How much will your main meal cost today (per serving).

[Petitmum]

I'm curious, do you cost out your meals and balance out low / higher cost meals through the week. Reading threads on here I am always shocked by the variation in spending on food, a cheap meal for some is an expensive meal for others.
We are a family of 4 with two teens, all home at the moment so our food bill covers all meals ........I cook from scratch and waste very little. Currently shop in Morrisons and Lidl and on average we spend £80 per week including toiletries and wine (no pets). This time of year we eat a lot of stews/curries / soups / pasta dishes / homemade pizza and roast dinners.
I have just made a huge pot of chicken chilli and decided to cost it out per serving. There must be at least 8 generous portions there which will work out @ £1.05 per serving (plus about 20p each for rice).

(1 kg chicken thigh fillets, onions, frozen peppers, red kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, garlic, chilli and spices = £8.40)

£6 each, just DH and I at home, we’re having some sort of ham hock thing from M and S with veg and roast potatoes then steamed pud and custard, again M and S.
We spend about £200 pw on food and wine plus the odd top up.

£2.40 - we get Gousto delivered for 4 people, so bulk cook each night for dinner for 2 plus 3 lunches the next day(the meals are big so always stretch fine to 5 positions instead if 4).

£2.98 from gousto

If you mean main meal only without desert, I would average a guess at £1-2 per person. With a roast once a week of abt £3 pp

Eek, we’ve gotten take away from a very nice celebrity chef restaurant tonight. I think it’s a good deal at £20 per person for 3 courses (just for Dh and I). Dc are having pizza and salad things.

But normally at the moment we spend £200 a week on shopping, including several bottles of wine for the weekend and non-food things like nappies, cleaning supplies, toilet roll. Assuming £150 a week on actual food divided by 3 (there’s 4 of us, but youngest is 2 and eats lunches at nursery), that’s £2.38 per person per meal. Dh, dd and I currently eat all 3 meals plus snacks and drinks, coffee, tea at home.

Honestly, we don’t budget. We don’t have to and I like nice food, but aim for £200 ish or less a week. I don’t think that’s at all an average budget though and I’m conscious that most people do need to be more intentional about stretching money to make it last til the end of the month. That did used to be us too. I’ve definitely had to remove items after they’ve been scanned through because I knew we didn’t have enough money to pay for what I’d put in the trolley. Obviously though it’s all very relative. But I’m grateful to have it easier now.

We had like but not ramen noodles tonight.
It works out at under £1 per portion.

Chilli, salad etc. About £2 a portion

Embarrassingly we had a drive thru today so it was a fiver each.
but we spend loads on food, it works out at about £20 a day, for 5, its gone up as im doing lunches now too. I love cooking italian food which is expensive I think. also maybe not eating meat means I have to be a bit more creative to make something special. main meals can easily be £2 per portion of im not careful, eg spag (£2) and smoked salmon (£4) , spinach or parsley (50p) cream(£1.50) salad and garlic bread(£2) is a typical meal

Buggered if I know
I really don’t have a clue

Meatballs and pasta.

Aldi meatballs approx £2.80 I think!

Pkt wholewheat pasta 50p approx

1tin toms approx 30p

1 passata approx 35p

Then 3 Richmond veggie sausages for one child £2.20 per pack of 8 so 83p

And soy spaghetti for me, £1.99 per pkt, approx 5 servings in there so 40p

Total £5.18 and served 5 with leftover pasta so £1.04 per person.

Would normally have broccoli with it but too lazy today! That would add an extra 10p each!

Today it was about 95p each. Linda McCartney pie (£1.49 for 2 in Lidl), peas, carrots, gravy. Delicious.

I'm on a drastic spending strike and would normally spend much more on food than I am currently. But I'm absolutely loving all the money I'm saving, not to mention how much less wasteful I am.

Tonight I think about £3.50/person. Varies hugely, I could/should be more economical but we love good food and it’s one of our few pleasures at the moment.

I didn't cost the herbs though!

It's saturday night, so we are having a treat tea of steak and chips with some mushrooms and peas! I think that it's around £7.50 a head which is loads! The rest of the week we have very cheap dinners with loads of veg! But it is a treat!

@Sally2791 I agree, I find cooking so therapeutic and even get a veg box full of weird things which challenge me to do different things

I spend about £5 a day total for me and ds (12).

Supper will cost about £1.40 per portion.

Expensive tonight as it’s steak, fries and salad all from M&S. Around £11 each x5 plus a bottle of red £9.50.

By comparison last night was Cajun chicken Cesar salad with baked potatoes and about £2.50 a portion.

Chicken breast £2
Rice £1
Peppers, mushrooms and baby corn £3
Maykway curry £1
Streaky bacon £1.50
Eggs £1
Prawn crackers £1
Spring rolls £1.50

Egg fried rice ( loads of veg too) with chicken curry for 8

£1.50 each? Huge portions, jam packed with veg and absolutely delicious. 5 of us had it and then 3 big lunches tomorrow.

£4ea - £3 of it being fillet steak

Today it's £2 each and thinking over our meals for the week that's probably pretty cheap.

It doesn't help I have a restricted diet so sometimes have to eat differently.

Tomorrow's roast

Chicken £3.80
Stuffing 50p
Potatoes approx 60p
Gravy about 40p worth
Carrots 35p
Petit pois 50p
Broccoli 50p
Leek 35p
Homemade Yorkshire pudding (no idea! A few pence each?!!

Prob about £1.50 each

Good job my home cooked meals are cheap as I spend A LOT on takeaways lol

Just short of £4 but dh, Ds2 and I have just had some m&s Chinese. Cheaper and nicer than a takeaway.

£3.50 each tonight, salmon and roast veg. That's probably about average for us.

£3.75. Fajitas. Chicken breasts with peppers, wraps, refried beans, salad (little gem, toms, avo, coriander and lime), and a tex-mex dip selection. Family of 4.

We spend approx £160 per week on our shop at the moment and shop anywhere from Aldi to Tesco to Sainsbury's to M&S. I get bored with the same supermarket every week!