to try and settle the 'which is cheaper, junk or cooked from scratch' debate once and for all

[IceBeing]

I have seen both sides of this recently on MN and on the box.

So. submit your meal plans here.

1. Choose junk or home cooked

1. Give a shopping list plus price for a weeks worth of food for a family of 4, assuming no reliance on a 'store cupboard' and no meal sharing.

1. Give an estimated weekly cooking time plus shopping time.

1. indicate if your plan relies on a local aldi/lidl etc.

Lets sort this the JEFF out please.....

noobie teacher, yes. No one who is working full time should ever have to feel stressed about having enough money to feed their family, or having to top it up by foraging. It's like something out of Zola's Germinal.

StressedHEmum - you feed 7 adults a week on £50? That really is brilliant.

I've attempted to compare like with like here so I've pulled together a standard weekly dinner only menu for our family, and then tried to find ready meal equivalents for the "junk food". This includes buying pre-prepared salads/veg if they are a side, but doesn't always make as much, or as good, food (for example, the burgers would be 100g burger patties each in the junk food, whereas our homemade burger patties are usually 200g each)

Assuming no store cupboard, I?ve listed the key cupboard ingredients needed at the end and have added that cost on to the shop which makes the from scratch slightly more expensive than it would usually be once you had your store cupboard set up.

Finally, all the prices listed here are Tesco online prices, and I haven't used promotional prices at any point so there are savings that could be made both by shopping smarter, or moving to a budget supermarket such as Aldi. We normally shop there for a very similar shop + breakfast, lunches, drinks etc and it usually comes to about £40.

So, without further ado, a rather lengthy menu plan...
 
Monday = Cheat Day ? Pizza, chips & salad
Ingredients: £4.39
2 pepperoni pizzas (£1 each = £2), ½ bag of chips (82p for bag = 41p), 1 ½ bag of rocket (£1 a bag = £1.50), 150g cherry tomatoes (98p for punnet = 49p), 1 carrot, grated (72p for 8 = 9p)
Store cupboard: olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt (for chips)
Time: 25 mins for pizzas, salad prepped in that time
Equipment: Oven, oven trays, grater, & knife

Tuesday: Prawn & rocket pasta
Ingredients: £2.70
360g spaghetti (32p for 500g = 32p), ½ bag of rocket (£1 a bag = 50p), 250g frozen prawns (£1.88)
Store cupboard: tbsp lemon juice, olive oil, salt, pepper, garlic & chilli flakes
Time: 20 mins (with prawns thawed the night before)
Equipment: 1 pan, wooden spoon, chopping board & knife

Wednesday: Chilli con carne on rice
Ingredients: £8.48 (makes double portions of chilli for tomorrow)
4 onions (1kg for £1 = 40p), 4 carrots (72p for 8 = 36p), 2 x tin kidney beans (50p each = £1), 400g tin taco mix beans (55p), 400g tin butter beans (59p), 3 tins chopped tomato (34p each = £1.02) 1kg mince (£4), 400g rice (40p for 1kg = 16p), cheese to serve (£2 for 400g = 40p)
Store cupboard: Salt, pepper, chilli flakes, balsamic vinegar
Time: 30 mins ? 1 hour depending on how you like chilli cooked
Equipment: 1 large saucepan, 1 medium saucepan, 2 wooden spoons, chopping board, knife & some sort of drainer

Thursday: Burritos with rice
Ingredients: £3.69
Left over chilli mix (cost counted yesterday), 1 tin chopped tomato (34p), packet spice mix (55p), tortillas (92p for 8) 200g rice (40p for 1kg = 8p), 160g cheese (£2 for 400g = 80p)
Time: 30 mins
Equipment: Saucepan, oven, baking tray, wooden spoons, grater, some sort of drainer

Friday: Spaghetti carbonara
Ingredients: £2.86
360g spaghetti (32p for 500g = 32p), 275g bacon (£1.04), 1 onion (1kg for £1 = 10p), 3 eggs (£2 for a 6 box = £1), 80g cheese (£2 for 400g = 40p),
Store cupboard: Pepper, olive oil, garlic
Time: 20 mins
Equipment: Chopping board, knife, 2 saucepans

Saturday: Home-made burgers with chips
Ingredients: £5.21
500g mince (£3), Bread crumbs (use ends of bread), ½ bag of chips (82p for bag = 41p), 1 egg (£2 for 6 = 34p), 1 onion (1 kg for £1 = 10p), burger buns (60p), 3 carrots (72p for 8 = 27p), Sliced cherry tomatoes (98p for punnet = 49p), Mushrooms (£1 for punnet = 50p),
Store cupboard: salt, pepper, chilli flakes, olive oil
Time: 30 mins
Equipment: Pan, wooden spoon, chopping board, knife, oven & mixing bowl

Sunday: Mushroom Risotto
Ingredients: £1.16
400g rice (40p for 1kg = 16p), 1 onion (1 kg for £1 = 10p), mushrooms (£1 for punnet = 50p), 80g cheese (£2 for 400g = 40p)
Store cupboard: Garlic, olive oil, stock, salt & pepper
Time: 45 mins
Equipment: Pan, wooden spoon, chopping board & knife

Store Cupboard: £6.43

• Olive oil £2
• Chilli flakes £1
• Lemon juice 50p
• Tomato puree 35p
• Stock cubes 20p
• Salt & Pepper 29p & 60p
• Balsamic vinegar £1
• Garlic 49p for 3

Left over at end of week: 96p
3 onions = 30p (add to store cupboard)
280g spaghetti, already costed
2 eggs = 66p (add to store cupboard)

Total cost: £35.88

The Ready Meal Version:

Monday: Pizza, Chips & Pre-prepared salad
Ingredients: £5.91
2 pepperoni pizzas (£1 each = £2), ½ bag of chips (82p for bag = 41p), ready prepped salad (2 x £1.75 = £3.50)
Time: 25 mins for pizzas & chips
Equipment: Oven, oven trays

Tuesday: Tesco Prawn spaghetti
Ingredients: 2 x £3.25 = £6.50
Time: 5 mins in microwave
Equipment: Microwave
Note: Meal must be eaten within 2 days of buying

Wednesday: Chilli con carne on rice
Ingredients: 4 x tesco value frozen chilli con carne & rice = £4
Time: 10 ½ mins
Equipment: Microwave

Thursday: Chicken enchiladas (replaced as no burritos) & rice
Ingredients: 2 x enchiladas ready to cook (£3.35 x2) & Microwaveable Rice (£1) = £8.70
Time: 20 mins in oven
Equipment: Oven, baking tray,
 
Friday: Spaghetti Carbonara
Ingredients: 2 x spaghetti carbonara = £4.80
Time: 9 ½ mins from frozen
Equipment: Microwave

Saturday: Microwaveable burgers with chips & veg
Ingredients: Microwaveable burgers (4 x £2) ½ bag of chips (82p for bag = 41p), prepped salad veg (£1.25) = £9.66
Time: 25 mins for chips
Equipment: Microwave, oven,
Note: burgers can be bought cheaper if frozen but all require frying which I count as cooking in this case the meal switch in frozen burgers + buns and cost = £4.76

Sunday: Mushroom Risotto
Ingredients: Frozen risotto = £1.89
Time: 9 mins
Equipment: Frying Pan, wooden spoon

Total Cost of ready meals: £41.46 or £36.56 (depending on Saturday choice)

So by my calculations, a ready meal equivalent is about £5/week more expensive for this type of food, and we would also have to consider the nutritional impact of living off ready meals.

That being said, this is obviously not the MOST budgeted meal plan, ready meals in particular could be a lot cheaper if you removed variety and bought 7 family value lasagnes for £21 - it would also be possible to home cook jacket potatoes with cheese 7 days a week which would come in very cheaply, but in both cases you'd soon get ill or bored, and I've have at least tried to think about vegetables!

Although I chose my favourite quick and easy meals, home made is still considerably more time consuming than ready meals, and overall you'd need at least a 10 piece kitchen set to be able to cook the full menu which can be very prohibitive for some people.

I hope that's been interesting - I've found it very eye opening how cheap frozen ready meals are in particular, and I can definitely see how hard it must be to justify £2 on olive oil when you can get a family lasagne for £3.

stressedHEmum does your £50 include bread, cereal, lunches etc?

50p a portion is a tiny amount

ready made lasagne with OK ingredients, like the one garlic recommended isn't junk food - it's a ready meal. I'd buy that. Home made is much nicer with far more veg in it, but takes so long to make and uses every pan in the house. It's something I make about twice a year as a real labour of love. Still, I'd want to add some veg to that meal - salad or broccoli.

I cook on TV and even I don't bother making lasagne most of the time. The bought stuff tastes acceptable and is usually quite well put together.

(If you are going to make a lasagne, try spinach, salmon and pine nut lasagne. Yum).

BoffinMum that is depressing. 'Acceptable' is not good enough for me though so each to their own.

Callami - can you cost out a homemade pair of pizzas? (obviously not making the pepperoni from scratch! but the rest?)

I find it hard to believe that anybody considers making lasagne so complicated that it becomes a twice a year undertaking. Racing you need one pan to cook your bolognaise sauce another pan for vegetables. A knife to chop and perhaps a couple of spoons to taste as you go along. Buy pre cooked lasagne sheets and then all you need is a dish to layer it all in.

i don't think it's complicated.

can't have cheese sauce at the moment and can't bring myself to eat it without (i have never done bechamel sauce, always cheese sauce)

"Ainsley's cupasoup have only natural additives too. There's a meal for four for £1.20 if you add some stale bread on the side."

A cupasoup and some stale bread a meal? Who for?

nickel babe i agree!

I bulk cook bolognaise and freeze it, then it's there if I want to make a lasagna.

nickelbabe - I'd cost two giant sized home made pizzas (same size as Pizza express) at about £1 each for ingredients:

15p for 1/4 of a 60p bread mix
25p for 1/2 a 50p mozzarella ball
9p for 1/4 of a 38p pack of chopped tomatoes
10p for 1/10 of a £1 can of black olives
30p for 1/10 of a £3 salami or chorizo
1p for a pinch of mixed herbs from a 30p pack of basics mixed herbs
that leaves 9p over for a 1/8 of a red pepper and 1/8 of an onion.

If you cut that giant pizza in half and added oven chips and salad or peas and frozen veg, each meal could come in at around 50-75p

Nickelbabe, I do make a lot of pizzas from scratch but I was trying to stick to the rules of assuming no cupboard stock so you'd end up with a lot of leftovers in the form of flour, pizza base sauce, toppings etc if you did this which means that I considered it out of reach in this budget menu

Saying that if you wanted to keep things back I'd say that you can make a pepperoni pizza with the following:
Flour 45p
Garlic & herb passata 79p (very basic sauce but passable)
Sliced Pepperoni £1.10
2 x packs of Mozzarella 44p x 2 = 88p

So that's £3.22 for at least 5 pizzas worth of ingredients or just over 64p each which isn't too bad!

If you wanted to keep that within the challenge, you could have a pizza each instead of pizza and chips and Monday's dinner would come in at £5.20 which isn't too bad but, to be honest, on a Monday evening I just wanna bung something in the oven!

ah, when i did my item, i was assuming that we would either have those things or be able to buy them for future - we use a lot of flour here as we have a bread machine :)

i think i'd make potato wedges instead of chips if i was doing pizza and chips from scratch - DH does really nice ones

but then we'd have to add mayonnaise to that...

curlew I am kidding. I find this thread depressing with its skimpy ingredients.

Two giant sized home made pizza using 1/4 of a bread mix? Use half a mozzarella ball and one tenth of a salami on two giant pizzas? Hardly going to keep the troops going for hours. I would use those ingredients on one standard pizza, not two giant ones.

I find this thread depressing with its skimpy ingredients.

Glad you said that. I was beginning to wonder if I'm a glutton!

Gruel is the new polenta.

Noobie, I am so glad you are joking about the cup-a-soup. I was genuinely concerned that your family was living off that...

I usually use 1/2 a mozzarella ball on a pizza but agree with the amount of flour because I like my pizzas thin and crispy

Also, I always make meal plans and thought I was good at budgeting but when you look at what some people spend it does just make me sad.

Half a m-ball is about right IMO. In Italy you eat a whole pizza to yourself, you don't do that sharing thing, and I reckon you'd get half a m-ball per person.

I'd go for an Asda giant lasagne, £2.98, to feed four. Iceberg lettuce, 60p. Value garlic bread, 60p for two. Total: £4.78 and includes 2 veg. If I've got v. hungry people, I'll add half a bag of oven chips at 40p. All can be done in the oven at once; it'll only need to be on for 40 minutes (and oven chips are veg!)

Or ... I could make pasta, needs to boil for 20 mins, with value mince, canned toms, dried mixed herbs, garlic powder and an onion: second pan on cooker for 15mins. Cost: 50p + £2 + 80p + 30p for the extras = £3.60. If I then add the lettuce and garlic bread, it comes to £5.40 and might not satisfy v. hungry diners. It's close - but, bumping along the economic bottom as I do, I know a pound or so per meal makes a big difference.

Btw, I had an Aldi pork pie yesterday to make a change from scotch eggs It was under a pound. I also had pumpkin seed bread, 85p, with margarine, some celery, some carrots, two bananas and an apple. Total day's food: under £4. Today there's an Aldi free-range chicken in the slow cooker with more of the celery & carrots, duly checked for sturdy legs! (The chicken, not the carrots!)

Gruel is the new polenta.

I make pizza every week - we use

A Wrights bread mix (500g) - 89p + tap water
Napolina pizza topping sauce - £1.00 (mix some water in to make it go further - would do 4 pizzas without water)
Cheddar or double Gloucester cheese (daughter is intolerant to mozzarella - makes her ill) - big 350g bag (cheapest way to buy decent cheese this week) - £2.00

These are Ocado prices.

Then any leftovers on top - chicken/sweetcorn/salad drawer remnants/sandwich meat - whatever - or usually just plain.

Gives us 5 X 14 inch pizzas - for a bit under £4, giving us one evening meal and one weekend lunch for 2 adults and 2 kids.

Thanks for lots of the great recipes and ideas from many posters here. I have saved the thread and had a good read of Boffinmum's blog.

I don't have anything useful to add really, we are not on the breadline just on a budget so it's not the same for us anymore but we have been in much worse financial situations over the years. We do our weekly shop at Aldi or Lidl ( the free range chicken is good) and is usually in the region of £65 to feed a family of four (with alcohol and also includes cleaning items/toiletries).
I realise that I am hugely fortunate to firstly be able to drive and secondly to have those supermarkets local to me.
What people have said about the price of fruit is very true. If I bought the equivalent shop at sainsburys the only fruit would be a bag of apples and one bag of value bananas. The same shop would be more like £90 without the alcohol and the few treats.

So please, do keep banging on about these issues. I know that some of you must feel that you say the same things on countless threads and it must be disheartening. Believe me, if even a few people realise that it's not as simple as 'stop making excuses' and 'ethnic supermarkets are great for' 'shop at you local market' etc, etc..... Then you have done a good days work and far more than some overpaid millionaire chef could ever do to raise awareness of a true reflection of poverty.