Sainsburys feed the family for a week for £50 - challenge?

[Jonny69]

I thought I'd start a thread on this as the campaign appears to be widely mis-reported and the press have been keen to pick up every detail and give it a slating. If you haven't seen the campaign it's here.

The types of misleading reporting I'm referring to are the likes of here and here. The main comments revolve around there not being enough food. For example, the lunches are reported as being a 'Lunch is a ham, cheese and salad sandwich. Two pieces of bread, halved' which is completely misleading because it omits the fact that a piece of fruit and a yoghurt are included. Admittedly, I'd probably eat more than that but I'm quite active.

That aside, I don't think it's far off. In fact, I think with a little more effort the quantities could be increased, it could be done with free-range meat and eggs, and the general quality of the food could be increased. I'm up for the challenge, if anyone else is?

So I'm going to put together some planned weekly menus, based on two adults sharing for a whole week, for around £25. The tricky bit is that I'm a meat eater and t'other half is veggie, so our bills tend to include a lot of cheese which is more expensive than the meat I buy. I also make a lot of my own stuff like yoghurt, bacon and bread which saves a few £££ each week, so I'll point out where this is the case and allow for the financial difference.

I foresee this will go in a number of directions:

1. I get a reality check and stand no chance
2. I starve to death
3. I get scurvy
4. Everyone sees how bad my diet really is

I'll try and keep the manual labour to a minimum, though this will always save a few £££. The other tripping point is the amount I actually eat: as I'm quite active I do need to eat a fair bit. I'll be starting on Sunday, as this is a good opportunity to have a roast and get a carcass on the go for leftovers and stock. Lets see how it goes. Please join in too!

[Will]

I spend £60 on myself a week for food!!!

[Mondo]

Originally Posted by Will

I spend £60 on myself a week for food!!!

Ditto!

[Haly]

I can see it being pretty possible to do
We spend £55 a week on shopping (and that includes toiletries, washing powder etc) and we eat pretty comfortably. It helps that we do so much from scratch, don't eat much meat (but what we do buy is free range - much prefer less meat but good quality than lots of crap quality meat) and look around for bargains though!

Plus of course if you have a roast chicken on Sunday, you can make loads from the leftovers. Pie, burgers, casserole or curry, soup, stirfry etc.

Will keep a curious eye on this thread though for more ideas

[Jonny69]

Originally Posted by Haly

much prefer less meat but good quality than lots of crap quality meat

This is the secret to good meat eating. Buy good meat and do something good with it

So one of the challenges here is getting the calorie count up. I'm not going to be messing around with low fat anything because the calories have to stretch as far as possible. Full fat milk because it goes further and butter ftw!

Not sure yet how I'm going to deal with buying big bags of stuff. Example: 1.5kg of porridge oats is £1.41 but it has 50 servings in my size. Say I have porridge twice a week, that's nearly a 6 month supply in one hit. I guess with breakfast items it's easy to put them into a set routine. It'll be the dinners that mix things up a bit.

[Jingo]

We recently bought a quarter lamb from a friend's field and our twenty-odd pounds provided us with a kilo of mince, a shoulder, a leg, ~8 chump chops, and ~6 'normal' chops.

We (Emma) cooked the leg which resulted in two huge roast dinners, and a lamb jalferezi (about 4 portions) etc so each piece of meat creates a huge amount of food in terms of meals.

Adding up all the individual parts would costs us A LOT more in the supermarket, and going on past experience, would not be half as delicious or remotely sustainable.

As goes for our local butchers - far superior quality, same price or less than the supermarket. Good food does not have to be expensive - it's just not as convenient to source or acquire.

[LeperousDust]

Originally Posted by Jingo

We recently bought a quarter lamb from a friend's field and our twenty-odd pounds provided us with a kilo of mince, a shoulder, a leg, ~8 chump chops, and ~6 'normal' chops.

We (Emma) cooked the leg which resulted in two huge roast dinners, and a lamb jalferezi (about 4 portions) etc so each piece of meat creates a huge amount of food in terms of meals.

Adding up all the individual parts would costs us A LOT more in the supermarket, and going on past experience, would not be half as delicious or remotely sustainable.

As goes for our local butchers - far superior quality, same price or less than the supermarket. Good food does not have to be expensive - it's just not as convenient to source or acquire.

I would LOOOOOVE to buy half a lamb fresh like that, sounds superb I freeze and store so much prepped food as well it would mean i don't eat lamb every day either!

[Kitten]

I think we probably spend less than £50 per week on food, for the two of us, and we make most stuff from scratch & buy good quality 'free range/RSPCA approved type' meat. We buy a lot of 'basic' range stuff but only if it's as good as the more expensive branded stuff - for example, I won't eat value beans, simply because I don't like the taste, but we do buy Tesco's or stock up on Heinz or Branston when on offer rather than Heinz at full price because the difference in price is silly and they taste as good (in case of Branston, better!). Pasta/Noodles/ dried goods - value brands are usually just the same. I won't compromise on taste for the sake of saving a few pence but I am finding more and more that the basic brands are better and better. We're VERY good at shopping at a few different places and picking up the offers in each one (BOGOFS, 2for£2 etc) and on stuff we buy regularly, it saves us a fortune really, and it doesn't take much time. Also shop in Costco for things like drinks & crisps if we're buying a lot of them.

It's easy enough to do if you put the time in and compare prices online before you go and buy (as Matthew does - he's like a walking directory of where to get what at the lowest price)

[Haly]

Yup, keeping an eye on the prices and going round a few different places really helps a lot.

We're lucky that we've got Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys all within about 20mins of us so we can stock up easily. Usually do the bulk of the shopping in Asda then get other bits and pieces/the bargains wherever it's cheap. That and we've got a fridge/freezer and a chest freezer so plenty of room to do batch cooking and store for later.

On a side note: I never get why people buy branded dried pasta?? I can never tell the difference! 20p bag of spaghetti in Asda is way better value than £1ish for some branded stuff anyhow At least until I finally get round to trying out the pasta maker I was given for my birthday.

[Jingo]

Originally Posted by LeperousDust

I would LOOOOOVE to buy half a lamb fresh like that, sounds superb I freeze and store so much prepped food as well it would mean i don't eat lamb every day either!

It really is superb - a perk of being socially connected to farmers

We generally portion things up and freeze also - such a purchase will last us months as eating lamb (however damn tasty!) isn't the best to do every day!

Originally Posted by Kitten

We buy a lot of 'basic' range stuff but only if it's as good as the more expensive branded stuff

Definately - Marks & Spencer / Waitrose make huge margins on foods from the same source and supplier as Tesco: although I totally agree about the exceptions: NOTABLY BEANS!!

Originally Posted by Haly

We're lucky that we've got Asda, Tesco, Morrisons and Sainsburys all within about 20mins of us so we can stock up easily.

We're soon to have an Asda store joining the Tesco, Lidl and Morrisons already in our tiny town; it's a total overkill but hopefully will result in some price wars

Originally Posted by Haly

On a side note: I never get why people buy branded dried pasta?? I can never tell the difference!

Me neither - fresh pasta vs dried; of course spend more and have the flavour, texture and convenience perks, but otherwise I would wager they come from the same supplier!