To ask what are your food shopping essentials?

[jennie0412]

When you're on a very low budget?

I don't really use butter or eat bread so I'm fine on that front

You’re still spending a lot on meat,

Long-term, you need to think in terms of 1 meat product only per week. So a whole chicken one week, the pork the next week etc.

Otherwise when your other stuff runs out (spices, lazy ginger etc, rice & noodles) you won’t be able to afford them.

It's worth working out what's cheap where and occasionally spending on a bus fare to a different supermarket to stock up on a couple of bags of things that keep -

Long-term, you need to think in terms of 1 meat product only per week. So a whole chicken one week, the pork the next week etc.

I'll go with the chicken then this week, and then maybe next week since I'll already have flour, sugar etc, I can buy another full chicken (I'll probably do this every week to sort of keep me going as a basic staple), and then frozen pork like I intended?
I've added blueberries to my list so I can make some blueberry muffins! My list has changed so much with all of your help, so thank you! It's amazing how quickly things add up and equally how much you can squeeze into such a small amount of money just by thinking carefully!

Your test is quite harsh on you. Cooking for 4 people on 50 quid a week is much easier than cooking for 1 for 12.50.

But then £200 a month for a family of four is a very tight budget. Is that definitely the absolute maximum your parents spend? Are they including little extras bought mid week etc?

Could you bring yourself to like pilchards in tomato sauce? Considerably cheaper than tuna, and makes a lovely sauce for pasta (just add onions and celery, maybe mushrooms). We used to eat it on toast (mashed and heated under the grill). I'm a fussy princess nowadays and remove the squidgy bit along with the spine.

Otherwise when your other stuff runs out (spices, lazy ginger etc, rice & noodles) you won’t be able to afford them.
Yes, it's essential not to end up living week to week to survive on a very low budget long term, you need space in your budget for the things that aren't weekly.

We're very tight on money at the moment, and so my mum usually ends up adding some of her money (her savings from birthday money etc as she doesn't work) to make ends meet, but this isn't really fair on her so I'm happy to try and make do with 1/4 of the weekly 'budget' without her help added in.

Forgot to add, I'm an only child so the fourth 'person' is my dog, so it's not very evenly split as he gets kibble and frozen fish out of the weekly shopping, which obviously doesn't come to £12.50, but I guess it's a rough estimate and if it was absolutely impossible to live on this budget I assume she would be happy to adjust it so it's fairer.

I've managed to convince myself hotdogs are the same as spam so I've added them to my list for an extra 50p!
Currently at £13.26!

I think if you have the following in you can always rustle up some kind of meal.

Cooking oil
Butter/spread
Eggs
Milk
Cheddar Cheese
Plain yoghurt
Bread
Potatoes
Tinned pulses x2
Baked Beans
Tinned Tomatoes x2
Frozen mixed veg
Onion
Rice
Pasta
Veg stock cubes
Mixed herbs
Salt /pepper
Garlic granules
Chilli powwder
Tin of tuna
Flour(Plain and SR)
Sugar (granulated and caster)
Custard Powder
Tinned Peaches
Frozen Berries
Oats
Weetabix

What do you already have in fridge, cupboard and freezer? Any dislikes or special diets?

I'd work out what the dog costs first. I spend £17.50 per person for myself and my 14 year old and we eat well. It's surprising the difference between £12.50 per person, and £15, or £17.50, a bit more makes a huge difference.

Good idea to bin the spam, it’s terribly poor quality meat but I ate it at your age too.

You can use the carcass with veg peelings to make stock for soups or stews. There’s loads of meat on the back you can use in soups, I’ve fried it up for fajitas.

I find sunflower oil less smelly when your frying.

If you buy plain flour that you’d usually use in batters etc you can make pitta breads, wraps and flat breads really cheaply and they freeze well.

If you wash, peel and chop the carrots they freeze well. Carrots can go soft quickly, doesn’t matter where you buy them it’s just what they do. I use tie handle bin bags to freeze in a layer then I shake them and voila ready to use & I think freezing makes them cook quicker.

I buy chicken thighs too, much better flavour.

The checkoutsmart app has offers all the time for energy balls etc & Shopmium does a lot of offers too.

So I’d go with the whole chicken this week and that would give you:

2x breasts
2x thighs & legs
Scraps for soup/fried rice
A carcass for stock (make veg risotto etc)

This week I’d freeze 1x breast & 1x thigh and leg and have that next week. Then you buy the diced pork.

3rd week you buy another whole chicken and do the same.

4th week buy e.g. frozen fish (or Spam!)

Eat more veg & pulses and cheaper forms of protein. Cheese goes a long way.

Meat is so expensive in such a tight budget.

The whole chicken is a great idea. And as outlined above you only need to eat 1/4 this week so that will give you one chicken meal every week for a month. Then next week you can buy another joint (pork/beef/lamb or whatever) and get 4 meals out of that. Or one big packet of mince. Etc etc.

Frozen veg is cheap and full of nutrients. A bag of peas this week, a bag of mixed broccoli and cauliflower next week, a bag of cabbage the week after that, and so on.

Frozen sweetcorn is great and you can make sweetcorn fritters with it...just add an egg, dash of milk and some flour and fry in little patties.

Also a pack of ham...you can do sandwiches obviously but also Ham, egg and chips for dinner or add to pasta to make a carbonara.

Potatoes
Bread
Pasta
Tinned tomatos
Mince beef
Milk
Butter/spread
Sausages
Carrots
Rice
Lentils
Frozen peas
Cheese
Bananas
Apples
Porridge
Baked beans
Tinned tuna
Onion
Eggs
Biscuits

I'd be looking at: baked potatoes, sausage, Mash and peas, bolognese, Dahl and rice, sausage stew/pasta bake, chilli and rice/jacket potato, tuna pasta with peas.

For breakfast/lunch: Toast (with beans/egg), porridge, cheese sandwich, cheese on toast, tuna sandwich, cheese and onion omelette, pancakes (milk, eggs and assumed flour from cupboard) with jam/syrup or sugar. Plus bananas/apples, carrot sticks, biscuits for extras.

I think if you are only spending £12.50 a week on food you need to focus more on goods that are cheap and nutritious rather than what you would chose to eat if money was no object . I'm worried you are going to end up with a very few meals of things you really like but not enough food for 3 meals a day plus snacks . I probably wouldn't be starting with making blueberry muffins the first week . You say you often have a banana for breakfast ( not much) but you already have ready brek in your stores , so what about ready brek with chopped banana for your breakfasts ?
And although you say you aren't very keen on bread it's definitely useful for being cheap and filling.

The egg fried rice you like to eat is a good call . Buy savers rice, I would add in some frozen peas , obviously eggs, and a bit of your chopped spam .

Not adding to your list but I used to make DC a packed lunch which was a little bit of shredded cooked chicken, a few left over cooked noodles, a little bit of very finely sliced onion and a grated carrot with a dressing made with a little oil and soy sauce and they loved it. Just mentioning it as it is a meal you could put together mainly from left overs from other meals which might help.

From your previous posts, you clearly like Asian food.

I lived in Korea for several years and Korean food is still my day-to-day 'go to': it's cheap and easy to prepare once you have the basics in stock such as gochugaro, gochugang, soup soy sauce, kombu, rice wine vinegar etc.

Set aside a bit of money from your budget every week to buy some pantry staples - do you have a local Asian/world foods supermarket? Also v good for ramen, packaged udon, bulk rice etc.

I'd also recommend eating as close to a vegetarian diet as you can - so much cheaper!

Yes! I love Asian food and it's mostly what I eat at dinner times (which is partly why i wanted to do this, because my parents mostly make heavy, stodgy food which I just don't want, and much too early when I'm just not hungry so this gives me freedom to eat the things I want, when I want)
I have soy sauce, sesame oil, fish sauce, gochujang, the gochujang powder (can't remember the name!), kimchi (albeit not very much!), and mirin off the top of my head, so I have the 'basics' to make a lot of it. I don't have a local market sadly but every few months I go online and restock my gochujang etc (I get a kg each time so it takes me ages to get through it) so I'll definitely set aside some money every few months to get that.

So from your shopping I’d say your menu is

Breakfasts x 7: omelettes & blueberry muffins, Ready Brek & cereal

Lunches: instant noodles?

Dinners: 2x chicken udon noodles stir fry; 2x fried rice (leftover bits of chicken, maybe hot dogs); 2x sweet potato & green bean satay; soup.

It’s pretty tight, you do need to think very carefully!

Not adding to your list but I used to make DC a packed lunch which was a little bit of shredded cooked chicken, a few left over cooked noodles, a little bit of very finely sliced onion and a grated carrot with a dressing made with a little oil and soy sauce and they loved it. Just mentioning it as it is a meal you could put together mainly from left overs from other meals which might help.
Oh that sounds nice and I probably wouldn't think to do that! Thank you for the idea

This seems like a bonkers plan to me...your family is on a minuscule food budget as it is and segregating it will just constrain both you and your parents even further. You need to work together to maximise the budget as a family. Pretty low to be rowing with your mum about food if she is already subsidising the budget with her birthday money.