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?

Just totting ours up to about £8 for 4 (plus power for a longish cooking time for a potato and onion casserole.) So £2 a head.

I spent £6 on lamb, used cheap, in season veg plus chickpeas, faffed about making a sort of casserole with spices,herbs and tomato puree and served it with potato and onion and broccoli.

I think it was really tasty for the price but we wouldn't make it midweek. Less expensive meat / no meat and I could save money. Buying more expensive lamb chops plus quicker, easier vegetable products we could do a quicker but much more expensive version.

reded
A bag of carrots are 59p and weigh a kg in Tesco (yes I looked it up so don't try to pretend they don't cost that).
If you are having half a bag (500g) between two of you, you are having 250g each! That's a huge amount and a lot more than 1 portion. A portion of veg is 80g so your quarter of a bag per person is actually just over 3 portions of veg (and only sets you back 15p)

and as a previous poster showed even cheaper in morrisons (42p per kg bag)

Looking at this week it varies massively. Tonight, I'm making sweet potato falafel which is about £2/head because of buying out of season salad stuff and I bought nice flatbreads. Monday it's cheesy pasta and green veg bake at about £1/head. Everything else sits somewhere in between.

We spend betweent £400 to £500 per month in groceries for a family of 4. I have never calculated the value of an individual meal but my estimate is that it can be anything between £5 and £15 depending of what we are eating. When we have fish is probably £15 for 4; but if we have sausages, pasta, vegetarian it can be around £5 to £8.

This is an interesting and useful thread spoiled by a few posters behaving like dicks. I would really love to see rededucator's family's faces if they served up 500g carrots each with an evening meal, as they claim is necessary for good health. What a load of bollocks. We eat obscene amounts of vegetables here and my family would think I'd gone mad if I served half a bag of carrots per person. Half a head of broccoli is also too much. Your plate would be 50% broccoli. Rededucator also mentioned it being impossible to provide carbs and protein for a pound per person. Rubbish. Have they heard of lentils, beans, chickpeas, potatoes, bread or rice? Their superior and sneering and completely ill-informed posts have really got my back up on behalf of the families here who are trying to do their best on not much money.

The poster who said £2.50 per head was cheap and that they spent
between 30 and 40 pounds a night - surely you must know most people in this country do not have anything like that amount to spend? I cannot understand posters who seem to live in a bubble. Even if you are only friends with people in your privileged financial situation, surely an hour spent reading on MN would alert you to the fact this is not how most people live?

OP, mine varies. There are 5 of us and last night we had jacket potatoes which was £1 for the potatoes, about £1.50 of butter and cheese, £1 for 2 avocadoes, say £1 for carrots, cabbage and mayo to make coleslaw, and £1.20 for a tin of organic baked beans. £5.70 and probably one of our cheaper meals.

Tonight we will have shop bought soya and veg pasties with kale and carrots, £4 for the pasties and £2 for loads of veg (local veg from a farm, cheaper than the supermarket, plus some frozen sweetcorn to top up). £6.

Other meals planned this week are : roast veg with wraps, this is £1 for wraps, about £1 for cheese, £1 for hummus, and the veg is expensive for this one: onion, mushrooms, squash, peppers, courgette, probably £4 or £5, and some quorn pieces, £2. Possibly £10.

Lentil stew: sweet potatoes, parsnips, carrots, leeks, courgettes, onions, peppers, red lentils, stock, oil, spices etc, just priced it up on sainsburys website and I think it is £6.50, plus bread and butter for people who are hungry, or rice, say £7.50, but this will possibly make two meals if I add a lot of lentils and people don't scoff the lot.

Good luck to everyone trying to enjoy good food on their budget, whatever that budget is.

I've never worked out the cost of a meal but I would almost never go out and buy just one meal worth of good. I'd buy three packets if frozen fish £10 in Iceland so that would be 12 pieces, I'd buy a big bag of potatoes in Aldi for a couple of quid aeuse then in lots of different ways across the week and I would have frozen green beans again for £1 which would be used for several meals. So the meal you described would cost me about £4.50 for four people. I do buy some veg fresh but always have frozen in too.

Basically what I do is buy in bulk either frozen stuff or freeze it myself, it works out much cheaper than buying each meal separately.
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Congrats on your new home! I think it must be very difficult to relax a bit after being on such a tight budget.
I think we average around £10 per evening meal for 5 adult portions . I'm sure some nights we spend less - we tend to eat meat 4 times a week and vegan for the other nights. I don't buy much in the way of snacks.