To ask what are your food shopping essentials?

[jennie0412]

When you're on a very low budget?

As a PP says, it's a bit of an unfair budget as it's a lot easier to feed 4 people for £50 than 1 for £12.50. You won't be able to eat as healthily on that budget as you would on a family budget of of £50. As much as I think it's a great idea, my DC would do the family meal planning and shopping at your age, I don't think I would want my DC to sacrifice eating a healthy diet for a matter of principle. Can you change the rules so that you can buy a share of an item that your parents are buying or store cupboard items they already have eg half a block of butter, 1 stock cube, 1/3 bag carrots?

It's also going to have a knock on effect for your parents, which will be difficult if they are on a tight budget too eg 1 pint of milk costs 50p but 4 pints of milk costs £1.09, almost half the price per pint. Buying small amounts individually could end up with you all paying twice the price for the same amount of food if you'd shared.

We eat loads of rice.
Onions, carrots, tinned tomatoes.
Pasta (and those batchelors pasta'n'sauce are good cupboard standbys).
Lots of eggs because you can make a multitude of meals from them.
You can stretch a pack of mince by making a stew/hotpot type dish with it.

@mysteryfairy

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.

👍🏻

Oh yes I eat a ton of rice too! Luckily it's fairly cheap and I'm okay eating 50g a time so it lasts ages!

Have you broken your list down into meals to make sure you'll get 3 meals and snacks a day from it? I'm looking and thinking that you say you usually have a muffin or omelette for breakfast, if you get a 6 pack of eggs, you'll use 2 in the muffins then have enough for 2 small omelettes or 1 omelette and some egg fried rice so you'll be having the blueberry muffins 5/6 days out of 7. Also you've added peanut butter but have nothing to put it on, which is fine if you eat it by itself but if you'd usually have it on crackers, bread etc you'll need to add that to the list of replace the PB with something else.

Maybe write a meal plan using what you have on your list to make sure it will fill you up. If you have access to discount stores like wilko, pound shop, B&M you can often find Nakd bars for £1 a box.

That's a bit harsh @mysteryfairy

The OP shouldn't have to eat food she doesn't like. She's come up with a good solution, exactly what MNers always suggest when teens want to eat a different diet from the family, that she should cook for herself. It just isn't very practical with their tight budget so it might need a rethink about sharing essential items to save everyone money.

Assuming OP didn't throw a tantrum...

I was thinking -

1x chicken breast = 2x servings curry
1x chicken breast = 2x servings noodle stir fry
I'm not sure how much thigh to use and what to use that for?
If I made chicken noodle soup, would that be 1x chicken thigh = 2x servings or 2x chicken thigh = 2x servings?
I've never made chicken noodle soup so I have no idea!
I'd use 1x hotdog for egg fried rice, and was thinking since I'd only be using 1x egg in my omelette in the morning (I usually have 2x), I'd add a hotdog and some onion to that too to puff it out a bit.

You might want to find out when your local stores reduce items and go shopping at that time, if you have room to freeze food @jennie0412

My DC are at uni and fill their freezers and mine now they are homewith bargains eg a pack of sausages for 19p, 2 rib eye steaks for £1, bread for 15p.

One chicken thigh is a serving as the only protein, half is fine if you have a vegetarian protein source like chickpeas or lentils as well.

Right! I'm off out in a min, so this is my list I'm planning to go by:
Full fat milk (4 pints, £1.09)
Wonky carrots (1kg, 35p)
Tea bags (savers, 55p)
Sugar (1kg, 65p)
Flour (Morrison's own, 80p)
Onions (1kg, 65p)
Eggs (large, 90p)
Grapes (wonky, 400g, 85p)
Vegetable oil (1l, 99p)
Banana's (5 ripen at home, 75p)
Whole chicken (£3)
8 hot dogs (50p)
Frozen green beans (750g, 49p)
Frozen mixed peppers (500g, 69p)
Morrison's peanut butter (£1.30)
Wonky blueberries (84p)
2x No added sugar sparkling peach (60p)
No added sugar coke (17p)
= £15.17
I'll be adding the extra £2.67 with my own money but that gets me oil etc that I won't be needing to add next week
Thanks again everyone, I couldn't have done it without you!

On that kind of budget it sounds as if you should go meat free, Certainly chicken breasts which have been suggested are too expensive. If you need meat try chicken thighs, legs or bacon bits.
For one person it is doable short term as I would say it is half of what I would spend as a single person per week.

^1x chicken breast = 2x servings curry
1x chicken breast = 2x servings noodle stir fry
I'm not sure how much thigh to use and what to use that for?^

So you can do:

1x chicken breast = 2x servings curry
1x chicken thigh & leg meat = 2x servings noodle stir fry

Then make the chicken noodle soup from chicken stock (made by boiling up the chicken carcass) and scraps pulled off the bones.

You basically have to eat much less meat and use every bit of the chicken for flavour.

If you can’t do that, buy the chicken thighs as you can just use these instead of breast meat & is less faff.

A whole chicken is only cost effective if you use every last bit.

You need to think in terms of eating veg curry or veg fried rice not meat in some meals.

From your eggs you’re using 2x egg fried rice meals, 2x for muffins so only 2 left for breakfast.

IME you don't need any extra chicken to make chicken soup if you are making stock from the carcass. There will be enough small pieces that will come off the bone that you weren't able to carve off. Just be careful to remove any small pieces of bone. Add some veg eg peas and spring onions and possibly an egg (poached, fried or boiled).

I would base it more around a menu rather than a list and then work out what you need. Eg:
Porridge for breakfast with a sprinkle of cinnamon and a sliced banana.
Make lentil & veg soup for lunch or beans and jacket potato.
Veggie chilli, veggie curry (tinned chickpeas/veg) or lentil Bolognese for dinner, eaten with rice if you can’t afford to get both pasta and rice.
I’d go for cheap yet versatile veg like carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, maybe peppers/broccoli.
You might be able to get a Jack Monroe cookbook from the library or look at her website for more recipe ideas.

Oil isn’t necessary for cooking btw. I don’t use it. I just use a splash of water in the pan instead - it’s called water sautéing.

Crumpets are a cheap and easy breakfast, I think you can get them for about 30p per 6.

Bread for lunches then buy things like, eggs, beans, cheese to make a variety of tasty lunches.

Evening meals I’d buy a chicken then make it into different things such as having a roast in the first day, curry the second, chicken omelette, stir fried with noodles etc.

It’s easy if your planning for just one person.

Well that was a semi failure!
I couldn't get blueberries, oil, carrots, peanut butter, flour or hot dogs
Oh well! I'll go again tomorrow when my arms aren't about to fall off

Bread
Milk
Potatoes
Pasta
Tinned tomatoes
Tinned peaches
Baked beans
Porridge oats
Tinned tuna
Frozen chicken portions
Cheap cheese

Eggs

@mysteryfairy
The OP isn't even taking her share. She is leaving her parents with £37.50 for two people and a dog. We eat well for £35 for two people and a cat. Obviously, unless we are talking about a 3kg dog then it will cost more than a cat to feed, but if the OP can make this work then I don't think it should negatively affect her parents.

I managed to get huge bottles of cream soda and Coke Zero (albeit Morrison's own brand) for 60p! Feeling proud

I shall be going back out tomorrow to try and get what I couldn't today

Morrison’s pack of mixed frozen stir fry vegetables are also good and obviously you can just use what you need so a bag will last a long time.
Great for a quick meal with the rice you already have.

Stupid question but do I cook the whole chicken at one time, strip it, and then just freeze it until I use it?

Depends what you want to do with it. It would be better to remove the parts you want to keep, & freeze them raw. More versatile.