£5 for five days

JBD

I haven't priced anything up yet, but here are some of my ideas. Low-carbers - look away now!
1 large wholemeal loaf. Will have bread for breakfast and lunch.
5 bananas - 1 a day for breakfast, in a sandwich
1 tub cottage cheese - sandwiches for lunch
1 tin basic kidney beans, 1 tin basic toms, 1 onion [make 3 portions of chilli]
1 pack of jacket potatoes
1 pack of basic noodles
1 jar basic peanut butter
Whatever is left will be spent on veg [carrots are probably the cheapest], maybe a basic yoghurt for 15p!
Will drink water.
This is only for me, as I don't think there is enough variety for my children. Eating the same things 2 or 3 days in a row doesn't bother me though. Plus I do have plenty of herbs and spices in my cupboard.

LE3

that sounds good JBD ...

I saw a note on last year's thread that basically talks about packet sharing for single people, and that for single people you could divide the packet say into 4 and store away the food that is not going to be used as if you were splitting it with a friend (I don't have friends locally who would be up for doing this challenge!)
What does anyone else think? Obviously not 1/3 of a tin of tuna, but dry stuff like flour/oats etc?

snowleopard61

JBD wrote: »

I haven't priced anything up yet, but here are some of my ideas. Low-carbers - look away now!
1 large wholemeal loaf. Will have bread for breakfast and lunch.
5 bananas - 1 a day for breakfast, in a sandwich
1 tub cottage cheese - sandwiches for lunch
1 tin basic kidney beans, 1 tin basic toms, 1 onion [make 3 portions of chilli]
1 pack of jacket potatoes
1 pack of basic noodles
1 jar basic peanut butter
Whatever is left will be spent on veg [carrots are probably the cheapest], maybe a basic yoghurt for 15p!
Will drink water.
This is only for me, as I don't think there is enough variety for my children. Eating the same things 2 or 3 days in a row doesn't bother me though. Plus I do have plenty of herbs and spices in my cupboard.

Porridge oats are very cheap (don't know if you are allowed to count part of a packet as a portion of the £5?) - although your banana sandwich will probably do you fine for breakfast. Also sardines, if you like them, are very cheap (42p in Aldi) and half a tin does me a sandwich for lunch. I like whole (peeled!) onions as a vegetable in their own right (something left over from childhood) - they can be roasted or boiled, but I find they can be microwaved very quickly, in a minute or two depending on size. Broccoli can be quite cheap depending on size and source, and is great with pasta and (if you can't include cheese) a white sauce, maybe with some mustard from the store cupboard. I've never tried it, but I think you can make a reasonable approximation to white sauce with water, flour, stock cube and other seasoning.

PS Considering the price of bread nowadays, it's worth knowing that Aldi's Essentials and Sainsbury's Basics large wholemeal loaves are both still around the 47p mark. Sainsbury's is better IMO.

ninaknowsbest

Hi!

Long term lerker here!

I often do a food costing diary and generally try to stuck to about £2 a day so deff up for giving this a go. £10 for 10 days would be so much easier though. right then

64p 24 wheatabix type things tesco own. Breakfast + snacks w/ water
£1 bag mixed frozen veg asda
£89p 500g cous cous- work lunch
55p = 5x 11p tesco own instant noodles
59p- ketchup
£1 pasta

4.67

wheatabix breakfast
noodles + veg as snack
cous cous lunch
pasta veg + ketchup dinner

shoukld probably look for some more feg for 33p...... or an egg and a potato

would like to try this some time this month- on a fiscal fast right now so know i'll need the cupboards down to a minimum to prevent cheats

quintwins

i think for one person this would be hard but for a family i would acually have £25 for 5 days for 5 of us which would be alot easier, but heres my try for one person

value tomatoes 31p
value kidnet beans 18p
value baked beans 29p
value pasta 30p
value uht milk 49p
value porridge (1kg bag would only use 1/3 at the most so) 25p
value flour 52p
value sausages 57p
value tinned sweetcorn 35p
bananas 24p
value soft cheese 50p
value sunflower spread (would only use about 1/3 of this so 25p
value malt loaf-28p

that comes to £4.53 but i couldn't find eggs online so gonna cost them at around 60p i would have some lo flour aswell

and i'd make

porridge
toast with half a tin of beans and 2 sausages
pasta using the sift cheese and sausages and sweetcorn, or a creamy tomatoe pasta using the tomatoes and cheese, or
sausage pie making my own pastry using the flour and butter a few sausages and sweetcorn and half a tin of beans
egg on toast
scambled egg and sausages
homemade pancakes
sausage casarole, using a few sausages chopped up kidney beans and chopped tomatoes, served with homamde yorkshore pudding

and the bananas are to snack on to get atleats a little bit of fruit in there

it's abit fruit and veg light but i do think it's do able, but like others i wouldn't want to do it all the time

LE3

I'll be well impressed if you can find eggs for 60p (tesco value are 85p for 6) and bananas for 24p, unless you are only planning to buy 1 or 2 for the week?

quintwins

lol well tbh i buy my eggs in iceland which is 12 for £1 or i buy trays of 30 for £3ish i have no idea how much 6 eggs cost as since theres 5 of us 6 eggs wouldn't last very long , that only included 2 bananas, it was more just to get some fruit in

Toxic_Lemon

I don't understand why they're including cigarettes in the £1 a day. You don't eat or drink those. Ridiculous.

adelight

it's really difficult from scratch. hmmm, well shopping at lidl/mrS/mrA i'd get:

porridge 39p
value jam 19p
onions 39p
carrots 49p
rice 40p
split peas 49p
SR flour 52p
value kidney beans 18p
pigs liver (£1/kg asda) 50p
value vinegar 13p
tinned potatoes 23p
passata 39p
mushy peas 8p
value grapefruit segments 34p
£4.72

i'd make loads of hm tortillas, versatile and saves yeast/cooking time. sweat some onions in vinegar to make some chutney, turn some of the liver into pate, refried beans(kidney beans, onions, little passata)
breakfast: porridge or hm tortillas with jam + grapefruit
lunches: split pea & vegetable soup, tortillas with kidney beans/onion chutney/pate, onion+carrot bhajis
dinners: split pea curry & rice, liver & onions w/spuds & carrots/peas, rice w/beans and onion
i reckon that would actually last me longer than five days but i would get vegetable withdrawl as i'm used to a lot more than that! i've tried to make it reasonably balanced

i'd have to use my spice stock or i would die of bland-ness :rotfl: i reckon enough curry powder, cumin and lard for that menu would be worth much less than 28p anyway.

JBD

snowleopard61 wrote: »

Porridge oats are very cheap (don't know if you are allowed to count part of a packet as a portion of the £5?) - although your banana sandwich will probably do you fine for breakfast. Also sardines, if you like them, are very cheap (42p in Aldi) and half a tin does me a sandwich for lunch. I like whole (peeled!) onions as a vegetable in their own right (something left over from childhood) - they can be roasted or boiled, but I find they can be microwaved very quickly, in a minute or two depending on size. Broccoli can be quite cheap depending on size and source, and is great with pasta and (if you can't include cheese) a white sauce, maybe with some mustard from the store cupboard. I've never tried it, but I think you can make a reasonable approximation to white sauce with water, flour, stock cube and other seasoning.

PS Considering the price of bread nowadays, it's worth knowing that Aldi's Essentials and Sainsbury's Basics large wholemeal loaves are both still around the 47p mark. Sainsbury's is better IMO.

Thanks for your suggestions. I eat porridge for breakfast now but I couldn't afford both oats and bread. I agree, oats are one of the best value foods around.