To those who are not sure you can feed a family for less than £100 a week

[Metoodear]

I posted a few pictures on the other shopping conversation of the food I cooked as people simply refused to belive you can weekly shop for less than £100 and not just eat pasta all week

Just come back from shopping and just wanted to show you my list and weekly plan Monday is not on their because I already have the dinner we are having salmon baby roasted potatoes and squash wedges with green beans

I have 3 kids and a cat no less Sp 5 of us in total this list includes stuff for lunch as well for me and husband

I it can be done if you don’t allow grazing and make a meal plan the

Frequency I completely understand why you shop as you do. I hope your financial position improves sooner and later and you can buy whatever you fancy whenever you fancy it. It’s a total luxury and it makes me annoyed that people who can afford better force some kind of superior puritanical existence on their kids. Excluding OP of course who spends a bloody fortune and is in denial

OP i get gusto delivered every week and it works out cheaper than your shopping lol

SorryFrequency I sounded like a right bitch!

I know it's hard (been there)

Oh, I know, melissa. I am aware our diet is shit. As I said, right now, it is the best we can do. I posted it because it is the reality of living on the breadline, not what OP posted which to me is luxury.

I would kill to have £100 p/w to feed my kids their breakfast and evening meal.

Things will get better for us when I finish college and/or learn when UC is coming to my area. I'm reluctant to use the college qualification I earned this year when I'm going back next year until I find out when we are getting UC. All the opportunities in my field/area are self-employed and under UC you only get a year to make your self-employment work, I don't want to 'waste' my year while I can't give 100% of my time because I'm in college. But there is an end in sight for us and once we are on our feet I am never stepping a foot in Aldi again. Ever. Not even for their spicy chicken wings which are delicious. I hate the place so much. The lack of choice, the stupidly short dates, the veg that looks off before you get it home... How anyone enjoys shopping there is beyond me.

I would say that chocolate hazelnut spread will never pass DD2's lips again once we are back on our feet but it's a favourite meal of hers so that is probably a battle I won't win. I will sneak some salad into her diet if it kills me.

Of course it's possile to feed a family for under £100. I do it on around £65 a week for a family of 4, including all lunches.

Breakfasts: cereal (lidl), porridge (Tesco value oats are about 75p for 1lg and indistuingishable from expensive brands. Fruit - usually banana, which costs pence - and yoghurt (cheap big pots from Lidl). Toast.

Lunches: daughter gets free at school. Son has packed lunch: sarnie, raisins, yog pouch, fruit juice, half a pack of some sort of crisps (not ideal nutritionally, but he's autistic and food phobic). H and I have soup ( usually a nice fresh soup on special at Tesco, 1 lasts me 2/3 days. or I HM from leftovers), or salad (couple of bags of mixed leaves in main shop, cucumber, olives, feta cheese, leftover roast chicken, or tinned tuna, HM dressing)

Dinners; Honey/soy salmon with new potatoes and veg (we keep frozen veg in freezer and steam it). White fish in HM spicy tomatoe-y sauce, veggie chilli - costs pence, make a vat, use it as basis for loads of meals, chicken curry bulked out with frozen spinach and chickpeas, HM pizza, roast chicken on Sunday, sausage casserole with loads of veg, bolognese etc etc

Snacks: fruit, breadsticks, rice cakes. I keep snack food boring so kids are less tempted to graze.

A couple of years ago I could get the food shop in for £45. Food has become more expensive, but I can still come in under £65 wiothout worrying or compromising and eating godawful convenience food.

And you didn’t eat the mice then you have mine this week

OP, you can keep your mice. Put them towards next weeks shop so you don't need to count them

I remember walking round Morrison’s with a calculator trying to feed 2 adults with £40 a week. Beans, pulses, pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, eggs.
It was dull and embarrassing and hugely stressful (what If I get the calculation wrong? I have NO MORE MONEY) view it as a hobby or source of pride if you like, but thank you lucky stars you’re in a position to do so.

Frequency it is shit not to have a choice and I think you're doing brilliantly to balance the food your DC like with what you can afford.

I hope you don't think I'm being patronising but there are clearly some quite savvy cooks on here. I wonder if you posted your rough food budget posters could come up with a meal plan that leaves you feeling less like you're going without?

Sorry to hijack OP but it would be lovely if something positive came out of this thread. I'd also like some new ideas because I just repeat the same meals, although I'm vegetarian (DC) not.

I remember walking round Morrison’s with a calculator trying to feed 2 adults with £40 a week. Beans, pulses, pasta, rice, tinned tomatoes, eggs. It was dull and embarrassing and hugely stressful (what If I get the calculation wrong? I have NO MORE MONEY)

I've had to do this several times in Asda. Only my local Asda aren't shit hot on changing price labels back when things have been on offer and then aren't, so you get to the checkout and the prices don't match up with your careful budget because the prices were wrong! So humiliating

@frequency most people have been skint - me included! It will make that much sweeter when you get to the end of your education and have money!

Lunch - DD2 - Aldi's halzenut and chocolate spread on white bread, monster munch (from Iceland which is next door to Aldi), apple, Aldi squeezy yoghurt, Aldi fruitshoot, Aldi's version of Jaffa cakes x 3.

That is a bad lunch! Sugar sugar sugar!

So the lesson learned from the OP is that if you have a chicken in the freezer plus ingredients for pancakes, fruit, eggs, bread, starve the family on Saturday, need to buy no cleaning products, loo rolls, shampoo etc and provide no lunches or snacks, you too can feed a family of four for £100.

Come on OP, own up, this is a joke isn't it. If not it's risible.

I don’t think that would help because people would just post the same old rhetoric - lentils, 1/3 of a container of soup for lunch, porridge oats. No account taken of frequency’s families food prefencenes or desire for variety (which we all have) I know you’re trying to help by these threads by savvy cooks (like the OP ) are always awful

Oh god fuckface. Literally our worst nightmare. Then you have to try and work out what you can leave behind without fundamentally damaging your skin right meal plan for the week.

Also, I never have any food in the house on the day of the food shop! Fridge is bare! Tomorrow is food shop day and I have 1 meals left worth of food and enough bread and milk for breakfast. I will then spend £100 on a whole weeks shop not including non food items.

You haven't proven any point here at all.

If you want to prove a point... do a whole weeks shop!

We easily spend less than £100 a week. We do a big cook every 3 weeks and fill the freezer.

To start you get 1.5 kilos of mince and 2 chickens.

For the mince:
Brown.
Put in a bowl.

Grate:
2 onions
2 carrots
½ a courgette
Some garlic

Put in big pan on heat.

Add a jar of lentils.
Add mince.
Stir.

Divide into 3.

1. Add a third to saucepan. Add a jar of tomato puree. Add 2 jars of kidney. Add hot and sweet pepper powder to taste.

Chilli Con Carne.

2. Put ⅓ mince in saucepan. Add chopped red pepper Add 6 mushrooms Add a tin of chopped tomatoes Add 1 jar of tomato puree Add some basil.

Stir.

...Spaghetti Bolognese

Add ⅓ mince to saucepan.
Add 1 jar of lentils
Add 1 chopped carrot
Add 1 small tin of sweetcorn
Add some frozen peas.
Add some herbs de provence.

Put in 6 small or 3 big foil tins.
Put mashed potato on top.

... Cottage pie

....each goes into 3 meals.

2 chickens.

Roast. Take all meat off bones. Put in a bowl with all the juices.

In a saucepan.
Grate:
2 onions
2 carrots
Some garlic
½ courgette
Add 1 jar of lentils.

Add chicken.

Divide into 3

Make pastry and put in fridge.

1. Add ⅓ of chicken to a saucepan. Add curry powder.

.... Chicken curry.

Add ⅓ chicken to saucepan.
Add 1 litre of stock (made with 2 stock cubes)
Add 1 packet of cut and chopped small green peppers
Add some thyme.

Thicken with flour.

Add ⅓ chicken to saucepan.
Add some mushrooms.
Add 2 jars of white beans
Add Rosemary

Line 3 foil trays with pastry. Add filling. Put pastry top on.

... Chicken and mushroom pie.

----

I also make soups. So quick and easy. Do you have a hand blender?

Red
2 onions
Some garlic
1 red pepper
1 litre of stock
1 jar of lentils
Salt, pepper, herbs

Cook for 15 minutes and blend.

Yellow
2 onions
Some garlic
Couple of tins of sweetcorn
1 jar of white beans
1 litre of stock
Salt, pepper, herbs

15 minutes then blend.

White
2 onions
Some garlic
Rosemary
1 litre of stock
2 jars of white beans
Salt, pepper

15 minutes then blend.

Green
2 onions
Some garlic
1 bag of frozen peas
1 jar of white beans
1 litre of stock
Salt, pepper, herbs

15 minutes then blend.

Easy, we just have fresh bread with it.

For the bread.

Get some 25g blocks of yeast (2 x 25g for 30p)

Add 1/2 a block of yeast
2 teaspoons of salt
2 desert spoons of oil
300 mls of warm water.

Add to that 500g of flour.

Mix and prove for 1 hour. Knock the air out and shape. Prove for another hour.

Oven on 200 for 25 minutes.

That wasn't to brag btw. Just thought someone might find the recipes helpful.

Christ. Your mince meals give everyone 110g of mince meat and 0.2 of a chicken. Grim.

Haha we eat 500g of mince when we have anything mince based... 2 adults and 5yr 4yr and 1yr old... we eat like monsters! DH would never eat a veggie meal. He is a neanderthal!

100 quid is loads for a week's shop imo

I only feed two of us but I would consider 50 quid a generous weekly shop where I probably had no meal plan and just put whatever I fancied in the basket.

Resourcefulcook is an amazing website to help with meal planning if anyone is interested.