Meal for two for 50p. Suggestions?

RainbowsInTheSpray

By the way, anybody got a cheap recipe for fishcakes? I'm sure that would come in close to the 50p.

cupid_s

RainbowsInTheSpray wrote:

Ok, let's work this out.

The posts on this thread prove pretty well that you can have your dinners for two for £3.50 a week - but let's call it, say, £7. Therefore, for 4 people, it should amount to no more than £15.

Shall we say the same again for lunches?

Shall we be ridiculous and say the same again for breakfasts?

3 x £15 = £45

That would still leave a fiver over from your £50 to buy some nice fruit to keep up the vitamins... and I think I've been pretty generous in doubling the necessary figures.

Rocket science, it ain't...

I know that there are lots of good wholesome cheap meals but being able to do this every single day would be difficult. Even looking at some of the meals here, most sound really yummy. But a lot include cheap white rice and value £1 for 3kg pasta for example. We only eat brown rice and wholewheat pasta because it's better for us and this already bumps the price up. Bread I only buy wholegrain and cranberry because I'd rather not eat bread than eat that white rubbish! Also a lot of the posts here are either for 50p each person which is still well cheap, or uses a lot of store cupboard items which we all have but need replacing.

We make several meals that I reckon are really cheap. We're having pad thai tonight

noodles - 16p
beansprouts - 16p
chicken - 50p
spinach - 5p
grated carrot - 3p
peanuts - 5p
bits of stuff to make sauce and oil - 10p

I reckon this is really cheap yummy and healthy. But still comes to £1.05 and that is only helped by the fact that we got a big bag of spinach for 10p yesterday and a big big bag of carrots for 20p and our noodles were 6 packs for £1.

And I would find it difficult to do something this cheap every day. Sites like this are great and give loads of ideas and have saved us quite a bit but even basic things come to more than you might think.

Also I plan my meals really well so don't really have left over veg or even left overs from sunday joints. Lamb gets made into shepherds pie. Beef for sandwiches or cottage pie, chicken for soup, etc etc. So even the left over chicken that would go into your chicken curry I would say is about a 8th of the meat off one chicken and therefore cost it as about 40p. Same with veg.

I know for me and OH our lunches come to around £6 per week. Breakfast we eat a fair amount to keep us going so that probably costs £10 a week. But that's for only 2. Then there are things like fruit, and fruit juices, and squash, milk, coffee, tea, sugar. And then our main meals account for most of the rest to be honest.

Saying that we eat well and we do have big appetites, but cos of what we spend I can understand a family of 4 spending £50 witout much difficulty. But people who are spending over £100 per week I cannot understand as I'd have to really try to ever spend that much.

goonlord

RainbowsInTheSpray wrote:

That's fine... there are ALWAYS honourable exceptions ... but let's not close our eyes to the 'unhealthy' revolution that's going on out there. SOMEBODY is buying all those frozen ready meals which the supermarkets are piling high on the shelves. Those queues outside the takeaways aren't tricks of the light.

The health statistics are in the news constantly and the medics aren't inventing them. People are managing the fantastic trick of paying more and eating less healthily - for the sake of cooking less. That's their choice and also their punishment.

The facts are undeniable. Because a particular individual here or there bucks the trend does not change this.

It always amuses me when somebody rings up one of the phone-in radio programmes to say that their grandad smoked like a chimney all his life and still lived till he was 100 - as if that proved that smoking was healthy!

I understand the point you are trying to make and I also know only too well about the unhealthy revolution in this country as it is part of what I do for a living - however, to my mind, it is healthier to eat an expensive, well-balanced ready meal (which I do occasionally) than a very cheap diet consisting largely of white bread or flour or rice or pasta, and many value other foods that don't contain much in the way of nutrition.

'Ready meals' should not be dismissed as the devil's food just because they are not made from scratch at home in the same way that it should not be assumed that just because something is made from scratch at home, it is healthy.

I've been quite frightened by some of the meals plans I've seen posted which include a 'proper' pudding every night!

Obviously there is a middle ground which most of us probably fall into which balances cost and nutrition but it worries me that people may focus so hard on cutting the cost of their food bill that they forget about their health. But before everyone attacks me, I am talking generally and not about anyone here!! Just something that I've been thinking about alot of late

cordial

Yes but surely the objective would be healthy AND cheap..?
There is a snobby school of thought that tends to assume that expensive equals good.

In my life, the experience has been that there is cheap rubbish, yes... but there is also expensive rubbish... and I am not at ALL persuaded that the former is in the majority.

I think that Rainbows is simply saying that looking for the ideal combination is the thing to do.

goonlord

cordial wrote:

Yes but surely the objective would be healthy AND cheap..?
There is a snobby school of thought that tends to assume that expensive equals good.

In my life, the experience has been that there is cheap rubbish, yes... but there is also expensive rubbish... and I am not at ALL persuaded that the former is in the majority.

I think that Rainbows is simply saying that looking for the ideal combination is the thing to do.

....and with that I totally agree! :T
I reckon the basic and simple rule of thumb is variety = healthy so as long as we're all mixing it up and eating lots of different things, it should be fine.

frizz_head

wurley wrote:

you can get pasta for 31p from asda (500g)and you can get lots of different shapes or wholemeal at that price too... Incidently if you don't add cheese and use 1 tablespoon of olive oil (as a healthy option to fry the onion) you can use this recipe in your slimming world menu!! NO SINS!!!

Asda also do the 3kg bags of pasta for £1.

hunnybunny_2

A fave of ours at the minute is -

dice a onion, and fry in a little oil add chilli flakes if you like, add a tin of value tomato and a tin of Sardines in tom sauce, stir and add to Wholemeal spaghetti. Its lovely.

Another one -

Dice up a red pepper,add to brown rice with a tin of value tuna and add a chooped up boil egg. Very cheap and very filling.

LizEstelle

Ok, thanks again to everyone for posting. I've been busy copying down again.
'Liz's 50p Dinners for Two' will soon be hitting the bookstands...

RainbowsInTheSpray

I'm sure a couple of Tesco value chicken drumsticks or portions don't come to 50p.

Would it not be possible to have fried chicken, home made chips and peas for not much more than the target..?

computerwoman

:xmastree:Hi everyone great recipes thanks I'll be trying some of these, firstly I spend £60 a fortnight at tesco's, why because I'm on IB and only get £86.75 aweek to run a 2 bedroomed house, and pay all the bills, my son is on JS as we live in a seasonal town and there's no work in winter, so he gets £45.50 aweek, which he does contribute almost all of it to the house keeping, without any thought for himself, so I pay all the bills out of my money, and he pays for the food, fair enough, we eat fresh fruit, fresh veg, I make my own bread, from tesco's bread mixes, the meat we eat is usually frozen be it a lamb joint, pork joint, turkey, chicken, or liver, the only meat I get fresh is mince, or ham, or bacon, we don't buy crisps, or biscuits, we don't buy any ready meals, we buy cheese, eggs, milk, cereals, sugar,coffee,tea,juice, all the normal stuff, but we do buy the value range, as it's just the same comes from the same factories just has a different label on, I know this because a friend of mine used to work at a factory that did coffee all the same coffee just lots of labels, so I'm not bothered that it's value, and no one has actually said to me is this cheap coffee because thy can't tell the difference, so I'm all for value range without it me and my son would'nt be able to eat as well as we do, and yes were both skinny, not fat, merry christmas everyone.