How to eat as cheaply as possible , suggestions needed.

99Androidguy777

99Androidguy777

99Androidguy777

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Hello everyone , I have a financial commitment and it leaves me with very little left over money every week, I will have about 30 - 50 euros every week for food (Ireland)
I will have this commitment for 6 months.
What sort of foods would you recommend I buy for sustenance ?
I need some meal ideas.


The 30 - 50 euros will cover breakfast and dinner (and lunch if i can afford it.)
I wont be able to afford snacks or Lunch all the time, that said my mom should be able to help me out by providing dinner for 3 days of the week, every week.
I just need to figer out how to survive for the other 4.

Cheap foods I can think of so far are beans on toast.
complan. (haha very funny I know)
tinned soup and rice mixed togeather.
tinned soup and noodles mixed togeeather
whole chickens on offer. (usualy 3 euros when on offer)
cheap bags of frozen mixed veg to have with my meals.
Potatoes , carrots , parsnips.
Tinned stew / cheap frozen meals. (usually around 2 euros each)
cheap meat and other foods on offer.

What I am asking you for is some other ideas for cheap meals which I can have.

places I could shop in are lidle , aldi , super value , super quin ,Dunnes stores, Euro spar , centra , mace or cheap Asian grocery stores. there are no tescos in the town where I live unfortunately nor any Asdas , marks and Spensers , Sainsburys or ice lands (Ireland)
Thanks for your time and suggestions.
Its not that I can't come up with anything, but suggestions would be helpful as I don't want to eat the same thing every day.
 
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wazza300 said:
have a good rummage around at the back of tesco's or sainsburys after the out of date grub
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There is neither a Tesco's or a Sainsburys in this town where I live unfortunately, I should be able to get by with 30 euros minimum without having to do that.
LOL at your reply and in all seriousness I hope I don't end up that way, hopefully not.
Anyway I am looking for suggestions as to what foods are cheap to buy though, cheap meals I can make.
I do not think that things will get to where I have to rummage around in dumpsters or skips for food.

mysticsniper said:
Pasta and Rice are cheap and very filling.

You can easily make a sauces for the pasta with tomato and some basil ;)
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Okay thank you for the suggestion. :)
 
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Bargain shelf's in the supermarkets can actually be full of little gems, do not discount them so easily as it could bring you some great little alternatives that provide a tasty meal you will be craving after set cheap meals.

Stew packs are cheap this time of year, cook a decent batch and you have a few lunch's made ready to be warmed, also a god send in the cold weather, for the sake of 3-4 euros you will have 3-4 lunch's, maybe more.

Noodles and veg for a stir fry will also be very cheap.
 
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It's got to be a mix of scanning for bargains, cheap cuts of meat (offcuts of ham for pea & ham soup for example), bellys, cheeks, you can normally ask at a butchers for off cuts and slow cook them etc.
Do stuff in larger batches, one pots, soups, etc. Then freeze them in meal size containers or sealed bags. This stops the waste when you defrost too much etc.
Try and use everything you have to the most you can. i.e. you buy a whole chicken for 3quid, you can get 3 meals out of that. (breasts, thighs/legs, stock from carcass)

Pulses are cheap as well, normally cheaper if you have to soak and cook them too rather than in a tin. They're very good bulkers and good nutritional things as well.
 
i would say take a good look around your town and surrounding country side at what shops there are, i know were i am in ireland on the outskirts of the town is a farm shop, i can buy enough veggies there (unwashed) for £5 that will last me a week (what more they last and taste better) were as in tesco £5 would not even get enough veggies for 2 days
 
30-50 a week. Easy.

Smart Price Pasta/Rice + Pasatta. Then beef it up with some mince, veg or the such like. If you're feeling really cheep, it's pasta + Cheese + peas.

kd
 
Do you have a freezer?

If so then I'd suggest you make yourself batches of food - although it may cost you a little bit upfront it'll last you ages.

We make batches of chilli con carne (we use lamb but beef is much cheaper) and it's easy to pack out with beans which are cheap and filling (I use the BBC Good Food recipe and do 2-3x the quantity of beans). Serve with rice (1 cup of rice is plenty for two people and probably costs 20 pence).

Also soup is great - get yourself down to a farmers market and grab a big bag of potatoes and some other veg. You can pad this out with bread or even a little bit of pasta. Leek and potato soup is great and not expensive.

With the potatoes from the farmers market, again if you have a freezer you could prepare some mash potato in advance or even a cottage pie.

For meat, cheapest option is a whole chicken. Co-op here are doing a chicken for £3.50 and we did one yesterday that easily would do three meals for two people and a little bit left over for our daughter. Same again here, batch cooking is the way to go if you can – sometimes 3 chickens for £10 deals are around and means you can save money/time. Also learn to make chicken stock from the carcasses as adding a few offcuts –
Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall has a good recipe that uses leftovers/offcuts to save those pennies.

Couscous is cheap and filling. We’ve been doing the chicken and couscous dish on BBC Good Food and using special offer chicken thigh/leg combos (usually £2 for 4x legs and 4x thighs).

Time your purchases as well, i.e. if you like pumpkin then wait until after Halloween when people will almost be giving them away – great for soup and pumpkin pie!

If you do go to a farmers market don't forget to stock up on onions and garlic which if stored correctly can last a little while.
 
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50 euros a week for food shopping? That seems pretty generous to me.

I eat A LOT of good food and it doesn't cost any where near to 50 euros a week.

I do cook nearly all of my food "from scratch" rather than buying ready/packaged meal type of things though.
 
spoffle said:
I do cook nearly all of my food "from scratch" rather than buying ready/packaged meal type of things though.
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This is where money goes quickly for a lot of people. I work with someone who spends £800 a month on food and basically all their meals are M&S ready meals, that's 60% more than we pay and that includes probably £8-10 a week on a bottle of wine.

Things like Uncle Bens instant rice is SUCH a ripoff - you could buy 5kg bag for about the same as two sachets of this semi-instant stuff.
 
If you are planning on skipping lunches, make sure your breakfasts is decent.

30 to 50 euro's seems more than doable to me. I have resorted to cooking rice and putting ketchup in it when I was broke as a student lol.

Beans on Toast is epic win, and very cheap. You can do things like put cheese on it, use marmite with it (YUM!), make bean toasties etc.

Jacket Potatoes with anything.

Don't discount £1 frozen ready meals if you need something quick. But stay away from crap like pot noodles etc.

Pasta/Rice with anything.. you can add lots of little things and different meats/sausage etc to make it different. Pasta bake etc.

You shouldn't have any trouble 'surviving' and eating reasonably as long as you don't blow the money on other things. You can even do things like have a silly cheap week, and then have a nice week, or alternate nice meals with silly cheap meals.

To be honest, it'll be the mental thing rather than what you can afford. When you start going off things.. just change it up.. try something else.

Good luck, I don't personally think you are gonna have an issue.

p.s. Don't forget fruit!!!! If you are eating cheap, you will need it. Try to stay away from depending on chips/pies etc have those as luxuries.
 
I pretty much lived off of pasta at uni. Whack in a can of chopped tomatoes (dirt cheap) add some basil, salt and pepper and you've got yourself a mediocre sauce.
 
No need to skip anything with that price.

If you have a freezer it makes things so much easier, just buy in bulk, cook it up and freeze.
Look at altipernative meat cuts as well. Like beef short ribs, so cheap and makes amazing stews.

Get a big ass pork shoulder and do pulled pork, stuff. It in some rolls with a bit of salad or coleslaw and that's lunch sorted for about two week.

Get two kilos of beef mince, some tinned tomatoes, chili powder, kidney beans and that's probably 8+ portions of chili, to freeze up.

Living on that price you do not need to skimp at all, just a bit of planning.

If just made a chilli

800g beef mince £7.98
1000g pork mince. £4.58
3 cans chopped tomatoes £2.07
2 cans kidney beans in chili sauce £1.30
1/5 Bag of onions £1, 20p
4 garlic cloves 10p
Chilli powder 50p

£17.73, 8 portions that's £2.21, although its more like 8-12 portions depending how greedy you are.
And it would be easy to make it a lot cheaper, with cheaper meat or all pork. Can serve it with rice, flat bread, jacket potatoes etc.

There's 6 portions, more in the pan, just ran out of foil containers. I did use a slightly more complicated recipe.
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For 30-50 a week there's no need for these drastic student type recipes.

So many things you can do, if you freeze.

Just need some more foil tins.
Got more to do this week, got lamb shanks, pulled pork, pork ribs to do.
Then next time I do a shop I'll get some stuff to do like 10pies.
 
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Don't forget your eggs, you can buy them very cheaply and they're full of goodness, you don't have to buy organic or free range, the cheaper varieties will do the job. Poached, scrambled, omelettes, even raw! Get 'em down yer!:)
 
+1 on the cook from scratch and store.

With mince go for full fat instead of lean. A 500g pack full fat is approx 1250 kcal, it sells for a ait bit cheaper here in the UK than the lean/extra lean with less than half the enegy value. Although the danger with high fat foods is you dont want to mix with carbohydrates unless you want your waist line to expand. ie have it without huge helpings of rice/pasta.

Rice with vegetables is another great cheap combo. So many varieties/flavours you can mix up. Tip: use stock to add flavour. Any left over chicken carcass is excellent for this, can make a simple beatch of rice and and some diced pepper into something delicious when you add the stock to cook the rice along with some salt/pepper seasoning.
 
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