Wednesday 21 January 2015

Food Challenge - updated

Welcome to Louise Tomlinson and Claire Jessica Miller via Bloglovin.

Sue, over at Our Quiet Life in Suffolk has posed the question, "can you eat well for £20 a week for 2 people". There are quite a few limits such as no yellow sticker food, nothing from your garden etc. Not quite sure why as in reality, if you were living on a low income, yellow sticker food would probably be in your equation. Also, if you had a garden, and had the sense to garden, it would feed you handsomely as the lovely Scarlet shows often enough on her blog The Finished Article

Despite having things already in my cupboards, I shall buy everything I need without going over the £20 limit. The main shop will be in either Aldi or Lidl, anything not bought there will come from one supermarket.

Breakfasts - Monday to Saturday - porridge oats for 6 days = 46p (price includes oats, milk, water, sugar and salt for both of us). Whilst we normally use organic rolled whole oats which would cost £1.25 for the 6 days mentioned, it would be far cheaper to use the cheapest oats. I'll let you know what we do for after shopping. Sunday - toast and jam - 15p (price reflects 4 slices home made bread 10p plus home made jam 5p)

Lunches - Home made vegetable soup - 2 meals, Home made Chicken & Mushroom Soup - 2 meals,
Beans on Toast, Cheese on Toast, Eggs on Toast.

Evening Meals - Roast chicken for 2 nights (bones & skin towards soup), roast pepper & courgette pasta, impossible quiche for 2 nights, egg, chips & beans, toast - (we eat out on our walking day so only have toast for tea).

As our home made bread is so cheap and we shall have eggs and milk to spare, maybe a bread and butter pudding will be made to feed us over 2 nights. We don't often have pudding but it would be a nice treat after the roast chicken dinner. We could also have toast if hungry and I will be budgeting for butter as opposed to spread. I also make a litre of yoghurt each week, so again, that plus some wild fruit from the freezer, could be eaten.

Herewith things I need to buy and have already roughly costed, but of course it might be different on the day we shop. I shall add revised prices then:

1 small chicken 2.85,
4 litres of milk 1.78, 
500g pasta 45p
potatoes 1.89, 0.99p, 0.90p
carrots 49p,
courgettes 89p,
peppers 95p,
onions 59p,
1/2 white cabbage 35p,
mushrooms 89p,
sage & onion stuffing 37p,
300ml crème fraiche 79p,
12 eggs 1.58p, 1.55p, 0.03p
1 x Butter 89p,
porridge oats 75p, 85p, .10p
cheese 350g 1.75p, 1.30p, 0.45p
2 tins baked beans 48p,
2 tins chopped tomatoes 62p,
1.5kg bread flour 75p,
yeast 59p,
sultana's added, 84p

Total = £19.70 now £19.26 leaves us 74p still to spend!

I do still have fresh fruit in the fridge such as apples and pears so I shall cost those out if and when we use them so they don't get wasted. It will be interesting to see how it goes but we are always careful with shopping, would normally bulk buy when applicable, but not for this week.





12 comments:

  1. Oh well done, you are really going to do it. I was thinking theoretically really and the reason I didn't use yellow stickers is because we never see any in this part of the world and I was pricing on line anyway and the reason I said no garden is because the majority of people just don't grow food. It's only sensible people who use their garden and time for growing food. If you spend a bit of time on house hunting websites there is hardly a house for sale with any vegetables in the garden.

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    1. True but like you say, you don't have access to yellow sticker food etc.
      this blog only uses a budget of £5 per person per week http://frugaldom.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/oats-with-everything.html
      I'll give it a go and anything left over can be used for another week.

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  2. Well done. I've got too mant things need to use up otherwise I'd do it. I am however going to cook all the meals and cakes etc at some point over the next couple of weeks. Good luck.

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    1. Same here but most can be frozen for another time. It will be interesting to see what is leftover.

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  3. I hate to post as "anonymous" but I don't know anything about those other accounts. I try to estimate the cost as it is affected by the exchange rate . The "p" does give me problems. Looks like some tinned items are cheaper there and we don't have an Aldi here. Your meals look great and I do so enjoy your posts.

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    1. Aldi and Lidl have really made normal supermarkets take note and reduce their prices. I'll post pictures on my menu tab.

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  4. Well done, it sounds like you will still eat well. I think £20 is totally doable in this house as we don't buy meat, beans and pulses are sooo much cheaper :) xxx

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    1. Now I've made my mind up to do it, am looking forward to trying and seeing what is leftover towards the following week. Might turn out to be a good long term money saver.

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  5. Very good blog, you have inspired me to try again to be more frugal with my shopping....Thank you. Woo xx

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    1. Thank you. The secret is meal planning from what I have discovered and I menu plan for a month in advance but am still free to swap days if necessary.. Many things I cook create meals for 4 so are used later in the week or frozen for another week. Despite that, our usual bill for everything including toiletries etc, is around the £40 a week mark. If the menu can be cut a little, it leaves us savings for other areas. We love soup so anything left at the end of the week goes into that.

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  6. Great idea! As you say planning your meals helps enormously and avoids waste too. We hardly eat any meat in our house now which has helped, but since stopping work, I have reduced our food bill from an average of £160 per week to more like £80, sometimes even less. I now can't work out what the heck we were eating before!! Juliette

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    1. It is amazing isn't it, same with spending in general. It makes you think just how much savings we all could have accumulated if only we had known earlier about simple living!

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