Food budget £12.50 a week - help please!

skogar

A hunt on supermarket websites setting price low to high for each category (e.g. veg) gives you some good ideas of what the cheapest things to buy are, both per pack and if you look at the / kg by weight. Looking on the Tesco website I've found the following for these categories - frozen veg, fresh meat, frozen meat, tinned fish, frozen fish

Quite a good selection of frozen veg at about £1 / kg pk and no waste. Frozen mushrooms are cheaper than fresh, but fresh carrots and onions are cheaper than frozen.
Cheapest frozen fish is the value white fish fillets at £1.62 for 520g.
Beef and pork mince is £3.00 / 950g, cheaper than the fresh at £2 for 500g but if your budget is very tight you may be limited to the smaller fresh pk. Frozen chicken livers are 50p for 225g.
Chicken - value breast fillets are £2.49 for 500g or £3.99 for 1kg. but chicken legs are £2.75 for 1.5kg so better value.
Cheapest tinned fish is the ecconomy sardines in tomato sauce or the tuna flakes mentioned in previous post.
Bananas are a relatively cheap fruit although you have to allow for the skin being waste when comparing.
Fresh meat - cooking bacon is 81p for 500g (but not at Tesco), offal especially pigs liver is cheap so if your husband likes liver and bacon... Mince is £2 for 500g.

Have a look at the websites, do a few searches and see what you can find. It may give you a few ideas.

Crisp_£_note

Thanks again every one of you these are all such valuable advice. So far weve managed on cereal, soup and sandwiches but were beginning to put suggestions together and look at the recomended websites for further ideas and so its not feeling quite so hopeless.

Weve been given £50 from a relative who says they dont want it paid back but its to stock us up get us rolling. Were so greatfull naturally for their generocity and will repay them with a cake or roast dinner soon just to demonstrate our apreciation.

Thanks again to everybody so far

OurLass

Look at saygoodbyetothose's thread,there's a free download cook book called Good and Cheap.Really is good:)

OurLass

Also thriftyleslie.com has some good recipes and meal plans nice and cheap but healthy.
Penny's recipes also good and you can sign up free for daily recipes via email. Sorry can't do links,but easy to Google.
ShirleyGoode's blog is also useful.

Don't forget to look at first page of grocery challenge thread..........very helpful recipes and links there.
Maybe JackieO could let you have a copy of her misers cookbook?

skogar

Have you seen this thread? I think it's called something like meal for 2 for 50p. It's quite an old thread so prices etc will not be up to date but there's quite a lot of useful ideas on it.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/326929

Crisp_£_note

Even more good news is some friends have heared how bad it got for us and are putting together a food pile for us from stuff thats been stuck in the back of their freezers and cupboards unused and unwanted. They think its great to put it to good use rather than guiltily chucking it away! We are so thankful as were not the sort usually to share our personal financial problems with family or friends yet were often one of those first to help out. Its just that fact we didnt want to turn to those close to us due to embaracement that I turned to this forum! Now I have even more truly amazing friends and my gratitude is imense thank you.

As soon as this stock pile of food has arrived I will try to post a list of it all and ask for thrifty magic ways to create some freezer meals whilst cooking day to day as we go.

Thanks again every single one of you for everythig so far and to come and I am liking all these sites you mention and trying to keeo a note of them all for future reference and use.

:T

skogar

That's great news. Looking forward to seeing your list. I'm sure there will be people with plenty of ideas to offer.

It's amazing what gets hidden in the freezer. I lost a packet of meat in ours recently. I didn't think we'd eaten it but couldn't find it anywhere so decided we must have. It was a thin pack and had got stuck imbetween the freezer mechanism between the drawers. Only found it when we defrosted the freezer at the weekend! Every so often we have an eat everything in the freezer (not allowed to buy anything else till its all gone takes several months usually to do it) so that we know how old the stuff in it actually is!

Charlton_King

skogar wrote: »

Have you seen this thread? I think it's called something like meal for 2 for 50p. It's quite an old thread so prices etc will not be up to date but there's quite a lot of useful ideas on it.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/326929

Was just wondering out of idle curiosity.

Could it still be done? A meal for two for 50p..?

Butterfly_Brain

So glad that you have had a bit of luck Crisp£note :T

Butterfly_Brain

Do you have a local market or greengrocer? I got 4lbs jersey royals for £1 at the weekend.
If you go just before the market is closing you can pick up lots of bargains, because they don't want to keep it over the weekend