How can I spend £50pw on food?

[jugodenaranja]

not a begging thread! I’ve had over £100 worth of expenses not budgeted for and now literally can’t spend more than £50 per week on food for the rest of November. Toilet rolls and toiletries can be bought separate. It’s just me and DD so should be possible but usually spend £65-70 + extra for toiletries, I buy dog food separate as well. I could put it on a credit card but not sure I want to get into debt.

I’d think about where your biggest spending is and try and swap those items.
Are you buying all own brand/basics already as you could swap to those?

Do you have any points anywhere? My Nectar points helped me enormously this summer.

Use everything in your cupboards first, don’t worry about having spare pasta or whatever you normally have, use everything up and replace it later when you’ve got more money.

And depending where you are in the credit card cycle, you can have up to 7 weeks to pay what you’ve spent without incurring charges.

Batch cooking is your friend. Buy some mince and a couple of onions , carrots , lentils , a couple of cans of tomatoes.
Fry onions add mince , finely grate carrots into mix. Cook & add lentils , add cans of tomatoes, cook & simmer for around 30 / 40 minutes.
Then you have the base of several meals.
Separate into portions and freeze.
You can turn these into spag bol by adding garlic , mushrooms , mixed herbs.
Chilli by adding red kidney beans.
Curry powder plus left over veg for a curry.
Pasta bake , add pasta plus a grate of cheese if you have some.
Assuming you have store cupboard things , plus rice / spaghetti / pasta all that could be made pretty cheap and keep you going.
Jacket potatoes are another cheap meal.
Don't disregard eating in a supermarket, in some places you buy one for you , kids eat free.

Is that covering 3 meals a day for both of you? How old is DD?

I think that could be reasonably easy to do if you home cook/batch cook everything.

If you think you'll struggle, see if you have a community pantry where for example, you can get 35 quids worth of food for 7.50.

£50 shouldn't be difficult for a month. How old is the child? I spend £60 for an adult and teen boy. Look at your receipts and cut out and expensive snacks or prepared foods. Buy the cheap fruits and vegetables, bananas, onions, carrots, potatoes and so on. Bulk out one pot plus rice/pasta type meals with cheap vegetables or beans/lentils.

Avoid meat for the time being.

Lentils in things like cottage pie, spag bol and curries is a really cheap and healthy way to bulk meals.

Supermarkets own brands where possible.

Seasonal veg or veg that's on offer (Lidl change theirs weekly and it's always really cheap!)

Don't worry about every meal being healthy and balanced, beans or toast now and again is fine!

If you normally buy meat or fish, replace them with cheaper protein such as eggs or cheese.

It shouldn't be too difficult ... if you like meat then buy one of those offers '3 for £10/12' ... that should give you a chicken, pack of mince plus pork steaks or sausages (or similar) ...you can easily get all your 'main' meals out of that. Oats for breakfast, soup/sandwich/leftovers for lunch. Obviously not many treats or fancy stuff but perfectly doable.

Just came to say this. Go for dinners like pasta bakes, omelettes, jacket potatoes.

Lentils are definitely your friend.
You can use them in many tasty dishes and nutritious too

Rice, pasta, spuds, yellow stickers, veg (frozen if necessary), tinned fruit. Jelly and rice pudding for deserts. If you can shop every 2/3 days get veg/fruit from the market. Porage and toast.

It will be hard.

Google ‘community larder near me’ (or search in local Facebook groups for this term). A lot of places have them now. Basically free food near its sell by date

If you are open to doing a bit of hard work yourself then there is a Facebook page called 'giving up the game' - it matched people with game (pheasants/partridges/rabbit/venison etc) with those that want it. People generally don't want much for it and a fair amount goes for free. Very good source of free range, local meat.

I spend £65-70for a family of 5. Totally doable with a bit of meal planning.
Cereal for breakfast
Sandwiches for lunch
Normal tea

Dry pulses are good- so cheap. Orange and green lentils need no special preparation and are packed with protein. Something like a vegetable soup, chilli or similar made with lentils really helps the budget.

look up Dahl, scotch broth, vegetable chilli.

Jacket potatoes, cheese and baked beans.
pasta bake with an Aldi pasta sauce and chunks of cheese buried in it.
egg on toast.

make porridge as a filler upper/pudding if you want. Really comforting in cold weather!

Lentil and carrot soup , jacket potatoes with beans , cottage pie ( should be enough for 4 portions ) cheese toasties , Aldi pizzas , sausage mash & peas . It's do able , good luck hope December is better .

I think you'll manage. Look in your cupboard and freezer first. See what ingredients you already have. Someone suggested minced beef with a couple tins of tomatoes, a carrot grated and bulk lentils for Bolognese. Freeze other portions for later in the week. As it's only for one month buy cheap sausages and frozen oven chips with baked beans, make a toad in the hole with 2 eggs with other half of the packet of sausages and buy frozen veg to have with it. A chicken day 1 roasted with potatoes and fresh carrots , day 2 warmed through in gravy and frozen mixed vegetables, day 3 anything left throw into a stir fry with noodles and chopped vegetables. You can use the other 4 of the eggs to make an omelette for one dinner with a bag of salad leaves. Jacket potato with baked beans as lunch over the weekend. Buy cheap squash and dilute it well. You could buy cheap cereal for breakfast or toast and pate or jam if you have it in the cupboard. Macaroni cheese or a tomato pasta bake would do 2 days each and very cheap to make. A bag of cheap apples and easy peelers. You'll just need to cut out anything not essential like crisps, biscuits etc. Have you got any tins of food in your stock cupboard like corned beef, soup or rice pudding?

Easy if you meal plan and make good use of your freezer. This is my usual budget for me and my son (and I tend to also get toiletries, cleaning products, days out etc as well from same budget).
Batch cook things like chilli, curry etc padding out with lots of cheap veg, potatoes,
pulses etc. I make huge portions of soup with cheap seasonal veg and tinned pulses. Visit supermarkets later in the day to look for the reductions on meat, then portion it out and freeze. Don’t waste anything… if I have left over potatoes I mash them and freeze, left over herbs are frozen, veg made into soup then frozen etc etc. It takes planning but is definitely doable!

At Tesco, half a dozen large eggs are £1.85 for 44.4g of protein, 250g of 5% beef mince is £2.19 for 52g of protein, so pretty much the same cost.

thanks everyone I will read through in a moment. So far I have been going through and swapping brands for the cheapest ones and it has made a difference.
In my online basket I currently have 400g of diced beef for £4.50 to go in a stew. What can I have in it instead that isn’t £4.50? I also have in the basket cooked chicken thighs for £3.75 for in sandwiches because ham doesn’t taste very nice not sure if there’s a cheaper substitute

600g chicken thigh fillets are £4.60 for 110g of protein, so again a similar cost. Eggs may work out cheaper if you get a 15 pack from Lidl maybe, I'm just checking the Tesco app.

Buy fresh chicken thighs, you can use them for loads of things.

Cooking your own chicken would be cheaper, can do in portions and freeze. You can buy a whole chicken to roast for maybe 75p more which will do lots of meals and sandwich fillings. Or replace with eggs, cheese etc.

I would keep the meat but pad the stew with extra root veg, maybe a tin of butter or haricot beans etc. If bigger packs are better value then get more and freeze some.

Download the Olio app and try to get some freebies off of there

£50 for one adult one child will be absolutely fine. Make sure you meal plan for the week.

Have beans or lentils in your stew, put pasta or dumplings in it.

Egg mayo, hummus, cheese spread, peanut butter in sandwiches instead, or cook your own chicken.