To ask minimum monthly food spend single person living alone

[ItsNotJaneFonda]

Afternoon mumsnetters. I know mumsnet has an intelligent and pragmatic demographic. Just trying to sort my monthly budgets out.
The lockdown has made me sharply change my spending habits.

What do you think is the minimum amount a single adult female with an office job and no physically strenuous hobbies can spare to spend on food a month.?

Hard to say without knowing your budget, which shops you have and what sort of cooking facilities you have, plus your actual cooking abilities - though there's so many recipes available online these days, even if you're not naturally a great cook I'm sure you could follow those. Maybe it would be easier if you tried to come up with a rough meal plan for the week first and then worked out how much it would cost if you stuck to it. If it came up a bit high, you could tweak it a bit. I'm sure people here could help with that, and you could look online for budget meal ideas. If you have freezer and a microwave, it's easy to freeze things and defrost/heat them. Without a microwave it's just a case of taking things out of the freezer about a day before you plan to eat them. Meat tends to be a big expense so if you're a meat eater maybe look at things like having a few vegetarian days or bulking out meals with lentils and beans. Finding out what time shops discount items is handy, as you can often get some good bargains. Things like porridge and museili tend to last a while and are filling, and can made with water instead of milk if needed. A bag of potatoes to make jacket potatoes with can also last a few meals (bit samey but if money is really tight, it will do for a while). Pork chops tend to be the cheapest meat ime. And it's always useful to have some stock cubes in or some kind of seasoning to flavour things up so everything doesn't taste boring.

@BackforGood great advice/suggestions there. I'd add though that Waitrose do the biggest reductions - think big gorgeous sirloin steaks for about 49p. I was gutted when my closest shut down last year. I don't drive, walk everywhere (it helps living in a city centre, I'm a live-in Church caretaker) and I miss it.

Omelette or porridge for breakfast

Lunch would be lentil and veg soup (homemade) with cheese and crackers or cheese/tuna/hummus sandwich

Dinner would be chicken casserole with a baked potato. Or Spag bol. Or Chilli and rice. Or sweet potato and chickpea curry.

Tips : buy full fat everything, the fat keeps you full!

Are you veggie, op?

Also, add fat to meals, as with the FF milk, it keeps you full. Cheese, peanut butter on toast use plenty of oil in salads, butter on veg etc

@EileenAlanna - yes, someone in my dd's student house works in Waitrose and I have heard of the delights they get with the reductions