I just want to make it 100% clear that I am only doing this challenge for 1 week. I've had a lot of awesome suggestions about gathering food or using £28 for the whole month to get a better selection of foods, but this is strictly a single week challenge!
Having said that, there have been a lot of tasty suggestions for cheap recipes and ways to eat for less. Frugal in Derbyshire commented yesterday with a recipe for lentil burgers made with red lentils, carrots, onion and oats and gillibob linked me to a website where you can feed a family of four for £100 a month, which looks like a really handy resource for anyone looking to keep their food costs down!
I have been eating some seriously cheap meals so far this week from my £6.98 shopping trip.
Breakfasts have been porridge made with UHT milk and water. Total cost = 13p.
Lunches have been lentil soup (21p a portion because I used a small and more expensive pack of lentils) with two slices of bread "buttered" with baking fat. Total cost = 26p.
I made two portions of stew out of potatoes, carrots, onion and a parsnip. Cost per portion = 24p. Eaten with a slice of bread, making the total meal cost 26p.
I've also made a sort of vegetable ragout out of red kidney beans, chopped tomatoes, carrots, onion and stock, which cost 37p a portion. I had it with rice, bringing the total cost to 40p.
Tomorrow for dinner I'm pretty excited to try making those lentil burgers!
All the meals listed above are very filling. It's amazing how cheaply you can make something that will keep you going all day!
Here are a few more cheap meals I've made in the past:
Quiche
Lentil Salad
Pumpkin soup
Cheap snacks:
Rhubarb crumble (vegan)
Chocolate cake (vegan)
Caramel shortbread
Just out of interest, how much do you spend on food each week?
5 comments:
I have spent just under £150 for January. That is four adults and includes all meals as well. So basically works out at £37.50 per week. I can do it on less and indeed have done it on £25 or under some weeks-but that is down to a well stocked larder and we eat a variety of foods. Hope folk enjoy that website as it is a brilliant resource.
Good luck with your challenge-I hadn't realised you were doing it for a week. :-)
Hope they turn out okay. Will be even better next week when you can add celery and a little garlic ( or ransoms from the hedgerow when its out)
Like gillibob's link.
Gill
I haven't really kept track--I guess this week, I spent about $20 because I had friends coming over and wanted to buy some fish and stewed tomatoes (and got some canned diced tomatoes for other things). I stocked up on a lot of things recently and am basically eating down my pantry.
I have no idea right now what we spend. I'm actually afraid to find out! I once kept all the supermarket receipts for a month and added them up but some of them were for large purchases that would last longer than one month like staples such as flour, sugar and items like that kept in my pantry. It's hard to figure out exactly how much is spent and what it costs us for a month. The food here has gone up so much in recent times and I struggle with keeping a budget. I give you alot of credit for your efforts.
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