to asked for a break down of what you eat if only spending £40/£50 a week on shopping

[littlemissbossyshoes]

when on other posts I often see poster claim to feed a family of 4 or 5 sometimes with pets for less than £50 a week. I have often asked for a bit of a break down or what they have for their evening meals this has never ever been answered.
is it all lentil stews and make a chicken last five meals or can it really be done still having healthy tasty meals and not cutting back on fresh fruit?.

Tuesday this week:

Breakfast Swedish waffles made with 2 eggs (I pay 3 for a tray of 36 from a smallholding my parents go to), 180g margarine, 400g plain flour (lidl) and 300ml milk. Served with berries that I got free on a Tesco Orchard programme and some foraged wild blackberries this served 6 plus 65p carton orange juice
Total cost of breakfast - 1.28 for 7 people

Lunch sandwiches made with a 14p loaf of bread, cheese and ham that I got free from the leftover breakfast buffet at work and the chef let me take, with a 5p cucumber and little gem lettuce that cost 6p. A slice of a tesco red velvet cake that was reduced from 10 to 1 and cut into 12 pieces so 8p a slice, a Satsuma each that were on 90% off reductions so around 5p each, bag of Mccoys crisps (these were on special offer at 1 and I had a clubcard coupon making them 50p so 9p a bag). I made 6 of these packed lunches but had mine at home. DD had lemon sole tempura and chips half a lemon sole that had cost 35p, 3 tbsp of frozen veggies at about 5p and a potato from Dads allotment so about 24p. She had a lidl mini magnum as a pudding which are 2 for 8 and some plums from the garden.
Total cost of lunch - 2.52 for 7 people

Dinner BBQ party for 7. I made my own lamb burgers with a packet of mince that cost 1.19, made spicy lamb koftas with another pack flavoured with five spice and chilli. Korean chicken wings which cost 60p for the wings and marinade ingredients cost about 50p. Pork kebabs using a pack of pork loin medallions from Lidl half price weekend at 1.20, some tail ends of red pepper and pineapple which I got free in morrisons with a Sun coupon.. I got burger buns, garlic bread, flatbreads and hot dog buns on the 90% off bakery reductions at tesco, total cost 55p as they were about 14p per pack. I made pesto pasta salad with a tub of finest pesto I picked up for 16p and some orechiette pasta that was on clearance at 50p. We had a 25p bag of salad leaves, some free tomatoes from a friends greenhouse. Fried some onions, these cost me about 56p for a large 5kg bag so cost of 4 onions was pennies. Had chutney and sweetcorn relish bought at Lidl on the half price weekend for 35p a jar, used about half each.. We had meringues with blackberries and Chantilly cream 3 egg whites at 8p each, about 20p sugar, the Finest Chantilly cream cost 35p on clearance and the blackberries from the hedge. We drank cider and Smirnoff Ice that I was given from work as they were being chucked in the bin as very out of date.

Total cost of BBQ for 7 people was 7.22 approximately. Total cost of food for the day for 7 - 11, 1.57 each. Add into that maybe 1 pint of milk at 25p, 4 cups of instant hot chocolate and about 8 cups of black coffee, a bottle of lidl 39p fizzy water for dinner.

Sorry for epic post but felt I needed to explain how I reached my costings. Dinner would not normally cost 7.22, that was a party night so much more than normal

Me, dh, 3 DC. Spend about 60 per week on shopping including cleaning products.

Breakfast: Aldi version of shreddies. Children sometimes have a banana too.

Snack: apple, satsuma or grapes, 1 biscuit.

Lunch: Sandwich or wrap with hummus, soft cheese or peanut butter. Cucumber, cherry tomatoes.
Yogurt (from the big bucket tub from aldi, piece of fruit.

Snack: similar to morning snack.

Dinner: spaghetti bolognese with Quorn mince (we use half a pack betyween the five of us and bulk it out with red lentils and grated carrot plus whatever veg is on offer.) The next day we add chilli and beans to it and use it to top a jacket potato served with salad. One day is lentil soup with a bread roll. Fridays we make pizza from scratch and top it with passata, veg and a bit of cheese. Risotto one day, that's just risotto rice, veg and stock. Leftovers are eaten for lunch next day or incorporated into the next day's dinner. Yogurt and fruit again after for the kids.

DH and I share a bottle of wine or have a can of cider on a Friday!

If we had more money, I'd buy more fruit for dh and I, we do end up saving it for the children. The biggest saving we've made is shopping at aldi rather than asda - almost halved our shopping bill. Also visiting the greengrocer at the end of the day and buying the fruit that's being sold off cheaply - strawberries for 50p, nectarines 50p for 8, etc.

4 kids, 2 adults, 9 dogs, 4 hens, 2 ponies and a horse. spend about £60 a week on shopping, Live in Scotland so cost of living is much much cheaper.

I don't actually plan meals weeks in advance but typical dinners, sausage and mash, fish and potatoes and peas, Bolognese, mince and potatoes, game or venison pie and mash and gravy (sort of doesn't count - were shot by me for free), burgers and wedges and salad, chicken/ beef/ pork stirfry and noodles or rice and pizza.

I buy bread, jam, juice, tea, coffee, cereal, veg and ham for soup and a few other things too that I cant think of off the top on my head from the shops but I work on a farm so the majority of my meat is heavily discounted and I wouldn't eat supermarket meat if someone held a gun to my head.

I'm not into these health food things so most of my main meals are classic meat and two veg types but I will go out the box occasionally.

Oh, whatever fruit we have left over, if it goes a bit soft, I bake into a fruit loaf on a Sunday which does very well for packed lunches and snacks - usually add some oats and dried fruit to it too.

To us, not being wasteful or extravagent with food means the difference between being financially comfortable and being able to afford holidays, have savings, not worry about the car breaking down etc etc.

We probably spend about 60 a week for 2 adults and 2 cats and could easily do it for less. The cats could eat cheaper food, we could eat less meat for example.

Conversly, we could probably spend a lot more, the cats could eat more expensive food, we could eat more ready meals, expensive fish, steak, fruit from M&S and Waitrose, more alcohol, more expensive cleaning products etc etc.

Say we spent 120 instead of 60 a week, that's over 3k a year and I'd rather spend that 3k a year on a couple of holidays rather than out of season fruit and the most expensive products in the supermarket. We do get some treats, but we do also eat lots of cheaper meals like omelettes, stews, mince based dishes or vegetable curries etc.

I have no loyalty to brands or supermarkets - I use Aldi a lot and for the rest, it's whatever's on offer - luckily I have a variety of supermarkets on the way home from work, so if something like bread or milk is needed, I'll pop in and have a quick look for any good offers to stock up on.

Oh a large courgette lol, every days a school day :)
Thanks for the reipes too

Today's food:

Breakfast Porridge (50p, made with half a pint of milk and water) served with choice of hot griddled pineapple (60p) or blackberries and plums (free). Crumpets that cost 9p for 6. I put out orange juice but this was not drunk. 4 cups of instant hot chocolate, tea for DH and a cup of milk for DD.
Total cost of breakfast for 6 = 1.19

Lunch Stirfry consisting of half a chinese cabbage (13p), 1 egg as omelette ribbons (8p), 6 rashers of smoky streaked bacon (30p from reduced pack), some polish sausage trimmings at about 50p, 2 packs of fresh udon noodles at 60p (reduced), some fresh ginger, dash of soy sauce and mirin. Packet of peanut butter wafers that were 1.99 for 10 in the chinese supermarket, apples at 5p each, cherry tomatoes maybe 25p for 4 portions. This was for 4 people. DH is eating out, DD is at nursery and I am eating spaghetti rings on toast for lunch today from an 8p loaf of wholemeal bread as I can't be bothered to have anything else. half tin of sainsbos own spaghetti about 25p ?
total cost of lunch for 5 = 3.13

I made a banana cake for our students to have when they get in - bananas were 25p, 150g plain flour, 2 eggs, 125g margarine and 125g sugar. Stuck in some dates, raisins and walnuts that have been lurking round for months to use them up. About 1

Dinner will be for 6 as dd eats at nursery - Pork medallions from lidl half price weekend - 2.40 total. We will be having courgette, bacon adn onions fried (courgette free from allotment, bacon about 30p from the reduced pack of 24 rashers, onions from massive pack). Mashed potato from Dad's allotment, just the cost of some milk and butter to jazzy it up. Pudding tonight will be churros con chocolate - the good food recipe uses plain flour, hot water, a small amount of butter. I already have the chocolate dip leftover from when I made it last week so no cost attached to that. There will also be satsumas, plums, blackberries and apples available. We will probably have half a bottle of "pop" with the dinner - 3 for 1.50 so allow 30p.
Rough cost for dinner - 4 for 6

Total cost of food for 6 today is 8.04 plus add an additional pint of milk 8.30 roughly

makeup of our household this week is 2 adults (DH and I), 4 teenage chinese girls that range between 14 and 18 and 4 year old DD. Next week we will also have BIL and SIL back home as well. So basically 8 adults and 1 child.

Ok I finally understand how magic chickens last so long. Someone up thread suggested 2 breasts to be shared between 4 people.

Yes, 2 breasts between 4 - 6 people depending on the size of the chicken (I buy the extra large ones). Then the rest of the meat is stripped off and divided into 2 for using in 2 meals (curry, pie, pasta bake or whatever). The carcass then gets boiled with an onion, a carrot, a couple of celery sticks, salt and pepper to make stock which gets turned into chicken soup. Any little scraps of meat that have escaped being used already get put into the soup.

4 meals from a chicken. The meat is not normally the main feature of the meal and scarcely features in the soup, but it is enough to keep people happy.

Breakfasts - asda cereals (3 boxes for £3)
Oat so simple porridge or toast

Packed lunches include cheese and branston samdwiches, quorn ham, marmite. Crisps (variety from poundland)

Raisins, dried apricots, fruit bars

Other snacks include biscuits, ritz crackers, Cheddar bsicuits.

Meals include quorn curry, quorn spag bol, pizza and garlic bread, homemade veg lasagne, quorn chicken nuggets, chips, frozen peas, carrots, broccoli, quorn sweet and sour veg stir fry, veggie burger, jacket potato and salad. Vegetable rice.

Fresh fruit, kiwis, bananas, cherries, satsumas. Cherry tomatoes, cucumber, lettuce.

Tinned soups, asda soft cheese, crumpets etc for lunches.

Maybe it's because we don't eat meat but never go over £215 per month for family of 4.

It is possible to have those things without spending a lot. To be fair I only have two small children so it will be very different when they're older. I spend £40 a week all in (that includes lunches), I do need to but I could probably afford to spend £60-70 if we really really stretched ourselves. But I hate spending money too. We have fresh fish once sometimes twice a week. We have one 'exotic fruit' in the fridge a week (e.g. kiwis, last week had a watermelon etc). I don't buy organic though so I suppose that is a difference.

My post was to hollie btw

I used to be able to manage £10 pw shops when we were up shit creek. It was only really me & a 7 yo eating though, DD was a baby and OH regularly has no appetite due to illness.

It was miserable, the food was always very samey because it was cheap to buy in bulk and I found it utterly depressing. It was basically an existence of baked potatoes and beans on toast.

We are no longer up shit creek and I never missed food so much, avg shop for us now is probably 60-70.

trufflesnout I hear you!

When I left my first husband and lived on my own I had £10 a week for food.
I used to walk round the local kwiksave and work out how many meals I could get out of six eggs, how many rashers were in a pack of bacon and how many meals they would do (six rashers would be three meals).
Chicken reduced or half price? Soup on buy one get one free? woohoo!!
My lunches at work for the week would be a 29p pack of 6 bread rolls and a 50p pack of sliced ham plus an apple or a banana.

No wonder I was a size 8.

Gemma I am substantially chubbier since graduating from shit creek

Me too

Some really nice recipe ideas on this thread... I thought I was being frugal 'washing out' the (Aldi) ketchup bottle when I'm making bolognaise sauce but these are great!

Wow. Some good ideas on here. At the moment it's just me,oh and ds who's only 7.5 months. We spend about £100 at the start of the month on a stock up shop-nappies, wipes, washing powder etc then at least £60 a week from then on. We really need to cut that back as I'm not going back to work and it's just getting ridiculous.

We spend £160 a month for two adults. That doesn't include lunches - dp has subsidised lunch as he's on the road and I sometimes have leftovers, make salads or buy bits specifically for lunch. Also, he doesn't eat brekkie, and I get breakfast for the office separately (often porridge or a piece of fruit).
Some months we're stricter than others with meal plans. We avoid food waste as much as poss so don't have a full fridge very often - we buy fresh little and often.
I also try and use up leftovers as much as poss - e.g half a lemon frozen to be used for drinks, fresh herbs or chilis dried etc. we cook fresh a lot. It does take time but we've spent a l

..long time learning and honing recipes.
We often don't fill the black bin with food waste in a month even (our council keeps changing our day - very frustrating and hard to keep track of ).

It's only me and dd in the house, but I don't spend anywhere near £50 per week. It's probably more like half that plus another £25 per month on non-food items (washing powder, fabric conditioner, shampoo, cat/dog/rabbit food, etc.)

I do the majority of my shopping in Lidl. They do a 65 wash powder (non-bio/bio/colours) that is just as good as Persil and I picked one up a few weeks back for £6.19. It will last forever even with me washing like a demon. They do a gigantic box of dishwasher tablets for just over £3.00 and I think a spray bottle of antibacterial cleaner is about 59p. I buy only organic/fairtrade fruit and veg out of there which is very cheap and lasts. I recently stopped eating meat but do still eat fish, and their fresh fish hardly dents the budget at all.

For frozen fish, quorn products and dd's slummy mummy meals (fish fingers, chicken nuggets, etc.) I go to farmfoods. I also buy my toilet roll from here (Nicky quilted stuff - 18 rolls for under £4.00).

For all animal food I go to Tesco, where I also stock up on value tinned tomatoes and the like. I make a special effort once every two months to walk up to my local Pound Stretcher and buy several packs of tinned tuna - John West or Princes 4 packs are under £3.00 each.

A typical food week for us would be:

Breakfast: Cereal / porridge with raisins / toast and banana / omelette and toast. We drink organic milk and usually have a fruit juice of some kind as well.

Lunch: Sandwiches using wholemeal bread / homemade soup with chunky homemade soda bread (Jack Monroe's recipe which costs pennies) / cheese and crackers with grapes and homemade chutney / salad with cheese and tuna mayo.

Dinner: Spaghetti bolognese using heaps of veg and quorn mince / smoked haddock chowder / quorn sausages with veg, gravy and a big ol' Yorkshire pud / cheesy wholemeal pasta with veggies / jacket potatoes and salad / pizza, garlic bread and salad / salmon fillets cooked in a little oil, butter and cracked black pepper with veg / smoked mackerel salad.

Snack: Fruit, carrot sticks, yoghurt.

£40 would buy more than whole freezer or Iceland stuff

I am in irl, 5 DC, me DP abd 1 DSS
I spend 70-80 euro a week at the moment,
I shop in Aldi, local butcher, I have a huge veggie and fruit garden and a piggy and deer in the freezer ready to use. and make my own bread

Today b/f cereal, lunch homemade soup cheese and cracker, dinner is salad ham and wedges
Sun cereal, lunch roast chicken veggies etc icecream and jelly. tea will be a fry up only bought cereal milk and jelly
Mon cereal, lunch left overs from sunday with salad and bread, dinner, spanish omlette and chips lazy bank holiday monday
Tue cereal, lunch lasagne garlic bread salad,dinner poss beans on toast with eggs
Wed cereal, lunch bangers and mash and veggies, Salad, fish cakes Thur cereal, lunch pork and ratatouille with baked potato, dinner waffles eggs and beans
fri cereal, hummous crackers and veggies, dinnerfish chowder garlic bread and salad or chicken and salad
DC can eat fruit/veg yoghurts as they want same with bread cheese or jam, drinks are milk water or squash
boring week food wise as DSS is here and a fussy eater he will eat 60% of thevabove and I cannot be arsed with his mother accusing me of depriving him of food
I buy cleaning supplies, laundry powder etc when on special offer
I also have storage space and deep freeze so can buy whole animals and butcher my self make burgers sausages etc pain in the ass but saves ££££ and costs hours, I also freeze and pickle what fruit and veg I can and makemy own jams etc
Next week I need to spend less as had to buy extra ham etc for DSS to eat