£10 a week....

JIL

Theres a lady on Instagram who feeds her family of four for 5 days for £25. Using Aldi. I'm always interested in seeing what others do and I have to say what she made did look good. 

My cheap meals would be things bought that could be used twice, if that makes sense, so a bag of potatoes could be wedges and fishcakes. Or a pack of sausages could be meatballs and a casserole. Bacon could be quiche and a pasta dish. Chicken thighs could be fajitas and something else.

Like every thing it's all in the planning. 

skogar

A number of recipes from Delia Smith's book frugal food are online here. It's quite an old book but has ome useful recipes. Must admit i haven't seen sprats on sale in a long time.

https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/books/delias-frugal-food

Floss

Playing devil's advocate here...

How many of those "feed a family of 5 for thruppence" type blogs are aactually up to date with current food prices? I used to feed me & 2 teenagers for around £25 a week 20 years ago, but those prices would not be the same even 5 years ago, and certainly not now.

Happy_Sloth

Floss said:

Playing devil's advocate here...

How many of those "feed a family of 5 for thruppence" type blogs are aactually up to date with current food prices? I used to feed me & 2 teenagers for around £25 a week 20 years ago, but those prices would not be the same even 5 years ago, and certainly not now.

tbh some of the food they suggest is awful, i know a really good one that's based in the USA but prices and foods are different to hard to apply to the UK.   I was trying to find a UK based one and i was honestly struggling.   

Obviously with priced rising many of these meals plans would cost what they did at the time they where done,  as i said im lucky enough not to need to limit my budget that tightly,  but it did get me wondering if anyone here knew how much it would cost to feed a family at todays prices and feed people something resembling a reasonable meal. 

When budgets get cut sometimes compromises needed to be made on dish's, sadly sometimes it's not feasible to feed healthy food when you are that strapped for cash, sometimes all you can hope for is a belly that isn't *too* rumbly.  

I am considering running an experiment,  just to see how low i can get my food budget and keep meals reasonable (My OH would be the test... if he's hungry he'll let me know!), if nothing else it will help me understand the struggles others are going though. 

goldfinches

skogar said:

A number of recipes from Delia Smith's book frugal food are online here. It's quite an old book but has ome useful recipes. Must admit i haven't seen sprats on sale in a long time.

https://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/books/delias-frugal-food

I picked up a copy of the book from a charity shop not long ago and have made some of the recipes which are very good. It does have some limitations in that it was designed around the ingredients readily and cheaply available when the book was being written as well as being aimed at the average family's kitchen equipment at the time. 

@Happy_Sloth - Something you can try is using the shopping basket option on recipe websites such as BBC Good Food, Guardian newspaper, Sainsbury's magazine and so on, some of the sites let you change the supermarket so that you can compare prices for a recipe across all the shops you can get to locally which is helpful. I do think that there are so many variables that it is difficult to predict what you'll find most useful but you might try Jack Monroe (@BootstrapCook).

FrugalHedonist

I like the feed your family for £20 a week lady - she has some good recipes and they are well balanced.

I would probably make a Jack Monroe recipes such as her Dhal or mixed bean chilli

JIL

Floss said:

Playing devil's advocate here...

How many of those "feed a family of 5 for thruppence" type blogs are aactually up to date with current food prices? I used to feed me & 2 teenagers for around £25 a week 20 years ago, but those prices would not be the same even 5 years ago, and certainly not now.

The one I referred to was up to date, complete with receipt from Aldi. If I come across it again I will post a link.
The only comment I would make is there wasnt much in terms of fruit, salad and veg, which puts my shopping bill up. 

London_1

As I live alone I eat usually twice a day only ,lunch and dinner.Today I had two slices of seeded bread (I had to buy some as I had a visitor the other day who likes a sandwich) it cost me £1.20, but gave me 20 slices of bread. i portion them up in four slice packs and freeze I don't eat a great deal of bread so it will last me a good while. On my bread which I toasted I had grated cheese and half a tin of baked beans so 2 slices of bread around 12p half a tin of beans 11p =21p plus about 10p of cheese= 31p for lunch. I had a satsume aftewards which cost around 10p (I had a bag reduced )so 41p for lunch

 Dinner tonight is a piece of haddock from the freezer (y/s) 60p plus some boiled new potatoes (on offer at 49p for a bag I have about five steaming at the moment so around 10p so 70p, plus the last of my sweetheart cabbage steamed (also on special offer last week ) so maybe another 10p 80p for dinner 
Lunch 41p
Dinner Fish, new potatoes and cabbage 80p with an apple afterwards ,about 9p from a reduced bag

Total food today around £1.30, if you add several cuppas and a coffee tis afternoon I suppose it cames to about £1.50

but I will eat virtually anything and am not in the least bit hungry in the evening I will not eat again until lunchtim tomorrow but will enjoy several cuppas in the morning I'm not really a breakfast eater at all and never have been, 22 years of shift work put paid to normal three meals a day I think. But I'm quite hppay and well fed and not seen a doctor in over three years.

But each person has different needs and some like me aren't keen on breakfast but enjoy lunch and dinner instead 

JackieO xx

D924

Easy enough if you don't care about your macro ratios and only look at calories. Protein is brutally expensive without exception, fat and carbs can be practically free.

cbsexec

It’s worth looking for Shirley Goode recipe books.  Although she died a few years ago I believe her blog is still available with recipes.   Lots of frugal ideas