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?

I'll weigh the Savoy cabbage next time I go shopping lol!

I don't budget at all for food. I don't buy the most expensive brands or organic products as I don't think it's necessary for my family. But we certainly don't go hungry. And I don't believe you need to spend £1 a head on veg to have a healthy balanced diet.

We absolutely cannot afford 2.50 a head. Thats 70 a week before even taking into avcount breakfasts and lunch!!!

Will read up for the meal ideas :)

reducator as PP have said, you can get a fair bit of veg for £1 - a whole iceberg lettuce and a cucumber, for example, which is more than one person needs at one sitting. You can get a kilo of mixed frozen veg for about £1 - that would be about 8 good-sized portions.

Carbs are usually the cheapest part of the meal - 500g of pasta for 55p will serve a family of four. Rice is even cheaper - Sainsbury's Basics rice is 45p a kilo. Some veg double as carbs - potatoes, sweetcorn, sweet potatoes etc.

As PP say, there are lots of cheap and nutritious sources of protein - lentils, beans, eggs.

£9 for 4 doesn't seem extortionate, but then again our weekly shopping bill for 3 is about £70 and that obviously includes all our drinks, washing stuff, breakfast and lunch so maybe our meals are cheaper than I think.

Depends on what we are having. We buy chicken breasts from a meat wholesaler for £20 a box (they are incredibly large) a box usually works out £1 per breast which we freeze so there is no waste. We also buy cheaper meats such as Gammon, sausages, pork, beef mince and fresh hamburgers from Lidl/Aldi - but again, we freeze what we don't eat.

We used to do a Spag bol with 500g of mince but actually cut down to 250g and bulked the mix out with more veg and DH plate out with pasta, which is obviously a lot cheaper. A spag bol probably costs £2 per portion. Between 4 this is only £1 cheaper than your meal.

Another typical meal for us would be seasoned chicken breasts (£1 per breast), homemade chips (20p per portion as a big bag of Maris Piper lasts a while) and some frozen veg or cheap bag of salad (30p per portion).

We tend to do a lot of wraps and stuff like that too and change up the side dish between (cheap) spicy rice, jacket potato, chips, pasta etc... so nothing ever costs us a bomb.

I think we spend between £2-£3.50 per head for dinner. We don’t eat much meat but I only use organic meat, so 2 chicken breasts would feed four of us in a curry or stir fry. I probably spend £15 a week on lunches, £5 on breakfasts and £10 on fruit (mostly frozen) and that’s everything.

A bag of carrots does not cost 50p in aldi, nor does broccoli. If you think half a pack of broccoli is enough to feed a family of five then it's game over.

1kg of carrots - 42p

groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/Morrisons-Wonky-Carrots/346187011?from=search&param=carrots

I think £3-4 per head per meal on average. Tonight I am making chicken breasts stuffed with garlic mushrooms coated in breadcrumbs, baby potatoes, veg = £3.50 per head. Bought cherry and almond flan thing with cream = £1 per head.

Hmm tonight's probably £5.50? for 4. £2for 2 chicken breasts from muscle foods, £2 for vegetables, 10p for cous cous and about £1 for halloumi 30p for the herbs and spices.

That's about average for us. I only use 2 chicken breasts between four of us and shop at LIDL for fresh stuff then the local discount shop for cupboard supplies so a box of cous cous for instance was 20p so I brought 4.

DP and I are veggie, cook from fresh every meal, and eat almost entirely organic. I worked out each meal costs on average £2.50 per person per head -- breakfasts are a bit cheaper, but lunch as our main meal is more expensive. So you are doing fine.

I would say sometimes it would cost about that, but usually less. For instance roast chicken and all the trimmings would probably cost around £7. Sometimes we have tacos, which don't cost much at all, macaroni cheese or dhal (both cheap cheap cheap). Beef casserole is a favourite of the kids so that's a bit more. Once I bought cod loins for a fish pie that my son fancied and the fish was about £16 for the four of us, which is quite a lot (fish I suppose is generally more expensive).

Tea today was

Stewed beef cheeks with mash and greens and I think it probably cost £3 per person. With 2 portions of the beef left over.

Another day will be lentil daal which will cost about 50p -1.20 per person depending on if we have any roti or anything .

If you bought the basa frozen from Iceland it would have been £4, You could buys the beans frozen too for 50p and then the potatoes (say £1). Fresh fish is nice but it's a luxury item .

I bought 1 KG of lean mince from Aldi ( reduced) some bent carrots and potatoes and with a pack of frozen peas served 6 people for £3.00

The previous day the four of us had 4 tins of sardines, frozen peas, potatoes and noodles again less than £3.00 all in

Porridge bought in industrial packs , noodles again bought in bulk, sardines, tinned tomatoes can be bought cheaply and meals of around a £1 per head is possible

Well tonight I popped to Sainsburys on my way home to pick up the bits we needed for dinner.
Dp got the meat at the butchers (steak), it was £42. My ‘bits’ from Sainsburys cost £51. Actually, 3 things weren’t for dinner and some of that stuff we only used parts of, so say £30 of it was for dinner.
So about £80 for the 5 of us.
Monday to Thursday I’d say an evening meal costs anything between about £15 (eg pasta bake. Bag of pasta, 3 tins tomatoes, onions, garlic, large pinch of paprika, a few generous slugs of olive oil, a few balls of mozzarella, half a block of Parmesan, green salad) and upwards.
Friday, Saturday and sundays we push the boat out a bit more.
But we love food, dp loves cooking, and we have the money to spend on it. We could shop a lot cheaper if we were inclined to bargain hunt but essentially neither of us want to for various reasons so we don’t.
I don’t think you have to spend a lot to eat well but we love things like crab and lobster, steaks and fresh fish.

Meat veg carb dinners are easy and cheap , I think carrots are 40 something pence in Tesco this week.
Meat stew, jacket potatoes, veg curry with rice, home made soup, spaghetti bol etc are all cheap but we can’t just have this day in day out so I think we spend more than the average than people on this thread do. We will have steak and seafood etc a couple of times a week.

What really also pushes the price up for me is cheese and extras eg I’m making fajitas and have to have the dips to go with- this means it’s about £5 a head. Still it’s much cheaper than a take away

@CakeNinja ours too. We use food as a 'luxury'.

Tonight’s dinner. Chicken curry, roasted cauliflower, sweet potatoes, rice with greens.

Slow cooked curry sauce
1/3 bag of wonky onions - 20p
chopped tomatoes, 29p/tin
two wonky peppers from bag which contained 8, so 1/4 of £1.17 - 29p
Herbs and spices from garden and cupboard - i admit there is a start up cost here but it’s not an ongoing one.
Chicken breast - 500g - £2.14
Cubed sweet potatoes roasted - two big ones - 60p
Half a large cauliflower also roasted with cumin and turmeric - 50p
Rice - 60g per person at 15p/100g - 35p
Shredded spring greens run through and steam with the rice - part of much bigger pack - say 15p

£4.43 for four. It was done mostly from the freezer, there were leftovers, and I challenge anyone to say there wasn’t enough veg in it.

I don't get this obsession with fresh veg - tinned, fresh and frozen are all better for you than no veg at all. If I cook, say a bolognese sauce I'll add grated carrots and celery as well as onions, garlic and tinned tomatoes. That way one pack of mince will do spag bog one night and then I'll freeze 1/3 of it. Another night I'll mix the remaining sauce with a tin of beans and some frozen peas and top with sweet potato mash to make a cottage pie. Given the relative quanities of veg to meat I reckon the spag bog gives 2 portions and the cottage pie 3 so a green veg or salad on the side plus a piece of fruit should give most of their 5 a day in the one meal.

Its unlikely to do 5 a day in one meal as it isnt just 5 different veg its 5 potions.

Eg - a pie made with a tin of tomatoes (2) 1 or 2 carrots (1) 2 celery sticks (1) between 4 people is only 1 portion each.

A small side salad is 1 portion. Unless a couple of whole Tomatoes, 1/3 of a cucumber etc. But its a LOT of salad. Usually a salad is 1.

A piece of fruit mighy be 1, but for satsumas etc you need 2 pieces of fruit for 1 portion. So probably 3 in one meal. But easily made up wuth a piece of fruit and some veg soup or salad with lunch.

Theres an infographic somewhere, they expect a fair amount of veg for "5" portions. Other methods say 8 fruit/veg but measure smaller portions. (Was it Oz)

However your main point is very very true. Frozen veg often has more nutrients than fresh ! And canned veg and fruit all count.

Varies hugely.

Last night we had pasta in a spinach, broccoli and cream sauce, with garlic bread. For five of us, about £4.

Tonight we're having roast chicken (£4.50) with Aunt Bessie's roasties, parsnips, carrots, Yorkshires and gravy. Probably about £8 between 5 of us.

£2.50 per portion seems a lot. Even leaving off my youngest who's not eating adult portions that would be £70 for a main meal for the rest of us for a week, not including breakfast, lunch snack and so on. I'm only spending around £80 a week on groceries.

Today I bought a Cumberland ring from the booths butchers counter ... it weighs 1kg! £5.50. I am cooking it with thyme, bay leaves (both free from garden), red wine, wild mushrooms, garlic, onions, red currant jelly, juniper berries - £7 for the lot I reckon. Polenta with cheese and some vegetables.

£10 all in - six portions £1.67 - feels like a very nice meal for that.

We are having Pasta bolognese with grated carrot and courgette. Cost £1per person.

But £2.50 pp for your meal is still good value, think how much it would be in a restaurant.

We had sausages (£2 for 8), Yorkshire puddings (15 for 48p in Lidl) Carrots (6p each in Tesco) broccoli (50p) and onion gravy. Under a fiver for all 4 of us.

You've got me thinking so I just worked out our last few days of meals. We're vegetarian by the way

Roast - Quorn roast, potatoes, carrots, green beans, mashed swede & gravy. £5.20

Pasta with soft cheese, peas, sweetcorn & hot dogs (kids favourite) £3.05

Vegetable & lentil stew with dumplings - Potatoes, carrots, onion, red lentils, frozen peas & dumpling mix £2

Pizza & salad (for 4 as I had toast as not feeling great) £3.25

Chilli with rice - quorn mince, tin of kidney beans, onion & squeezy chilli £4