which cost pennies. Broccoli, but also cabbage, serving perhaps 1/3 of a good sized cabbage, and something else seasonal, it’s been squash recently.

I guess if you took into account the eggs for the Yorkshire puddings and the milk, the oil for cooking, if you had to buy the herbs (DH has a herb garden) and the flour, seasoning for the gravy, everything. You could probably divide it up saying £3 for meat £3 for veg and £3 for sundries. It’s still a big meal for seven though.

I'd say I rarely spend that much. Our big shop is about £70-80 and a decent chunk of that is fruit. Tonight was sausages (£3.33 because part of 3 for £10), baked potatoes (£1ish), corn on the cob (£2) and various roasted veg (not sure of cost as odds and ends).

Buy things like salmon whole when on offer in supermarkets (keep checking reduced sections every time you're in the supermarket), on same day chop into small fillets and freeze individual portions. normally works out roughly £1 per salmon portion.

Fish is easily defrosted in the microwave (2-3 mins on defrost settings)

Also, ikea sell individual frozen salmon portions very very cheaply- worth stocking up when you're there! It's good quality too probably from Sweden!

I spend about £80 a week for four. That's £20 each, roughly £3 a day.

Fish is one of the most expensive things I buy. A big roast and a pile of veg is not too expensive per head.

Tonight it cost us 50p for 3 portions.
We had egg fried rice.
Left over white value rice (15p?)
3 eggs (12p)
Handful of peas (10p?)
1 onion (5p)
1 stock cube (8p)
It’s simply cheaper as last nights was £3/4 so we mix it up to keep costs down.

I wish I could like salmon. I'm not usually nesh about food but the colour puts me off. I'm going to try again.

Me and 2 kids had a mince pie (80p reduced), half a head of broccoli (40p reduced) and a third of a bag of frozen chips (96p).
So, what’s that...
£1.32.
But I guess I’m in the frugal category as the vast majority of meals in our house are based around whatever reduced stuff I can find.

onit I love a whoopsie. We needed them for a long, long time plus my husband is from Yorkshire tight so my kids think all food comes with a yellow sticker!

There are ways and means of cooking nutritious and tasty food for less cash.

Buy veg in season , on offer and frozen. Veg curry. A pulses in your casseroles . Potato and onion in a bit of stock. The dreaded liver from my childhood! Haggis is damned tasty actually.

Supermarkets are good at tempting us to spend more. Sometimes it's a good trade off for convenience, other times it feels like a rip off.

Ours was around £10 tonight for three of us, but we had lamb.