£40 for food for 13 days

[Gakatsbsk]

Hello

due to unexpected extreme expenses this month I will be living on a tight budget until pay day.

after accounting for all other expenses I will have £40 for food. If I bought nothing I could have enough food in my house for 5 days. I have lots of protein powders and meal replacement type things lying about too.

I do not eat meat or fish, I don’t use any milk or anything like that and I have enough margarine to last. I have all the basics like oils and seasonings.

Has anyone any tips for getting some nutrients in over the next few days. I have a limited appetite anyway due to medication and am 2 stone overweight so don’t need huge meals. I don’t have a blender but have all other standard appliances.

this is just for me, I have no dependents.

Jack Monroe has some great budget recipes that are also mindful of getting reasonably good nutrition:

cookingonabootstrap.com/category/recipes-food/

Box of veg from Lidl. I don't know if aldi do the same? Basically all their going off food. Then make soup and smoothies.

For one person? It's doable, won't be fancy but doable as others have said.

As a vegetarian I think you can eat quite well on a small budget. Assuming you batch cook and freeze portions it needn't be too repetitive either. Jack Monroe has some good recipes. Her peach and chick pea curry is one of my son's go to recipes. Also bean and pepper chilli (using frozen peppers), coconut squash dansak and vegetable and lentil cottage pie. Adjust recipes to suit your budget. You don't need sun dried tomato puree and tinned green lentils can save time and effort!

Search Facebook to see if there's a community fridge or FareShare project in your area where you pick up surplus fresh food fir free or very little. Base your meals around what you find. Pick up bags of veggies for soup and freeze portions. I often grab loads of cherry tomatoes and make loads of pasta sauce by roasting, seasoning and blending them. Freeze that too.

Tinned lentils or dried soya mince sub well in lots of recipes - batch cook a spag bol, portion some off, spice it and add kidney beans to make it chilli, freeze in portions. Bigger bag of baking potatoes, bake all at once, wrap and freeze then you just reheat in the microwave to save on fuel.

I'm know I'm repeating some suggestions, but these are the sorts of things I would do:

A tin of the cheapest tomatoes with herbs and spices makes a cheap pasta sauce. Add a bit of finely chopped onion if you have some and anything else .

Not sure if you eat eggs, they are nutritious and if the main part of your mea, quite cheap. Spread out over the weeks for variety.: 2 boiled eggs; 2 egg omelette; 2 scrambled.

I'd make a vat of lentil soup. If you've a freezer, freeze in portions so you can spread out. Otherwise it will keep for a few days in the fridge, a little boring if you have to have it each day but filling and nutritious.

1/2 tin beans on toast one day & the other half on a jacket potato the next.

If you can get a Lidl veg box, make a vegetable risotto, vegetable stew, vegetable soup, veg stir fry (if you have soy sauce in your cupboard, that is enough for a stir fry, you don't need to buy a sauce) .

If you get aubergines and/or courgettes in the veg box, you can add tinned tomatoes tk make ratatouille. Appreciate that might be too expensive if you can't get the veg cheaply.

If you have curry powder, fry a bit of onion, add some curry powder, add a portion of rice and slowly add water/stock til cooked. I used to eat that on its own when I was a student but you can have it as a side too.

If you're happy to, keep track of what you eat and create a post as I'm sure lots of other people will be interested.

I'd buy oats, onions, garlic, tinned tomatoes, a selection of fruit and veg you like, dry lentils, tinned coconut milk, tinned chickpeas and kidney beans, pasta, brown rice, eggs, flour, sugar, margarine.
Have porridge and fruit for breakfast.
Make soups and flatbreads for lunch, make lentils, chillis or pasta and veg sauce for lunch.
Bake a cake, freeze it and have some when you feel like a treat.

“If I bought nothing I could have enough food in my house for 5 days”

so it’s actually your budget for 8 days?
what do you usually eat? I wouldn’t have thought a vegetarian was spending much more than £20 per person/ per week in a normal week to be honest

There are also a lot of food budget videos on YouTube, they’re usually £10/20 per week challenges. Worth a watch.

but you have enough in the house for 5 days so it’s only 8 days of food you need to buy. How is £40 tight for a week of food for 1 person?

If you have 5 days' worth of food, do you have 18 days till payday?

That's £3 a day for the remaining days - not loads but doable.

It's not going to hurt to eat less than ideally for a week or two. Quite often I will have something like peanut butter on toast and a raw carrot for lunch, and I'm not watching the pennies. As loads of people have already said, pulses and lentils are great.

The first thing I'd ask though is that if it's a one-off extreme expense and you'll be flush after pay day, could you get a temporary loan or borrow a bit of money and pay it back next month?

What do you usually buy and what do you usually spend? I think the budget is totally manageable for 13 days (especially factoring you have enough in the cupboard for 5 days anyway!)

Go for cheap breakfast i.e. porridge, cornflakes or supermarket own brand cereal. Base meals around eggs, chickpeas and lentils, which are very cheap and filling. Buy cheap fruit and veg - apples and bananas rather than strawberries and Watermelon; carrots and cabbage rather than mangetout and avocado. Aldi have that "super six" of fruit and veg on good value each week.

Frozen fruit and veg can be cheaper than fresh, and it's fine for curries/stews.
Baked beans on toast are cheap, filling and yummy, and porridge is a good solution for breakfast. Aldi, Lidl and Iceland are your friends.

If you're near a supermarket spend it on the value range or in the world food aisle. Do a big batch of pasta sauce and intersperse various lunches/dinners with sandwiches, soup, omelettes, beans on toast etc. Your budget will go further than you think.
I wouldn't spend it on Too Good to Go. It's a great app, but you're buying food at the end of its shelf life when you need to be buying food for two weeks.

If you don't eat meat or fish you shouldn't struggle on that budget. Where do you usually buy food...Harrods,?!

Slow cooker veggie curry or chilli beans. Serve with rice, or potatoes.
Lidl do £1.50 boxes of fruit and veg —- it’s pot luck but some are great quality ( think they must get new stock in and stuff not sold gets boxed) sometimes they’re a bit sad.

40 quid for 13 days for one person is not exactly on the breadline.

So £40 for 8 days for only one person? I only have a bit more than that per week for 3 of us. If I had £120 I could buy anything I wanted! I wonder what you usually buy that that feels tight?

Some ideas of cheap healthy meals:
Vegetable stir fry with rice
Chilli made of veggie mince, tinned toms, kidney beans with rice
Lentil Bolognese with spaghetti
Jacket potato with beans and cheese
Add whatever salad or vegetables you like to these.

It’s not exactly loads though, either. I wouldn’t want to be restricted to this sort of budget for any length of time. A few weeks is doable with a lot of planning and careful shopping.

As a single veggie you should be able to manage on that - but If you find yourself struggling please find the details of your local food bank and get some help

Lentil soup
Noodles and a handful of frozen stir fry veg
Tesco do v cheap frozen pizzas- used to be 69p but probably gone up now

It's 40 quid for 8 days not 13 though. Really not challenging for a single overweight vegetarian to live on a fiver a day.

Just skip anything flown in and stick to UK grown fresh veg (carrots, cauli, cabbage, spuds) a big bag of frozen peas, shipped in lentils, pasta and rice and two dozen eggs. It's a financial/environmental win-win.

I would imagine it’s more the fear of running out than making the actual budget work. Having a particular budget and knowing you can buy more if you didn’t plan perfectly is very different than having no backup.

Tuna pasta bake. Mmmmm

I saw a fb post earlier this week about Iceland and Ocado both having some really good new customer promotions on atm, they could be worth a look.