Would this last u a day?

[HappyGoLucky96]

With the price of everything going on
could you make £20 last you daily?
family of 4 two adults 2 children under 7?

No worries. We love carbonara here, so easy to make and cheap but feels kind of special 🤣

The kids here are older than yours but one still insists pom bears are the best crisps and I don't like rubbish cheese but cathedral city is nice and is on offer at the mo. Buy stuff when it's on offer and it'll go further

I find if you get the smaller punnet of strawberries and a pack of kiwi or a pineapple to mix in with it they won't complain and it's a lot cheaper. Put a little pot of Greek yoghurt (decanted from the big tub) in their lunchbox and they can mix it in. Carrot batons are dirt cheap if you cut them up yourself too.

even fruits £3 for bunch of grapes £3 for strawberries etc etc

You can get a bunch of bananas or bag of apples, oranges or kiwis, or a pineapple for a quid.

Plus grapes are 2 biggish punnets for £3 in Morrisons.

Of course strawberries are expensive as they're not in season yet. Buy frozen berries or bananas if you want to spend less.

But it seems that on here it is preferable to buy mountains of out of season fresh fruit and then complain that it is expensive.

I buy whatever fruit is in season and therefore cheap. Pineapples were £1 for months recently.

Packed lunches should be cheaper than school dinners. Have you got a packed lunch box with sections? Then you can put in a biscuit from a packet of biscuits rather than a wrapped up one. That sort of thing.

Packed lunches should be cheaper than school dinners

Not for infants.

No, obviously not. 🙄

For food? Yea, easy

She's explained that her kids won't eat school dinners. Of course they would if that was the only option but let's face it, when you're just starting out sending your kids to school then you worry and want to send them with things they like.

A cheese sandwich, a little pot of fruit, a packet of crisps or a couple of breadsticks and a pot of yoghurt and a biscuit with a bottle of water costs less than a quid. It's the getting dragged in to the marketing hype of brands and the more expensive fruits and snacks that bumps the price up.

Op, 3 30 on a Sunday get to m and s.
Amazing discounts, I used to get all sticker food but I was astonished at how good Sunday discounts were.

Do you mean £20 a day for food?

If so, yes.

On food? Yes, easily. We're a family of 4 and I spend a bit less than that. Don't buy brands, shop at Aldi, Lidl and B&M. I use a butchers wholesaler for good offers on excellent quality meat. I do cheap meals or bigger meals that stretch over two nights, ie. A bolognaise sauce that can be made into a chilli the next night, with spices and a tin of of beans. I stock take the freezer, always do a shopping list and meal plan. I wfh and have loads of gadgets (ninja foodi for pressure cooker/ airfryer, bread maker, soup maker, smoothie maker) to help meal prep, I have time to cook from scratch. I'm also not adverse to some cheats to make life easier, gravy granules, frozen mash, frozen Yorkshire puds etc.

yup I can, but as mentioned kids are very fussy will only eat grapes strawberries melon

Do you mean something like AFRID?

Probably just about if I was careful...but we're a family of 5 with two adults, two adult-sized teenage boys and one 7 year old. I'd imagine it would be very doable for 4 when the two dc are younger.

Afrid?

You can buy a whole melon from Asda for £2 and cut it up, lasts a few days in the fridge. Grapes are pretty cheap there too.

Avoidant restrictive food intake disorder

gosh yes, very easily, what is the context? Is you partner saying it cant be done and they need more? or something?

No my partner never said anything!

it’s just it all seems to go really quickly I do a food shop on a Sunday and most could be gone come Wednesday/thursday.

i don’t eat much to be fair but husband and kids do eat a lot.

they all have breakfast in the morning
husband and me have lunch at home
kids school pack lunch’s.
kids lunch when not at school at weekends
dinners (kids won’t eat much what we eat)
so a lot of the time I need to make 2 different dinners , dinner last night for example we had cottage pie with peas and sweetcorn. Kids refused so I had to make them fish fingers baby potatoes sweetcorn.
then snacks in between every day yogurts fruit biscuits crisps for kids and of course my husband.
after dinner he would have a snack like toast and tuna onion at maybe 9pm dinner at 5/6pm? Husband eats probably the most? I’m not complaining about him eating if your hungry you need to eat he’s around 12 stone n works hard so it’s understandable.

just finding ways to try and make it last a bit longer maybe I might start freezer some more stuff

@HappyGoLucky96 when you say the kids "refused" to eat the cottage pie - is that because they simply don't like it or would they normally eat it?
I they literally don't like it and never eat it - why make it for them?

We are a family of 4 adults and spend less than that on food in a week.

Based on your posts, OP, the issue is that you are buying expensive items (out of season fruit), providing multiple food options which may mean you can't take advantage of making meals in bulk (though if this is the case I'd suggest making for 4 and freezing half), and that things like yogurts, crisps etc are comparatively costly.

Unless your DC do have ARFID or something similar (I'm assuming they don't as you didn't know what it was), then I'm afraid I'm a fan of serving them up the same as everyone else - ideally picking something they do like and they can choose to eat it or not. Under 7s do not get to dictate what type of fruit the household buys especially if the household cannot afford it.

I'd start meal planning (for everything) and only buying what's on the shopping list. No top up shops unless for reasons of storage/can't carry everything. Eat what you have in the house before buying more.

I would suggest dropping the crisps, they are insanely expensive these days, and offer more filling option snack instead of biscuits. Biscuits can be very cheap, but so sugary they are going to cause further hunger, they dont fill you up.

Yes.

We are a family of six (2 adults, 4 kids under 12, 2 dogs and 3 cats) and we regularly had to manage on that this year while my husband was out of work. That would cover food and gas/electric (top up meters)

Was it fun? Not at all. But perfectly doable.

It looks like your main problems are making separate dinners and snacking choices. There’s no need to make separate meals. Why did your kids refuse cottage pie? I just serve up the family meal, if they don’t eat it then no alternative. Make sure you’re choosing family friendly meals, but cottage pie is a basic so unless there’s something they really don’t like in it they should be eating it. For snacks, get unbranded cheap options. Tuna is expensive, could your DH have an alternative for his toast like pate (under £1 for a tub) or peanut butter? You could also bulk up meals with cheap things like garlic bread (35p for a basic one in Asda), stuffing or Yorkshire puddings depending on the meal to fill everyone up more.