To think £3.25 isn't cheap for a dinner every night?

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DD (18) has a Caesar salad every night for dinner, I batch cook but she doesn't like any of the stuff so I buy her the stuff for Caesar salad. It works out at £3.25 (she likes this certain fresh hot and spicy chicken that goes on it.) She thinks this is quite cheap, I did mention that she is expensive with the food shopping and she got defensive saying that she eats cheap foods and that it isn't fair to say she is expensive! AIBU to the £3.25 every night is quite a lot for dinner?

Pre-cooked chicken can be pretty high in salt and sugar.

Does lettuce have much nutritional value?

Is it those little packs of spiced chicken fillets that cost about £2.50 for a small pack, They are the sort of convenience food that I sometimes get as a one off if I am on my own and feeling lazy, they are not really a day in day out meal thing.

One day I'll manage to put everything in one post 🤦🏻‍♀️

I don't think it's cheap for what it is.

I agree with pp, she will be comparing it to eating out. Which is what people who don't shop and cook do. My dad and dh do this all the time.

Dh went out and got the food for a roast and it was £45 once. When I was incredulous he said that when we went out for dinner it was about £80 so thought he'd done well by saving us money.

I told my dad once that the butchers sausages were a quid each and he said he thought that was cheap. But for 5 of us that would be £11 on just sausages. So bangers and mash would cost the same as a side of salmon.

It is expensive; if you add this and breakfast/lunch/snack costs you are probably looking at a weekly cost about £40 for one person; this a fair chunk of a weekly food budget for a family. For people on here saying we spend £100 pw on 2 adults that is no reflection on a family food budget or £200pw for a family, it's nothing to do with income etc it's just too much for one person.

I suppose it's different if you are well off

but generally I would have thought budgeting and cooking a meal by 18 is important for most people. £3.25 for one meal is a lot for me and probably for most people in this country.

I don't count putting together pre-made chicken and salad and sauce as cooking a meal! While she's doing A levels I'd let her get on with it, but when she's finished she's got to learn to do this - unless as a family you are well off enough for her to carry on this way (which is fine, great if you are able to do this).

The posters saying that it is expensive for what it is, are spot on. The OPs budget and what people think is a reasonable cost per meal is secondary.

Supermarkets make a big thing about all their fresh meat being UK sourced, red tractor standard as a minimum, while quietly importing lower welfare meat for use in ready meals and cooked meat products. Also there is the huge mark up in processed food.

For example Tesco Fiery Piri Piri Chicken Breast Mini Fillets at nearly £18 per kilo, made from EU chicken, likely to be from somewhere like Latvia or Poland, where welfare standards are probably not a patch on the UK.

Compare with Willow Farms Mini Fillets fresh chicken, their value brand, but still UK reared red tractor standard, at £4.85 a kilo, or not much more than a quarter of the price.

OK you have to cook it, and marinade the chicken, but you could easily half the cost of the chicken, or more, by just marinading and cooking the chicken yourself, and you’re probably buying higher welfare chicken, from a shorter supply chain.

I think it is reasonable and she is your daughter. Who counts up what our kids ear? I've not come across things like this before. At least she is easy to feed, unlike many.

She's 18, clearly has no concept of budgets and is wrong, unless she's paying herself she doesn't get to tell you what is cheap

We had a lodger who used to eat the same filled pasta every night with a bit of salad. Some folk are just like that. He was super healthy and into fitness - just a bit boring with his food. I'd leave her to it.

Maybe cook up a chicken to last the week though. Buy a whole lettuce if you aren't already. Lidl or somewhere for the hard cheese would work out cheaper. I'm sure you can make croutons (I don't like them so never have).

She really shouldn’t be eating that same salad every night! It’s not nearly nutritious enough amd variety in a diet is super important.

It's a bit expensive; but the money is not the main point here. She may be 18 but she is a school child living at home as part of the family. She should muck in with everyone else and (perhaps with the occasional exception and certainly with the option of having more or less of particular items) eat what everyone else is eating. How else will she develop a range of tastes? How is she going to cope socially if she only eats chicken Caesar salad? If she ever has to go to a formal or professional dinner, or even a wedding reception, there is unlikely to be box under "Dietary Requirements" for " I only eat chicken Caesar salad". Why are you indulging this fad?

I'd say expensive too
Im not on any sort of budget just a bit mean
£6-7 can do a roast pork dinner for 4 (£5 for joint, a pound or 2 for veg, gravy, stuffing) or a cauliflower curry can be about £2 for 4 if cauliflower on offer (had a huge one for 69p recently) or a huge 3 bean chilli is a similar price

For people on here saying we spend £100 pw on 2 adults that is no reflection on a family food budget or £200pw for a family, it's nothing to do with income etc it's just too much for one person.

It has everything to do with income and how you budget your own finance. How can you decide what is cheap or expensive for one family?
For some, £40 a week for one person really is not much, that's less than £6 a day per person!

Some spend less, some spend more, but it's not a ridiculous number.

I don't think people increase their budget per person accordingly. If it was just me and dh we'd still spend the same. Approx £100 per week. (we did pre dc). All that has happened is that with every new dc the budget has been stretched further. The pot didn't increase because there was another mouth to feed. I would never justify one person having more than others.

I really rate the Lidl free range whole chickens for about £5 op if you are thinking of getting DD to do it herself. You could easily get 5 portions (if you are having with cheese and croutons etc) out of that. (sorry if that's all a bit mumsnet chicken for a week, which i'm not usually like - honest)

It's not hugely expensive for a single meal but to eat that every single evening soon adds up!

Also, the cost per person is very high i.e. you are buying for just one person, if it was a list of ingredients for 2 adults or whatever, that would be better value

I can't caesar salad personally, understand she likes it, but having it every night is surely not great!

I don’t think it’s THAT expensive for an evening meal for one person

However if it’s too expensive for your housing budget then it is too much

I am amazed at those saying it is cheap. Sure if you have steak that is a more expensive meal, but surely no-one is eating steak every night?

I don't think people increase their budget per person accordingly.All that has happened is that with every new dc the budget has been stretched further. The pot didn't increase because there was another mouth to feed.

My budget has increased massively with every child!
You think it's temporary with the first one when you buy nappies and bits with the weekly shop, then you realise that it keeps going up even when they are out of nappies and baby food

I am impressed if you manage to keep the same. Even when we had some of the kids friends staying over for tea after school, we just buy more, so we spend more.

I think someone that eats that every single night will really not want to eat chicken off a whole chicken. It won't look the same. You're better off getting chicken breasts and getting her to marinade them herself, then roasting and slicing. At least it will then look like the preformed pre sliced stuff.

Is she earning? Does she pay anything to you for her meals-maybe she should?

I'm just wondering if she's planning on going to university away from home; that £3.25 every day won't seem cheap to her then

What I mean is the available budget doesn't suddenly increase. Ie if you only have £100 per week for food and there's 2 of you that makes £50 per person. We didn't then up the budget by £50 with every additional child. That would mean spending £250 on food. The same £100 had to stretch. So meals stopped being salmon and steak every night and became mince and veg curries etc. If we spend more on people coming over I then cut back the rest of the week. There is flex, but not that much. When I moved out of home my parents didn't automatically cut their food budget by a third. They just bought nicer things! If that makes sense.

Cost aside, do you have other concerns about her diet or her general wellbeing? Is this a way of exerting some control? It's not a disaster to have the same dinner every day if it's nutritionally balanced but a caesar salad is really high in salt.