To think it’s actually hard to live off this for the rest of the month?!

[munnyya]

I have 350 to last me and dd (2) until 29th of august. This is for food and household essentials like washing tablets, dishwater tablets, shampoo etc only. I think this is incredibly difficult to do? Am I going wrong somewhere? I can’t understand how this is meant to last us until then.

But let's go through and price that up:

Ready meals at £3 each - £9
Fruit juice 1L - £2 - running total £11
Bread - £2 - running total £13
Milk 4pts - £1.50 - running total £14.50
Chocolate - £2- running total £16.50
Prepared potatoes are £1 for 2 portions at my supermarket so let's call that £2 - running total £18.50
Veg, about the same so let's make that another £4 if you like a lot of veg, so that's £22.50

Which leaves you with £47.50 for a couple of freezer bits and some chicken in sauce and some duck breasts. That just doesn't feel right to me, cost wise.

Could there be anything you've missed?

Obviously separately from that it would be a lot cheaper overall to cook from scratch, but I can see if you don't cook currently that might be hard. I really like Jamie's ministry of food as a set of learn to cook recipes.

It should be doable and you should not need to compromise as much as people are suggesting if one looks at food plan ideas like "a bag of own brand crisps for lunch". The latter would likely cost you more in medical bills later.

Well it is going to be hard to live off if you are buying duck breasts and expensive ready meals, yes. 🙄

You should be able to make a main meal for £5.
That leaves £9 for the other food.

You can get shampoo for next to nothing (own brands) and you mine lasts me months.

Breakfast- porridge oats are £1 a kilo.
Milk
Eggs are cheap
Bread for toast

Lunch-eggs, jacket spuds, tuna, pasta, baked beans, homemade soup and bread rolls/ cheese

Dinner- loads of options as others have said.

You should have enough left over for an apple a day, bananas, oranges, and some veg.

Tesco has recipes on their website for budget meals

Chicken in a sauce - why not buy chicken and make sauce?
Potatoes - why do they need to he prepped? Buy a big bag and prep yourself.
Freezer - frozen veg can be good value but what else do you buy that's for the freezer?
You don't need chocolate or fruit juice. Do you buy the cheapest bread?
£3 is a lot. You could spend £3 on a tiny portion of spaghetti bolognaise or make your own and have enough for the week for that price. Also, I know ready meals are easy but at 2 they should really be eating the same as you.
Pasta £1 rice £1 2 tinned tomatoes £1 stock cubes £1 frozen veg £1 mince £2 cheese £2
3 toddler meals or pasta bake and veggie rice and bolognaise and chilli assuming you have herbs and spices, is it 'only £3' now do you think?

Own brand shampoo and conditioner at Tesco is something like 89p per bottle. We use it and it’s absolutely fine.

This has to be a joke. Dishwasher tablets are "essential"? You would cut down on your elec. bill too if you washed dishes by hand.

You also can't afford £3 toddler meals. If you gave her one everyday that's £21 a week alone

It’s definitely doable. My budget is £400 for 4 of us (ds here only around 50% though). Try shopping at Aldi or Lidl, I find Sainsbury’s in particular really expensive.

Buy things like:
mince (spaghetti Bol to last a couple of nights and/or put leftovers in the freezer in toddler portions)
chicken thighs (fajitas, cook to use on salads, chicken curry etc)
bag of potatoes (baked potatoes, mash etc)
rice
pasta
carrots
onions
broccoli
frozen peas and sweet corn
tinned tomatoes

You can also do one or two easy/cheap meals per week like fish fingers, mash and frozen peas or omelette and salad or jacket potato and tuna or pasta pesto.

Don’t buy:

expensive meat - steak, duck etc

fresh berries - swap for frozen berries or bananas and apples are better value or even a melon or pineapple to chop up.

prepared food like ready meals, prepared potatoes, veg etc.

brand name foods and cleaning products.

Buy a cookbook and learn to cook.

three meals for dd usually little dish but they are only 3 pounds each.

That is just crazy.

You and your child can eat the same food.

No wonder you can't manage.

You could cook a whole meal for 2 adults for £3

You seem to be relying on ready meals rather than cooking from scratch.
That's why you can't manage the money.

As Pps say- you need to learn to cook, not heat up ready meals.

Buy fresh fruit not fruit juice.

Fruit juice is high in sugar and shouldn't be given to children (or adults.)

What to add, nothing. PPs have said it, but seriously learn to do some simple cooking.

large bag of potatoes
lathe bag of rice
bags of cheap frozen veg
bags of lentils and dried beans

all cheap, and make many meals

prepared potatoes and duck breast are not what someone on a budget should be buying nor are 3 quid toddler meals. Seriously. Please. Do yourself a favour and just google some easy recipes and learn to cook.

Yeah you need to cook rather than live off convenience products, Buy some eggs(10 for less than £2 in Sainsburys) and cheese and make omelettes, get some flour and milk to add to your eggs and make pancakes. Buy some pasta and make a basic tomato sauce, probably costs around the same as one of your toddlers meals but would do you both several meals.

I spend around £100 a week for a family of 5 including a teen and tween boy who eat ALOT!

The special toddler meals are a bit of a rip of. You can be made to feel like they are somehow better than what you could cook for them, but that absolutely isn't the case at all! And the mark up on them for what is a tiny bit of food is crazy. I would switch to cooking the same meal for both of you. In the long run, as her appetite gets bigger, it will save you loads as you can't be buying 2 or 3 of those tiny portions for every meal when she's older. And you don't want her getting so used to eating just them that she rejects your cooking.

You need carbohydrates, vegetables, and protein for every meal. Work with that as your options. Proteins the most expensive. Eggs are a good cheap option. But when you buy meat, it is probably cheaper to buy plain cuts of meat, and then add your own sauce than the pre-sauced options each time. But if you aren't that confident in cooking you don't need to start with a super complicated sauce recipe that needs you to buy loads of ingrediants. e.g. learn to make a simple cheese sauce (butter, flour, milk, cheese). This can be added to pasta for maccaroni cheese or chicken/fish. You can add a tiny bit of mustard to make it more cheesy. Then you can do more things with the same basic recipe - omitting cheese to make a simple white sauce, adding garlic etc.

But I have never met a toddler who didn't like pasta in cheese sauce

Is OP a well off person who has hit 'hard times' this month for some reason, the shopping list isn't one of someone generally in poverty

If you are not a confident cook - or perhaps feeling too busy or overwhelmed - start off by making small changes.

so perhaps replace one or two of the ready meals - buy a bag of pasta (75p) jar of sauce (£1-2) and bag of grated cheese (£2)
for £4-5 that would be several dinners for both of you. Later on learn how to make your own sauce?

Dishwasher tablets and running a dishwasher cost hardly anything unless you're stupid enough to buy branded tablets at full price and use they less water than washing up by hand. Plus they save loads of time if you cook every day/meal.

OP I've heard a lot of good things about Taming Twins (I think the origin of her recipes was coping while having young twins so producing easy and quick food on a budget without resorting to ready meals).

www.tamingtwins.com/

Duck breasts? Chicken in a sauce? prepped potatoes? That's your problem right there.

Have you thought of meal planning and, you know, actually cooking...

You can see if any charity in your area has a food club and join it

After bills this month we will have about £180 for two adults, a primary school child and a toddler until the bank holiday weekend.

Like everyone else has said, mince can make a few portions of spaghetti Bolognese or shepherds pie, roast a chicken and split it into a few meals (chicken and chips, chicken stir fry, chicken risotto, whatever sort of thing you like). Toddler should eat what you do ideally, they don't need ready meals.
You can find a lot of recipes online using Google or Pinterest, they are pretty straightforward to follow if you search for easy / quick meals.

With your budget I don't even think you would need to go for budget brands, you just need to plan and cook rather than relying on convenience food.

Well that's why you're skint 🤦‍♀️

I'm a single parent to a teen dd and our food bill is loads cheaper than that.

Get yourself a budget cookery book, stop buying expensive meat, stop buying ready meals....

I batch cook meals, and you can find recipes on the feed your family for £20 quid a week. I get my fresh fruit and veg from my local food pantry. Also some meat and ready meals. Any joints of meat I buy from my supermarket near me.

Duck breasts are an example, don’t get them every week but bought them last week which is why they came to mind. I have no idea how to make sauce etc. I’m run off my feet as it is and never learned to cook as a kid. I genuinely don’t know where to begin.