Feed a family of four for £20 a week challenge

debtmess

Hmmmm I am still struggling, 5 in my house so trying to plan with £25 as bulk of my main shop only some things may double to get 2 weeks worth it (40 min delivery spend) .88p over at the moment and wanted to buy juice for the children which would be another £2.80 for 4 cartons.

Anyway here is what I have for my £25.88 all from Sainsburys as I don't drive and either walk nearly 2 miles there n back or bus would be £2.80

Butter spread half price. .90p
2 bags of basics apples. £1.64
8 pork sausages .65p
1 kg bag of mixed vegetables .75p
2.5kg white potatoes £1.95
6 pints semi skimmed milk 1.89
Porridge oats .65p
Long grain rice .40p
125g ham slices .61p
1.25kg vegetable selection £1.00
Instant custard .15p
2.5kg chicken portions £4.38
Cornflakes 0.35
Vegetable stock cubes .10p
Sponge mix .25p
Mixed herbs .14p
Oranges x5. .74p
Batter mix x2 .18p
Gravy. .18p
Sage and onion stuffing .15p
Chocolate mousse .33p
Pasta shapes .39p
Barn eggs x6. £1.00
Beef mince 400g. £1.24
Pineapple pieces .32p
Red kidney beans .27
Carrots 1.5kg. .89p
Rice pudding x2. .26p
Bananas x8. £1.02
Chopped tomato's .35p
Baked beans x2. .56p
Whole meal bread x2. £1.00


Total £25.88


Then tea bags would be .35p
Black current squash .80p


Total £27.03 meaning £2.03 over my budget.

Meal ideas

Breakfasts porridge with fruit, jam or cornflakes.

Lunch
Ham sandwiches x 2 days.
Make huge pot of soup with 4 chicken pieces 1/2 the vegetable selection, 4 potatoes a small handful of rice and 2 stock cubes add some mixed herbs
Scrambled egg on toast 1 day

Dinners
Toad in the hole with carrots and mash potatoes use 5 sausages

Cook and strip 5 chicken portions add the other half veg selection and half bag rice to make a chicken savoury rice.

Beef mince half of with grated carrot 1/3 of the frozen mixed veg and pasta and gravy (it's nice)

The other half of mince with red kidney beans rest of rice and gravy.

Sausage and bean pie the remaining 3 sausages chopped added to beans with a mash potato top with carrots

Roast dinner with chicken portions roasted, cook the potatoes in with this 1/3rd mixed vegetables and carrots

Remaining chicken with the remaining 3rd veg topped with mash

Snacks would be fruit and toast with butter/jam

I have added bits for pudding as I have not tested the above amounts!
Pineapple upside down cake with custard
Rice pudding
The choc mouses
The remaining batter mix I would make some banana and apple fritta's with

Sorry I'm not great at this yet.

quintwins

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

I completely agree with this and it's how I make my own ragu/pasta dishes and I do manage to make 8 comfortable adult sized portions from a (750g) pack. But the OP is claiming to get 12 portions from a pack of mince which makes it a little over 60g per portion, just half that which you recommend

The key word there is recommended, plenty of people don't eat meat at all, and we do have the odd meat free day here aswell, yesterday's dinner here was a 500g packet of mince I got reduced, I bulked it out with 2 onions, then whizzed it down so it's finer there fore seems fancier and goes further, added 1/3 of a bag of mixed veg, cooked it and added gravy, made it into shepherds pie., by topping it with mash and cheese, this served the 5 of us well and oh had 2nds....but I only used 2/3 of the cooked mince mixture, the rest will make a pie, yet everyone was stuffed and no one feels deprived in the slightest.

Might be worth having a look at rubber chicken aswell it's very popular on here, if you go to the mortgage free in three blog you will see how she got 8 meals from one chicken, I only get 2 possibly 3 meals from a big chicken I'm much better at stretching meat. Saying that we buy huge packets of chicken breasts from a meat wholesaler they work out at 60-70p each and 2 does 5 of us a good sized roast style dinner or 1 does a casserole/pie/pasta bake.

RAS

sophlowe45 wrote: »

£56.25 JSA a week for under 25s.

£71 a week for over 25s.

And apprentices get about £29.50.

In many ways it is not those who are unemployed who really struggle as much as those in low paid work, who get the same budget (basic allowance plus rent plus CT) but have to fund the extras like transport and half decent clothing, hair cuts, shoe leather etc.

~Chameleon~

quintwins wrote: »

The key word there is recommended, plenty of people don't eat meat at all, and we do have the odd meat free day here aswell, yesterday's dinner here was a 500g packet of mince I got reduced, I bulked it out with 2 onions, then whizzed it down so it's finer there fore seems fancier and goes further, added 1/3 of a bag of mixed veg, cooked it and added gravy, made it into shepherds pie., by topping it with mash and cheese, this served the 5 of us well and oh had 2nds....but I only used 2/3 of the cooked mince mixture, the rest will make a pie, yet everyone was stuffed and no one feels deprived in the slightest.

Might be worth having a look at rubber chicken aswell it's very popular on here, if you go to the mortgage free in three blog you will see how she got 8 meals from one chicken, I only get 2 possibly 3 meals from a big chicken I'm much better at stretching meat. Saying that we buy huge packets of chicken breasts from a meat wholesaler they work out at 60-70p each and 2 does 5 of us a good sized roast style dinner or 1 does a casserole/pie/pasta bake.

Each to their own I guess. I just know that if I were to eat such a tiny amount of protein then I'd start to suffer muscle wastage. I also can't understand how you could make a single onion stretch to 3 x 4 portion dishes with so few other ingredients or veggies too. I don't advocate eating meat every day and indeed only serve it 3-4 times a week but there wasn't a great deal of other protein source in your list if I recall.

I get the impression reading this thread that it's become more a competition to see who can come up with the cheapest shopping lists but with very little regard to actual portion size. Someone said they can make a packet of 8 sausages stretch to two meals for 5 people :eek: And I dread to think what the sausages are actually made of given the price of them _pale_

I actually value feeding myself, even on a strict budget, to be a much higher priority than paying for a television licence

quintwins

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

Each to their own I guess. I just know that if I were to eat such a tiny amount of protein then I'd start to suffer muscle wastage. I also can't understand how you could make a single onion stretch to 3 x 4 portion dishes with so few other ingredients or veggies too. I don't advocate eating meat every day and indeed only serve it 3-4 times a week but there wasn't a great deal of other protein source in your list if I recall.

I get the impression reading this thread that it's become more a competition to see who can come up with the cheapest shopping lists but with very little regard to actual portion size. Someone said they can make a packet of 8 sausages stretch to two meals for 5 people :eek: And I dread to think what the sausages are actually made of given the price of them _pale_

I actually value feeding myself, even on a strict budget, to be a much higher priority than paying for a television licence

We get protein from other sources such as eggs and dairy, it was me that suggested the sausages chopped up in tode in the hole you need very few sausages if you split them in half then slice them 3 could esily do 4 people, i personally don't eat value sausages as we tried them once in a sausage casarole as i figured the sauce would hide the taste but the texture was all wrong, we buy sausages by the box full from a local meat supplier and freeze them in portions, we only buy them about once a yearworks out at £1 for 8 decent meaty sausages. This was just a plan to help someone in a bind not a long term thing, and i've lived on much less than is in that meal plan before when money was tight.

Oh and i don't pay a t.v licence either we don't need one as we don't watch live t.v and don't even have an ariel, we even got a refund from them when we moved and decided to do away with it, once i stopped watching the soap we canceled sky and once we canceled it we relised it was more backround noise anyway, however i'm not suggesting anyone just stops paying if they are watching live t.v


I do agree that plenty of things should go before food budgets are cut, however i don't think that plates sound be piled so high you can't move after and that most of it needs to be meat, in this house meatwise atleast a little goes along way.

Edit- oh and it depends on the size of the onion, yesterday i used half a large red onion and one tiny value onion and it was plenty for the 2 meals us.

debtmess

I don't feel it's a competition for some! With rising costs as in food, electric gas and so forth some have very little left, all it then takes is a bill to come in or something to break etc and the budget it squeezed even more so.

It's very easy to pile a plate high but in reality is this the contribution to rising obesity?

At the moment I am spending at least a 3rd more on heating my house/electric than food.

Soworried

~Chameleon~ wrote: »

How do you manage to get 12 portions from a single pack of mince? I can just about stretch it to 8 portions if I add plenty of veggies, e.g. onions, peppers, mushrooms, beans in spag bol/chilli type meals and onions, carrots, peas & swede in shepherds pies, to bulk it out.

I don't see any of those on your list, apart from a single(?) onion plus a tin of beans and a tin of sweetcorn. I assume these are to be shared across the 3x4 portion meals too?

Any veg to go with toad-in-hole?

Apologies if I sound critical but I really don't think there's enough food to feed people adequately in that list. I'm not talking from a health perspective either (it's clearly not a healthy diet) but I think it would even struggle to satisfy basic hunger

What would you feed the family of four with the same budget?

amcg100

I certainly admire anyone who manages to feed a family on twenty quid a week, after all , being a single person I occasionally spend half of that on a single meal for one ( a big steak or something ). I have however been through some hard times, and have fed myself on a fiver a week through growing vegetables and buying reduced price meat, and I think many of the posters in this thread are missing the point and do not understand the basic principles of saving money. I have just read the shopping list of a poster which details the shopping for the week. A lot of items in small quantities. A shopping list which is going to get down to twenty quid, should I think have no more than ten items, and be in larger quantities. If you go to the supermarket with a shopping list, your lost. Go to the supermarket/ market/ high st with a completely open mind and buy what represents good value for money. For my tea tonight I bought a packet of beansprouts from tesco which cost 6p, and combined them with some chicken breast from my freezer which cost 15p about a month ago. I have a piece of stilton which cost 25p and I might have it later with an oatcake or two. The point I am making is, be flexible and buy what's cheap, if you try to plan your meals by buying specific ingredients then you are at the mercy of the supermarkets and other traders. - Christmas is not the time for buying turkey, but after Christmas you can get loads of it for the freezer for next to nothing. Traders are always trying to sell something seasonal at a premium price, but when the season expires they look to get rid of their stock as quickly as possible, - the latest one in Scotland is haggis dinners - because of the burns celebrations.

Learn the basics and the detail will come naturally -

~Chameleon~

Soworried wrote: »

What would you feed the family of four with the same budget?

I couldn't, it would be impossible for me to do so on a regular basis. My health is far too important to compromise it by restricting the quality of food I eat (and by quality I don't mean expensive, just wholesome and nutritious).

And I should add that the last time I offered my advice on how to produce cheap healthy meals I got shot down in flames so I won't waste my time trying again

~Chameleon~

debtmess wrote: »

I don't feel it's a competition for some! With rising costs as in food, electric gas and so forth some have very little left, all it then takes is a bill to come in or something to break etc and the budget it squeezed even more so.

It's very easy to pile a plate high but in reality is this the contribution to rising obesity?

At the moment I am spending at least a 3rd more on heating my house/electric than food.

Nobody is talking about piling plates high with food, that would be ridiculous and wasteful. I have a fairly small appetite but some of these shopping lists don't appear to even provide an adequate quantity of food per person per day to satisfy basic requirements.

amcg100 has hit the nail on the head in the post above. It's how you shop, not what you buy that makes all the difference in reducing your grocery bill. Some weeks I may spend only £10 yet others I may spend £40. It all depends what is available at the time, but we always eat healthy nutritious food, no junk or processed food in my house.