to spend £280 a week to feed a family of 5?

[TempleOfBlooms]

I spend about £280 a week on food. This includes my work lunches which tend to be salads from places like Leon plus coffees etc. The rest is food eaten at home.

Breakfast for all five of us tends to be things like Bircher muesli or chia based stuff with fruits and nuts. Fresh juice too.

Lunches in summer are usually a selection of dips and cheese and meats and salads.

Dinner is usually fish or chicken with a selection of salads and grilled veg.

So fresh food but not caviar or ridiculous indulgences.

It seems like everyone else on here can feed a family of four on tiny amounts. How? We certainly could eat more cheaply but that would mean fewer veg, fewer fruits, less fish etc.

Is it really so unusual to spend so much on food? I never see anyone else admit to it.

What a pointless thread. Yes you're bragging but remember, we all like different foods, at different prices in different shops, so all our weekly budgets will be different but hey, if you want to buy a salad that's been sitting on the shelves and pay twice as much for convenience because someone has cut it up for you, rather than cutting some tomatoes, throw in some lettuce, a bit of cucumber and maybe a few prawns you go for it.

Also one bag of prawns, one cucumber, a spring onion, a bag of lettuce would do you about five salads.........just sayin'

I don't do faffy meals every night. However both dh and I like cooking
Quick (30 mins) cheap healthy meals include stir fry, pasta with broccoli, garlic and parmasan, another pasta dish with feta and walnuts, roasted veg with cous cous +- chicken thighs.

In the 30-60 minute range I would put various veggie curries with rice and dhal, various filling soups ( minestrone, French onion and a delicious Canadian corn chowder that DH makes) risottos (a lovely lemony spinach one, tomato, mushroom), omletes or quiche with wedges, quesadillas.

These are interspersed with more time consuming meals eg: spag Bol,chilli,lasagne, (all both meat and veggie)home made pizza, home made burgers (either beef or lentil) with wedges. Luckily we each get home by 5 once a week and often cook once of the above dishes a the weekend for later in the week.
We also have a roast most weeks and do have salmon (either fresh or smoked) sea food or fish (some thing like bass or makerel on the BBQ) most weeks- but usually just once.
As I said we spend £80-100 for 2 adults and 2 teens. (And we drink)

flamingofridays
Same Aldi is great!

I think £280 a week is very high. We spend about £60 a week for four of us, two adults, two teenagers. DH particularly likes cooking and we always cook from fresh and experiment with new recipes most weeks - well, he does. The amount we spent dropped dramatically when we swapped from Sainsbury's to Lidl. Also we've gone more or less completely vegetarian. No (or little) meat makes a big difference. We get a lot of fresh veg and fruit. We never do buy-out lunches or buy take-out coffee.

@stillwishihadabs are you me? :) your meals sound like exactly the sort of stuff we cook! Broccoli garlic pasta rocks.

Quite Count, these are the skills of which I speak.

My DCs cook with DH on a Saturday (My day off cooking), they do fairly basic stuff, and are surprised and delighted how easy it is to make ice-cream or brandy snaps.

Savoury-wise, they're still on a pretty basic level though (but do pick some recipes that I wouldn't necessarily chose, we had stuffed cabbage leaves last week, they were delicious, but yes, they weren't able to wrap and fold them that well).

Another important skill with cooking is the ability to season and adjust flavour properly which takes a well-trained palate. So an inexperienced cook may follow a recipe and it tastes 'ok', but an experienced cook will respond to their ingredients and know when something needs a little more 'bite, be it acid, sweetness, salt or umami, and will know know to suitably adjust.

Likewise with meat and fish, an experienced cook can look at the cut, the thickness, the levels of fat, and know how to best treat it.

Books and recipes are a great starting point but to really make fantastic food takes a great deal of experience, understanding and some level of innate talent.

I don’t think OP is bragging
We eat modestly compared to some

I know people that easily spend £80
Hosting a Sunday lunch

We are not flash and I am
Astounded how people feed their families for so little . Kudos

We're a family of two (just me and DP) and we spend about £90 a week on food without paying for lunches and coffee from shops, etc, so I can actually see how a family of five + lunches/coffees could cost that much.

Whether it's too high or not is solely up to you. To some of us it will be high, for others it won't, but that's irrelevant. If you enjoy the food you buy and can afford it, then carry on.

I think if you are spending £280 a week on food you probably know how you could cut back. That's like my full weeks budget for everything not just food!

Also these threads always end up in 'You can buy XYZ at the end of the day at Lidl and make this gruel that will do the whole family for three days!' But some people don't want to cook meals like that or don't need to/want to scrimp and save where food is concerned. Myself and my DP like food and don't begrudge paying for good cuts of meat and the things we enjoy. Sure, we could eat for £40 a week. But we don't want to.

When I was a poor student, though, I could feed myself for a tenner a week because I had to!

I think it would be easiest if once and for all, we all compile a nice big spreadsheet of usernames and spending habits (food, take-aways, holidays etc.), salaries and house prices. Bonus points for cleaners, house keepers, nannies and private schooling. Also might as well chuck in current pension pots.

Your Olives, artichick hearts and walnuts can be replaced with peppers, Radishes, Beetroot for much much less. If you're happy spending what you're spending then crack on.

I could spend a similar amount but that would include a bottle of wine most nights between me and DH, a bottle of champagne at the weekend and the odd G&T or margarita on a sunny day.

I make my own filter coffee at home and at work which saves loads. I bulk buy veg at the market and so my lunches and DC`s are homemade soup, salads and ratatouille plus sandwiches and cakes (also homemade). We have the occasional takeaway for a treat and eat out once or twice a month.. We eat a lot of eggs, fruit, salad and homemade yogurt and limit meat and fish to a steak once a week, a roast on Sundays and maybe a spaghetti Bol/ stew/ fajitas/kedgeree type of dish a couple of times a week and bacon or sausage sandwiches at weekends.

We are well off. We eat well, food is a total pleasure. I cannot imagine spending the sort of money you describe on food.

What's the actual point of this thread though?

What's the actual point of this thread though?

I'm not entirely sure, but it's getting plenty of traffic all the same.

Is a lot of it alcohol?

@nokidshere Asda is £25 minimum spend!

OP hasn’t returned to enlighten us more about why there is a concern about their food budget

Sainsbury's is £25 minimum also

I buy ingredients for meals plus a few snacks. Lots of fruit and salad stuff, nothing prepackaged, I’m perfectly capable of chopping up a lettuce!
Dips, olives etc are a treat,we can do without them.

Big jar of olives in Lidl is 39p just saying

We spend £70-80 on a family of 4. Fruit and veg is pretty cheap I find, even though I shop at Ocado, not the cheapest supermarket. Unless you're buying lots of exotic fruit which we don't. I think if I spent £280, theres going to be alot of wastage and food spoiling which I hate. We don't buy expensive cuts of meat, large joints, I suppose thats where costs could add up. Fish is fairly cheap so it wouldn't be that. We hardly drink much alcohol, that can add a lot, but if you're drinking that much, you might as well not bother with the chia seeds!

I'm thinking of people reading this who rely on food banks. It's sad that there is such a shocking difference between rich and poor people's food.

I'm very interested in nutrition and got in the habit of cooking well on a shoestring. I think sometimes we eat more healthily as we use pulses and plenty veg to bulk out meals rather than a lot of meat.

What's the actual point of this thread though?

I enjoy a good food thread.

What's the point of any thread? 95% of the threads here are of no consequence, they're just time-filling fluff and the excuse for a good barney.

I've been here for 12 years. Plus ca change innit?