To spend between £6 and £10 on the evening meal

[ShouldiWork]

We can 'afford' it - in the sense that all bills get paid on time etc - but I feel a bit sick when I tot up the months groceries - and I remember when I worked to a £2 per meal budget.

On the other hand - maybe it's what things cost now - and it seems a bit mean to scrimp on food for DH and DC - when the cash is there & DH works hard for it.

Tinkley I adore good food. Unfortunately I can't afford that, or any other luxuries such as days out or new clothes so threads giving advice on how to make things cheaper are fab

Cripes we must eat massive portions in our house because 1/6 of most of the meals you've suggested would never fill me up.

A packed of fajita wraps normally only has 6-8 wraps in, right? So do you all have one single fajita? Does that satisfy you? And with the above pizza thing - how many bits of pizza are the adults getting? You've not mentioned salad or any sort of accompaniment so I'm not sure if you're eating two wee bits of pizza and that's filling you up.

I think I must be a total gannet.

I often feel the same way on these threads weeblueberry, so you're not alone. To be fair, 3 out of the 4 people in our family appear to have hollow legs and need the portions I dish out.

How many wraps would you have then Wee. Personally I would have one very full one with salsa and salad and a bit of rice. DH and eldest son would probably want two.

My pizza, (if it was mine you referred to) was three thin oven rack sized ones between five of us, (eldest DS not around last night). We had a few bits left over actually.

We are all fairly skinny though.

I would probably want two tbh. OP didn't say anything about salad or rice, if we were having that I might only want one full wrap.

It was the OPs pizza I mentioned but I guess it really depends on the size of them. When she said there was two lumps of mozzarella I didn't really think they'd be massive?

We're definitely not skinny though... And I'm 32 weeks pregnant which is probably skewing just how hungry I am.

Well one wrap for you, one for the baby . Sounds fair enough to me.

That goes for cake and entire chocolate bars too, right?

Totally agree with the above poster. I keep a very low food cost but food is extremely important to us. I am a chef (no longer work in that field), we regularly eat at michelin restaurants, my ex owns the UK number 1 restaurant ! Just because i want to spend as little of my income as poss on food means nothing

Today i have eaten porridge with some free raspberries from the freezer. Lunch was a Covent Garden soup i paid 25p for with a pear that would normally cost a fortune, a pack of baked crisps i paid £4 for 108 packs, some homemade bread

Tonight we are eating homemade chicken & sweetcorn pie with potato cakes, roasted cauliflower, carrot & swede mash and savoy cabbage. followed by homemade profiteroles with caramel sauce or croissant bread and butter pudding. Dinner for 6 has cost me less than a fiver.

I bet that menu is better than a lot of people that spend 3 times my budget will be eating today.

Sorry, i was referring to ilkley moor's post

Ilkley, you don't write Eehbahmum do you ?

No, I don't write Eehbahmum truffle

Falling over with shock at the amount most posters are spending on food. I really hope you can all afford it. We're a family of 4, we all love our food, but most weeks I can feed us all for £60. I cook from scratch, bulk things out, shop at Aldi or Lidl.

If you earn enough to be spending over a ton a week fair enough. But for a lot of families that is not manageable.

For us - me, DH & eldest would have two wraps each - other DC one each (makes total 9). The balance of two packs goes on lunch next day wrapped around leftovers and the odd quesadilla after school snack.

Falling over with shock at the amount most posters are spending on food. I really hope you can all afford it.

I'm not falling over in shock about how cheaply some posters can eat because I could do the same, so why are you shocked about how much some people spend. It's there choice if they can afford it.

We probably spend more than average, but I cook from scratch and eat leftovers. For lunch today I had a frittata made with leftover roasted potatoes, some ropey spring onions and almost out of date eggs, amongst other things. We aren't profligate with food, just don't need to budget as much as others.

Years ago we had to live on next to nothing and it was fine, but I prefer how it is now and don't see why I should be riddled with guilt about it.

Wasting food - such as buying too much or throwing away perfectly good food - is far more morally suspect than preferring to pay for other than the cheapest option possible for a food item.

happy I didn't say it was manageable for everyone.

People have different incomes, and different priorites. My priority is time - I could go all over the place looking for bargains, but I'd rather spend half an hour online ordering our shop and then spend my time doing other things.
I cook from scratch, or DH does. We can afford to spend what we do. So please don't 'fall over with shock' on my account.

I love the phrase "falling over with shock" .

I use my local shops - a small supermarket and a greengrocer. It costs quite a bit more than Aldi or Lidl, but it's only a 5 minute walk away, and the greengrocer is a family-run business, which I like to support, I'd be gutted if it closed down.
Aldi or Lidl are a 45 minute walk or a 10 minute bus ride away - and I'd have to pay the bus fare to get there, which probably cancels out a fair bit of the money I'd save! I prefer to give my money to the greengrocer than to the bus company, and save my time - I can nip to the shop and get stuff for dinner in well under half an hour, whereas going to Aldi can take nearer 3 hours if I walk both ways, and it's a nightmare dragging full shopping bags all the way back.

You can't just look at what someone pays for their shopping, you have to look at the whole picture. I spend nothing on delivery charges, bus fares, or petrol (in fact, you could argue that having conveniently local, albeit more expensive shops is one of the reasons we don't need to own a car at all, which is a massive saving) and I don't use up much of my own time - which is also worth something, imo - by buying my shopping in a more expensive shop.

Oh dear. Can we have a smelling salts icon to assist those who are falling over with shock?

Just noticed my embarrassing mistake - their choice not there choice.

I find these threads fascinating - so many different attitudes to food on here. I am a good and interested cook and make most of or food from scratch. I do about 90% Aldi and 10% M&S these days out of financial prudence. I buy meat & fish, some fruit and deli goods in M&S. If we have a week where this is too expensive then I buy everything in Aldi and use bits from the freezer.

However I go occasionally splurge (if dh has received a large payment - self employed so happens a few times a year) and do an entire week's shop in M&S and I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE it. I thought I would do it every week if funds allowed it and for little while after I went back to work and was enjoying the novelty of earning again I did just that. But, incredibly, I got sick of what was always my 'treat'. Once dawdling around the aisles looking at all the lovely produce became a chore like any other shopping I switched back to the Aldi / M&S split so it keep and element of 'treat' for me. I rarely bought ready meals in M&S but love all the fresh produce, meat fish fruit and veg. It probably helps that there are only 3 of us

One of my dreams is to do a week's shopping in Waitrose - don't live in UK and have never been in one, but it sounds right up my alley!!

Do people really work this stuff out unless you are really really skint?

That's maybe where i am going wrong! we spend a lot on food, we are not well off but we don't smoke, drink very much or gamble so we choose to eat well.

I appreciate not everyone has the luxury of pretty much putting what they want in their trolly, but if you are not struggling, I didn't realise people still counted out the cost of a meal.

I will occasionally if I have got a complete bargain but don't routinely.

I don't either myother I don't think I ever have! I sort of don't see the point of it, for me working on keeping my weekly food budget to where i want it to be that week and still ensuring we all have enough to eat and it doesn't feel like cold comfort farm is enough.

didn't RTFT so didn't see that people were saying how much they spend. There are 4 of us - me, DH and 2 teen boys (and a cat), we spend around £150 per week on the main shop plus we still need extras of £20-40 a week at weekends etc.

I cook as much from scratch as I can but don't have time to shop about different supermarkets etc as we both work full time and DC have lots of activities that they need taken to as public transport is shite.

I was kind of celebrating as I've managed to come out of Sainsbo's having spent only about £130 on the main shop the last two weeks - and we had a leg of lamb that I got from the bargain bin for £8 last week.

Tonight we've had organic sirloin steaks that i got from the bargain bin along with a tray of roast tatties and box of mushroom (we also had pepper sauce and brocolli) but another night we might have a bag of pasta and a jar of sauce which would be what? about £2 total for the 4 of us? Can't believe I just calculated that one out :o must be catching!

I know why I spend so much more now than when I was a student - before I would have been happy with pasta + sauce from jar + a bit of cheap cheddar.

Now it's got to be parmesan, and a salad on the side, and the sauce will probably have naice fresh ingredients in it (more expensive than a jar).