food budget challenge

I was planning to turn my iPad off half an hour ago, but this thread and all the witty posts have made me laugh ....can't get to sleep now ?

Ha ha Phoenix, I think you will need to make your comment a lot more obvious for op!

Yes Jack Munro has lots of veggie recipes and the Bosh vegan cookbook is good. I’m not sure if this thread is a wind up either but no one is going to feed themselves on £20 per week if they are buying ready made and processed stuff.

Bootstrap Cook (Jack Monroe) has a great Facebook page...I love her ethos and respect her backstory...

Sorry I couldn’t attach a link here

Buy or borrow from library the Jack Munro cookbooks. Really good budget cooking

For a week, (at least) don't go shopping.
Look at what you've got that's still edible. In the fridge, freezer, cupboard etc.
Make meals from that, and then decide

How to cut the cost of your food:
1) always buy the cheapest variant the cheapest possible shop has - try Poundland, B&M Bargains, Home Bargains(?), Street markets.

2) Hang around markets at the end of the afternoon and buy vegetables by the sack at give away prices at the end of the day. Look at what tinned and packaged food is available on market stalls, ignore consume by dates.

3) Find out when your local supermarkets, mark food down and haunt those aisles, sections and gondolas when that happens.

4) Forage: pick wild provender, herbs fruit (blackberries, apples, greengages, sloes,. Do a foraging course so you know how to recognise, gather and cook food for free.

OR, since you can afford a reasonable diet.

1) Plan a weekly menu, use recipes you know and ones available online

2) Use recipes based on cheaper vegetables and fruit, root veg, cabbages and apples, not Butternut squash, sweet potato, raspberries, or mangoes.

3) By own brands not 'branded' brands

4) keep an eye open for special offers, buy food and veg on its sell by date and of you cannot eat it immediately cook it and freeze it.

5) At the end of each week, survey what fresh food is still in the house and then start the next week's menu plan with dishes using those ingredients, or make soup and freeze.

6) portion control. Serve food away from the table and give no-one anymore than they can eat, so that only empty plates come away from the table.

7) Nil food waste. No edible food ever to be thrown away, only vegetable peels and trimmings and that to go on a compost heap so that it can help you.....

8) Grow your own, even if it is just herbs in a window box.

9) Do not eat between meals

10 Do not buy any processed foods that you can make yourself.

Poor dog!

Does this £20 budget include feeding the dog that you can’t train ?

When my H first went into a care home and I was faced with care fees, I remarked to my D about my dilemma.
As I wasnt eating much she said , mum I think you could probably get by on £20 a week.
My reply, I probably could but I don't want to and don't intend to.
Who would choose to go without good and enjoyable food unless they absolutely had to?

Here's a suggestion of what to do with leftover noodles:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=784GHRBS75E

I never knew there were vegan magnums or Cornettos !!!

I too am another who wonders why a vegan would want fake meat products - but hey ho what do I know ? Lol

I think you're being totally unrealistic, you want to live on a £20 budget yet keep all your treats. Also how others managed on peanuts when needs must is not comparable with your crazy trial. Get real.

Perhaps it is an “academic question” to elicit thrifty or money saving tips which will in due course end up on Facebook or in the DM.
Be that as it may, I am puzzled by the discrepancy between what OP claims to aim to cut her food shopping to, and what her current expenditure , including takeaways, ready meals, magnums and smoothies seems to amount to.

Not speculating but finding it hard to believe that anyone has to have it spelt out in words of one syllable that pizzas, takeaways, ice cream etc are both expensive and unhealthy!
However GNHQ doesn't find the thread 'disingenuous'.
Therefore I leave you to it. Advise away!

Oh, please don't start speculating - the whole thread will end up deleted!

Can't work out if OP is trying to fool us or fool herself!
I could bring the T word into the conversation or I could contact GNHQ and do it "properly".
I wonder.........

Callistemon
Thanks for the laugh.
Your post on lentils reminded me of a friend who was going through lean times.
The things that woman could do with lentils was legendary.
Many years when we were going through a lean time Oysters were our saviour. We were lucky enough to live near some Oyster beds. These beds didn't belong to anyone they just happened to be in a place that the general public wouldn't know about ( Tollesbury in essex)
Unlike Southend where the world and his wife know about them

Lentils, vegetable stock, Indian spices.

Throw it all in together and cook 6-10 minutes, almost instant budget soup.

I'm not vegan so no idea of the cost of eating that way. I would suggest as others have that you eat all the food in the freezer to start with. I too have a 5 drawer freezer and if yours is full I think you will be amazed at the amount of food you actually have in stock. I'm pretty sure we could eat for a month from just the freezer and cupboards if need be. Instead of stopping at the shop after your walk why not go home and eat? I dont know the price of much ready made food but a vegan ice cream £2? Trek bars £1? Smoothie £2? Fruit £1? Ready made salad £2? Thats £8 x 7 days a week = £56!!! That leaves £34 for everything else. As others have said a good start would be writing down everything you buy for a week and then try buying the same but in Aldi or Lidl. Cooking from scratch is much cheaper, you can cook batches which saves time and fuel in the long run. I believe 2 people could live on £20 of food but maybe smaller portions, no luxuries and lots of planning. From what I've read I think you would find it difficult to go from £90 to £20 straight away. Have a go, let us know how you get on.

I recently ordered a £969 pram for them.
Now I know why you need to cut back on the food bill!

You could try lentils chilli, lentil ragu, lentils in a dahl, lentil soup, lentil burgers, lentil loaf, lentil pilaf, knit lentil jumpers

No smoothies, just drink tap water.

https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201904/medium-932873-9da1d5bb-9fd0-411f-840e-d18b6037e460.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201904/medium-387004-4f0845c0-5608-41d3-ac6b-f7eb1ecb863a.jpeg https://www.gransnet.com/uploads/talk/201904/medium-178043-63e75576-0b0c-4bf3-a0c2-77dde4c17e16.jpeg

Vegan Pizzas 2 for £5
Vegan ice cream £5
GN Magnums £3
Vegan smoothies £3

Doesn’t leave much out of the £20 weekly budget does it?

I think you’ll have to think it out again!

I think I need to shout A LOT !!

Dinno, just because a supermarket lists a product under a section it calls "Healthy Ready Meals", doesn't mean it actually IS healthy.

As others have said, what you could make at home will be much healthier, cheaper, and also more filling because it will contain real ingredients. Then you'll be less likely to buy expensive snacks every time you leave the house, so that'll save money too... Win, win.

Eglantine so did we! Literally - shopping list and all.
The reprint (which is what I have now, the original having fallen to pieces) is not quite as good though.