Shopping and cooking for one... over budget

NatMast_2

I thought I could budget for around £100 for myself food shopping per month. It ends up more like double that but considering I *mainly* clean eat and do buy luxuries and get side tracked by offers it's not bad.

I find the best staple cheap foods are your usual passata, pasta, garlic, spices, mixed herbs and the cheaper cuts of meat for slow cooking. I invested in a couple of slow cooking recipe books and was amazed at the variety of things you could make!

I am also such a huge fan of that reduced to clear counter! Especially the fish.

Miss_Bea

I live on my own (well, with my dog) and I have managed to get my weekly food budget down to £9.11. I am ovo-vegan (or veggan, as I like to call it), and I always buy organic when I can, otherwise I am sure I could get the cost down a bit further. I worked on my food budget / meal plan for months to find a version I really could stick to, and it does not include a lot of fruit and veg, I'm afraid - just a head of broccoli and a jacket potato per week, plus mint and parsley from the window sill. I bake my own bread with Tesco value flour, which I have for lunch, and I have oatmeal porridge (cooked with water) for breakfast. The only processed foods I buy are ready-made polenta, bouillon and lemon juice. However I am about to go on a gluten-free diet soon (I don't think ignoring my gluten intolerance has been very healthy for me), which means buying gluten-free flour, gluten-free oats, etc. This will take my weekly food cost up to £12.05, which is still not very much, but it is actually an increase of over 32%! Still, it means I have to cut out my weekly bean burger dinner, which should free up space in my tiny freezer for some organic carrots - that way I should be able to eat a bit more veg every week without it costing too much!