A weeks food shopping for £20

suki1964

LillyPop wrote: »

I think what we had was actually pretty healthy..

Breakfasts:
Boiled egg and toast
Jam on toast x2
Cereal x2
Waffles
Scrambled egg on toast

Lunch's:
Burgers and curly fries
Pepperoni and curly fries
Sandwiches x5

Tea's:
Pasta bake x2
Chicken stew x2
Sausage pot

So where did the eggs, burgers, jam, Curly fries, pepperoni come from? Thin air???

There is a cost to those as well I'm afraid

And I'm sorry, but by no stretch of the imagination is that a healthy diet

But you are here to learn I think?

Porridge is the best breakfast food around. Cheap as chips and healthy as anything. Made with milk even better for you. Don't add sugar , use ( thawed) frozen berries.

Frozen fruit and veg is often better for you then fresh, because it is actually fresher when frozen

Now seeing as there's not much veg showing in your diet, how about making a pot of veg based soup? Would do most the week for lunch. Add something like sardines or mackerel or egg or beans on toast a few days and already your diet will have improved


Us oldstylers buy something called rubber chicken. It lasts around a week and is cheap and chips . It's a mormal medium chicken. We roast it perhaps on Sunday, slice some of the breast and thigh meat for dinner. Monday we might use a couple of legs to make a pie or something. Tuesday, we would get as much meat if as we could and chuck in a stir fry and then finally the carucus is boiled up with some veg to make a soup So for me, a chicken makes 12 meals

We also love our pasta bakes as we can throw in lots of cheap veg Pasta sauce is a tin of toms, an onion and whatever flavours you have - garlic, anchovies, olives, oregano, basil, thyme - just add and taste

I like to use a bit of salmon in a pasta dish. Just a small portion of hot smoked is around £2. I flake that through cooked pasta with a cheese sauce made with a cheese triangle , a few peas and chopped peppers and a dash of chilli sauce. Delish and another way of getting an oily fish portion

Fish fingers and fishcakes, served with homemade wedges and piles of salad


The more you can cook yourself the cheaper eating can become. You just need to plan a bit more

GwylimT

Looking online for £21.20 at morrisons you can get, some lasts longer than a week so it would be less than £20.00 per week.

5 bananas
5 apples
Tomatoes
Whole lettuce
3 peppers
1kg potatoes
500g onions
1kg carrots
300g cooked beetroot
750g fresh chicken thighs
4 frozen alaskan salmon fillets
550g pork joint
2 loaves of brown bread
1kg porridge oats
Mixed herbs
Gravy granules
Cheese
Butter
1kg Cauliflower (frozen)
1kg Broccoli (frozen)
Milk

SailorSam

suki1964 wrote: »

Porridge is the best breakfast food around. Cheap as chips and healthy as anything. Made with milk even better for you. Don't add sugar , use ( thawed) frozen berries.

I get dried currants/sultanas/raisins to add to my cereal. I think i pay less than £1 in Asda for 500gm.
When i'm making curries in slowcooker the raisins go in with that.

suki1964

SailorSam wrote: »

I get dried currants/sultanas/raisins to add to my cereal. I think i pay less than £1 in Asda for 500gm.
When i'm making curries in slowcooker the raisins go in with that.

Yes dried fruit is good too as a sweetener , as is sliced banana

I hack to hide the dried fruit from myself. I have a habit of dipping in lol

fozziebeartoo

I thought that vitamins etc in veg are water soluable, therefore stewing them (and eating the resulting gravy) is better than boiling and then throwing the water away?

As you say, steaming is best (personally I hate microwaved veg).

And things like tomatoes are better for us after long cooking aren't they?

Interested to know for sure because I do a lot of slow cooker stews and casseroles stuffed with lots of veg.

GwylimT wrote: »

If you're stewing veg you're losing lots of the good stuff, stew your meat, although avoid poor quality sausages, but steam or microwave your veg and add it to the pot at the last minute.

Doshwaster

SailorSam wrote: »

Nearly all the veges i buy are frozen.

Apart from new potatoes, lettuce and onions just about all of the veg I buy is frozen. I'd like to buy more fresh but living alone it is hard to get the variety without a lot of waste or going shopping for a single carrot every day. You can get huge bags of various veg for about a pound each which last for ages.

redfox

threads merged to avoid duplication of advice as they are by the same user on exactly the same topic.

Murphybear

PennyForThem wrote: »

Use your library for cookbooks as well as internet.

Use MySupermarket on web to check out prices of a commodity at various major supermarkets.

Lidl and Aldi are great for stuff - but do make sure you are actually spending less for same. Veg bought there may not last as ong as veg bought at another supermarket - and don't forget any fruit and veg market in your town either.

You can make your own pizza dough very, very easily and therefore your own pizzas!

If you can't face making pizza dough buy ready made bases. The very cheap ones are not v good but Sainsburys sell hand stretched ones 2 for £1.50. They taste like the ones you get on expensive pizzas:D. Home made tomato sauce is easy and cheap and you can put on whatever toppings you fancy, good way to use up bits and pieces in the fridge.

As well as pasta and rice, try couscous for a change. A little goes a very long way as you soak it in boiling water (or stock or juice) and it swells up enormously. Add whatever have sitting around

ArtDecoGirly

As a housewarming present you could ask for a compact breadmaker, this way you can do pizza dough and fresh bread really cheaply (you can buy a 1.5kg bag of bread flour for less than £1 and will last several times... my breadmaker uses 320g for a loaf or 225g for pizza dough), this will save all that money on bread/buns etc...

Top_Girl

I prefer basic passata to tinned tomatoes for making pasta sauces, much smoother. Asda do cartons for 35p-ish.

If, like me, there are certain branded foods you really need (I simply don't like baked beans that aren't Heinz) shops like Home Bargains and B&M are well worth visiting to stock up. They often do 5 tins of Heinz beans for £2.50 and I also recently got 8 tins of John West tuna for £4.50 from there, the cheapest I've seen them in the Asda is 4 for £3. They do cheap Oxo cubes and herbs too as well as biscuits if you really can't resist. Also bags of potatoes are 99p. They may only be £1odd in the supermarket but every little helps.

As other posters have said, potatoes specifically for baking are more expensive, I tend to root around the bags of 'normal' potatoes and find those with one big enough for baking in!