How much to live on per week

looby75

Noonar wrote: »

I was interested in this thread because my daughter will be going off to University next year and I was wanting to get an idea of how much students will spend on food per week. I am (sad I know) putting together a list of ideas for her to cook/eat which will hopefully be cheap/healthy and filling but I am now worried that it won't be healthy enough!

it's not sad at all, it's really helpful, my daughter has said to me that she's pleased that she knows how to batch cook.

A lot of her flat mates were buying healthy stuff but just for one meal which obviously costs more in the long run because it's hard to buy exactly the right amount for one portion accurately, so some stuff is bound to go out of date before it's used again. Anything recipe she can learn to cook that can be frozen is the way to go from what my daughter has said (and what we do at home) Batch cooking can be really healthy because bulking out with vegetables actually seems to help food freeze well and obviously the sooner its frozen the more vitamins are stored

As a side note her flats fridge has temperature problem at the moment, it's not cold enough and some food is going off well before it's sell by/best before date, luckily for my daughter most of her food is already cooked and in the freezer so she hasn't lost much.

rubytuesday

Just make sure they are incorporating all the major food groups with plenty of fruit and veg and I'm sure they'll be fine.

Eat well plate

rubytuesday

The low down- girlie's last shop of £24 lasted her nine days.

Today she has spent £9 on butters for the flat and mainly stocking up on cereal offers.

So it is a pretty consistent average.

Oh and the vegetable lasagne was good and did two meals and two for the freezer.

No chilli or shepherds pie in sight of late!

Dunroamin

rubytuesday wrote: »

The low down- girlie's last shop of £24 lasted her nine days.

Today she has spent £9 on butters for the flat and mainly stocking up on cereal offers.

So it is a pretty consistent average.

Oh and the vegetable lasagne was good and did two meals and two for the freezer.

No chilli or shepherds pie in sight of late!

Butters?..

System

I wish i'd been taught how to batch cook before i went to uni (which is weird because my mum does batch cook a lot of things but she also does all the cooking so i was never involved in it) would have saved me a lot of money! So good on those whose kids can do it, valuable life skill to have and is very MSE too

Really need to try and start doing it now, and would be good to learn to make my own sauces (currently to scared of giving people food poisoning to try :eek:)

mumps

For people whose children haven't gone to uni yet it is worth considering that they don't always get much freezer space. I have four who have either been to uni or are there now. With post grads total of six universities. They have lived in halls and house shares and have never had more than a drawer in a freezer and sometimes not even that. Large amounts of batch cooking wouldn't have worked for them. Accommodation does vary and mine have tended to go for cheap so more expensive accommodation might have more freezer space.

Dunroamin

It was a pleasant surprise to me the nowadays halls of residence had freezers at all - we had nothing but the freezer compartment at the top of the fridge when I went!

looby75

Dunroamin wrote: »

It was a pleasant surprise to me the nowadays halls of residence had freezers at all - we had nothing but the freezer compartment at the top of the fridge when I went!

My daughters halls has a freezer with 6 draws in, so they each have one each. She bought some small plastic containers that stack together so waste as little space as possible. She made Chicken in mushroom sauce a few weeks ago and then text me in panic because she realised she had run out of plastic tubs and didn't know what to freeze the leftovers in. I suggested double bagging it in a sandwich bag, which she did and she says she might do the same for most stuff in future as it doesn't seem to take up as much space as even her stackable tubs.

rubytuesday

Dunroamin wrote: »

Butters?..

I think it was that Country Life stuff as it was on offer but they all muck in together on that sort of thing and other commodities and she felt it was her turn.

rubytuesday

I still ascertain that frozen then defrosted food tastes crap so I rarely freeze anything except soup and occasionallly curry and have a fridge with a very small freezer.

Fortunately my daughter doesn't mind it which is great because it definitely is making things easier and cheaper for her.

She didn't enjoy her chicken curry second time around though so some foods certainly respond better to it don't they.