How much do you spend on each main meals?

[Notgoingbacktofuture]

I'm wondering if we are spending too much on each family meal at home.

I grew up with meals cooked from scratch and served warm. So I couldn't do sandwich at home. When I worked full time before DS2 was born, we regularly bought readily marinated or prepared meat from the supermarket and just popped them into oven. But since now I'm not working and DS2 is out of his toddlerhood, I have a bit more time at hand, I cooked a lot in the past few months just from scratch. They taste much better than those readily prepared from the shop. But since I can't feel full without a bit of meat, each meal has proper chunk of meat for everyone (less for DS2 obviously). DS1 is 9 and he can eat 1.5 times the size of DH's portion.

I reckon we are spending about £4-6 a meal (just the materials excluding gas consumptions and etc.) if everyone is at home. Sometimes there's a bit leftover enough for 2 more portion, sometimes not.

We are in London/Herts.

Is this a lot?

Slow cooker lentil and bacon soup.

Crusty bread.

Cheapest slab of bacon as only want the flavour. Stock cube. Seasoning.

I'm going to shut up, had the worst day so probably projecting.

@Kerrrmieee ooh what’s the soup receipe?

Wow that’s a lot of mince!
500g here does 3 adults, a 14yo and an 11yo.

we always have meat free Mondays. But the rest varies. We had beef Wellington the other day (special GCSE treat) and that was 800g for example. Our chicken on Sundays probably only does a meal and left overs for sandwiches, but I always make stock

we only eat organic/free-range meat though - which is more expensive. .

Hi @Yajebbend

So so easy, you can do it the really cheap slabs of bacon from supermarket for the flavour then add some lardons in or...

Slow cooker, a gammon or bacon joint (only small) cook in stock until it's about done. I use salted for flavour. I add ground black pepper , some paprika (anything you have in cupboard to your taste) I bung an onion in too for flavour, so just chunky quarters.

Then add red lentils and either stock or water depending on strength of what's in there.

The lentils will soak up everything thing - make it your preferred thickness, cos it can get very thick!

Just pull bacon apart with fork.

Dunk some fresh baguette in!

Probably less than a fiver for so many portions you get fed up! Freezes well though.

Enjoy!

I’ve never thought about it but finding with the price hike that I should probably start!

I only buy meat in the butchers , mince has gone up to €14 for 1k

add in peppers - €1.69 for 3
courgette - 99 cent
onion - not sure maybe 15c?
carrots - 99c

passata x 2 - €1.16

i have stock & herbs in the press

so nearly €20 for the meal . That does 2 adults and 2 kids plus freezer portion and another portion for 4 year old . Not to bad looking at it that way

kids also get pesto pasta at least once per week which is super cheap though jar of pesto has gone up to nearly €5 😭

Shopping in tesco for family of 4 ( not including alcohol , we get that separately!) is around €150 per week plus fruit milk and bread top up is another €30 .
butchers around €30 per week
will definitely need to try and get it down 😢

I’ve never thought about it and 8m not going to work it out now but I just wanted to say that it’s much cheaper IMO to eat cheaply in the winter / colder months with stews , casseroles , fish pies , cottage pie, veggie gratins etc so if price per meal bothers you that much you need to work it out over a year not a snapshot of one or two summer weeks .

I don’t think £4-6 for a whole meal is bad. I would guess we spend around that as well. There’s only two of us but I always make double so that every meal is also lunch for the next day.

Probably €5 per evening meal (2 adults and 1 toddler) on a ‘cheap’ night, usually no meat. More like €10-14 if we have fish or meat.

meat and fish is really expensive here. Ie we bought a Turkey fillet, it was €22 normal, luckily 50% off so €11. That will do dinner tonight and some sandwiches for tomorrow.

I can do cheap meals (‘carbonara’ with cooking bacon, cheap spaghetti and cream cheese) and I can do steak with home made chips, onion rings from scratch and peppercorn sauce from scratch.

I get all of our meat from the yellow sticker shelf. If I didn’t get it in the yellow sticker shelf then we don’t eat it.

I saw a small pack of marinated chicken for £4 the other day - that’s more than a whole chicken. I try to shop smart and base meals depending on our budget.

£12 to £15 per midweek meal and up to about £20 for a weekend meal.
A tiny bit less for lunch.
We are a family of four adults.
That cost doesn’t include any drinks.

Dinner is 2 adults (DD lives overseas)
For weekend dinner roasting 1 chicken to eat half today and half tomorrow.
The bird cost 10.00 euro so 5.00 euro today plus small lemon 0.50 one scallion in bits 0.20 pepper herbs sea salt 0.20
1 midsized Sweet potato roasted for today split half each, the 1 cost 1.00 pat of butter each 0.15
Tomtoes 1.40 cucumber 0.50 drizzle olive oil 0.25 few black olives 0.40
Total 9.75 dinner for 2 persons.
S/o has with his dinner 1 can of belgian beer only on weekend the 0.5 ltr can as a treat 1.50 used to be 0.95 and me 1 small glass belgian sparkling water 0.25

Used to do a pasta weekday dinner for less than 5.00 but with higher grocery prices is now 8.00 euro just pasta, pasta sauce from jar, veggies and a simple salad.

typo tomtoes = tomatoes....see no edit option.....

A simple paella rice, veggies mix and small amount of shrimp or 1 chicken fillet in bits is also reasonable price. Use de la Vera smoked paprika powder imported from Spain.