If you had £10 for a weeks food what would you buy?

[TarpalCunnel]

If you had just £10 to feed yourself for a week, would you go for cheap fillers like value pasta & sauce, or do you have any emergency recipes for wholesome meals you wouldnt mind sharing? This is what I would do with my £10:

cereal £2
Powdered milk £1
500g pasta x 3 £0.90
Value Pasta sauce x3 £1.20
Bag of mixed veg £1
Porridge oats £0.39
Loaf of bread £0.50
Baked beans x 4 £1
Bag of value Apples £0.90
Bag of oranges £1

Excuse that funny symbol before the pound signs. No idea how those appeared

How much cereal do you eat?

Tesco value pasta is 29p for 500g, so I'm guessing other value ranges would be similar in price. Personally, I wouldn't waste a fifth of the budget on a box of cereal-it won't fill you up as porridge will. Instead I'd get a box of 15 mixed weight eggs for £2, which will be a more substantial breakfast (2/3 eggs boiled or scrambled).

I'd also make a huge pot of lentil/veggie stew, which will be filling and cheap. I'm in the bath typing thus but happy to share some useful recipes for cheap meals later if you want them?

siblingrevelryagain

Thats a good idea about swapping the cereal for eggs, I also probably dont need cereal if Im buying porridge oats anyway
Yes Id LOVE a recipe for a veggie or lentil stew, that would be fab

If it were me I'd buy:

Milk (4 pints) £1
Red lentils £2
Value kidney beans 30p
Value pasta (500g) 29p
Value peppers (5/6 in bag) £1.70
Bananas £1's worth
Value tinned toms x4 £1.28
Eggs (mixed weight) £2

With the kidney beans/lentils/peppers/toms I'd make a batch of stew/sauce which could be eaten alone but also served with the pasta or rice. All filling foods, which is the priority for budget shopping (things like beans on toast or white pasta and sauce won't keep you full for long).

I wouldn't buy bread for 50p. For £1 I'd buy strong bread flour and some yeast and set to making my own bread!

Value rice is probably the best value carb. A 1kg bag is about 40p and should last the week.

PotteringAlong - I like the idea of baking my own bread. How much flour do I need per loaf?

You need around 500g per loaf so you should get 3 from a bag.

You could make a fab pizza too -
500g bread flour
7g yeast
300ml lukewarm water
Half a tablespoon sugar
Teaspoon Salt

Put yeast and sugar in water and mix with fork
When it foams put it into the flour and salt and kneed for a few mins
Rest for half an hour in a warm place in a oiled bowl
Stretch out onto an piled tray and top with

Tin of tomatoes strained and blended with some garlic
Add anything to that really - veg, cheese, ham

Cook at 180 for about 20 mins.

It makes a huge pizza that would easily feed four adults.

I am loving these ideas, I definately want to make the bread & pizza

It would depend on what I already had in the house.

I should have said I already have mixed herbs, salt, pepper, olive oil, sugar, tea & coffee

I'd get some eggs too. There is a lot you can do with eggs- scrambled, omlette etc and they are filling. I would also get a couple of big potatoes for jacket spuds and beans.

If it was just for me:

7 tins of cheap soup 1.75 (tesco)
Box of cornflakes 31p (tesco)
2 tins of beans 50p (tesco)
2 x 6-pack bakery rolls 1 (tesco)
Cheese from deli 70p or so (tesco)
Eggs 85p (lidl)
Couple of tomatoes 20p (lidl)
Onion 10p (lidl)
7 bananas 86p (lidl)
8 pints milk 1.90 (lidl)
4-pack baking potatoes 79p (home bargains)
Bag of Thornton's mis-shapes chocolates 99p (home bargains)
9.95
(would also look for reduced items before definitely deciding final list - got veggie pizza for 35p, veggie sausages 43p, cream cakes 10p, cheese sandwiches and wraps 12p each and nice bread 29p on Sunday)

I'd google 'live below the line' and use their recipes/ ideas.

It's a charity challenge to live off £1 a day for 5 days, I've just done it.
We bought lentils, tinned tomatoes, value cornflakes, milk, value 'cooking bacon' (500g for 81p) carrots, onions, value digestive biscuits (more calories than rich tea but still very cheap), potatoes, cottage cheese, value rice, value bread, stork margarine,value tinned pineapple.
It cost less than £10 and fed 2 of us for 5 days. We felt like crap though.
Made: bacon risotto, lentil & bacon soup, jacket potatoes with bacon, daal & rice, cottage cheese & carrot sandwiches.

Pears are cheaper than apples in some places.

4 pints milk £1
Value bread x2 47p ea
Tin baked beans x2 35p ea
15 eggs £1.35
Value weetabix 95p
Bananas x7 80p
Value oranges 79p
Value pasta 500g 29p
Passata 50p
Value ham 10 slices 67p
Value cream cheese 60p
Value jam 29p
Frozen mixed veg £1
= £10.03

Here's the stuff I've got in the past on a £10 budget because I like cooking rather than ready meals:

Value ranges at Tesco/ASDA/Sainsburys:

1kg rice 40p (egg or veg fried rice, risotto, rice with curry)
1.5kg plain flour 45p (for bread, pizza, breakfast pancakes, pastry. Can make bread with just value flour, doesn't have to be strong bread flour)
Yeast 64p (allinson dried active yeast 125g for bread & pizza)
250g lard 40p (for pastry, bread & yorkshire puddings)
1 litre skimmed UHT milk 57p (pancakes, yorkshire puddings, in tea)
400g tin kidney beans 30p (veggie stew or chilli/curry if you've got any spices in your store cupboard)
400g tin tomatoes 34p (base for stews, curry or soup; also for pizza topping)
Jar of jam 29p (on toast, in pancakes, jam tarts, good for morale)
250g butter 98p (no joke. Makes a massive difference to the pancakes, omelette, pastry, bread).
Cheapest value range tin of fruit, likely to be pineapple, peaches or grapefruit depending on the supermarket, 35p

Iceland

12 eggs £1 (boiled eggs for breakfast, egg fried rice, omelettes, to make pancakes & yorkshire puddings)
Small chicken £3 (grill the drumsticks, thighs for a pie, breast in sandwiches and in risotto, use the carcass for stock to make soup & in risotto & pie. Aldi also do a small chicken for £2.99)
Frozen mixed veg £1 (Iceland version includes sweetcorn and green beans along with the peas and carrots. Can get cheaper bags in the value ranges, but much more carrot & cauliflower).

That leaves 28p, so I might try for a loose onion, or ask at the deli counter for a really small bit of cheese (literally 30g red leicester or cheddar) which would really help with an omelette, pizza or risotto.

Definitely check what you already have, and haunt the reduced sticker sections.

Frustrating aspect is that you're unlikely to use up all the yeast, rice, jam, lard and butter in a single week, but you'll have some stuff in the store cupboard for the next week.

If you have any of the store cupboard items already, I'd go for garlic or lemon to make stuff taste of anything, or see if I could spring for a bag of value apples (90p or £1) or cheap bananas (68p for 5 in Iceland, but they don't keep as long as apples)

Recommend A Girl Called Jack's website for cheap recipes, also Frugal Queen.