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!

 

[Jonny69]

I would say we wouldn't be too far off the challenge as it is.

This is what I was thinking. Take the bottle of wine per week out of our bills and that cuts a chunk off. Then once you discount all the cleaning products we're probably not far off.

One of the tricks is using up every last bit of food. We tend to chuck out a chunk of bread each time, for example, so it's time to start baking smaller loaves. Or slice them up for toast and put them in the freezer. The odd whole vegetable ends up in the bin because we over-bought as well.

We also do a run to the Lewisham veg market each Saturday, which means loads of in-season veg for next to nothing. I'm not sure if it would be cheating to use the market prices and the way we bulk cook a load of stuff for the freezer, because markets are out of reach for most people. I need to keep this realistic. It might add £5 to the weekly bill with the difference.

 

[Jonny69]

So far I'm putting a spreadsheet together to work out the costs of the cupboard regulars. Breakfast is what I'm including in this because it's going to be the same pretty much every week, made up of porridge, smoothies, toast and a fry up at the weekend. These items will need to sit in the cupboard or freezer, so for example a pack of oats is 1500g which is 50 of my servings, TTD sausages in packs of 6 can either go in the freezer or be used in meals along the week, cost of servings of 100ml of milk etc etc. I'm also weighing what I'm eating for the next few days to gauge the actual size of portions of fruit, yoghurt, oats etc.

Example: bowl of porridge, 200g:
Oats, 2 tablespoons, 30g - £0.03 (based on 1500g bag of porridge oats @ £1.41)
Milk 150ml - £0.08 (based on 4-pint bottle of whole milk @ £1.25)
Water 20ml - £0.00
Total: £0.11

That is an actual size bowl of porridge I'd eat and rounded up the milk a bit because I used slightly less.

What I need to do next is buy some fruit and veg to gauge the unit costs of things like bananas, apples, potatoes, carrots etc. Then I can work out costs of portion sizes in meals and smoothies and work out what costs what and where

 

[Jonny69]

Well it's not looking good for me so far

Working out breakfast options.

Smoothie, soft fruit eg strawberries, blueberries, 300ml
Soft fruit 100g: £1.00
Yoghurt 100g: £0.06
Oats 10g: £0.01
Milk 100ml: £0.06
Total = £1.12

I usually have 5 of those a week so that's half my budget gone

Alternatives:

Smoothie, Nesquik, 300ml
Milk powder 60g: £0.24
Nesquik 20g : £0.11
Milk 250ml: £0.14
Total = £0.49

Smoothie, banana, 300ml
Banana: (approx) £0.10
Yoghurt 100g: £0.06
Oats 10g: £0.01
Milk 100ml: £0.06
Total = £0.22

Better, but still not looking great...

 

[Jonny69]

Haha! That's the problem, to eat healthily you need to spend money.

I disagree with that. It's the fact that I'm using blueberries and strawberries which are extremely expensive

Have you tried the frozen fruit rather than fresh fruit?

Going to check it out because I'd like to keep soft fruits in at least a couple of my smoothies per week

Bananas are only about 18p or are you eating one and a half in a smoothie?

Just weighed a banana and the ones I go for are about 150g, which equates to about 10p. Cheap win!

 

[Jonny69]

I always stand by the fact that someone eating fresh fruit/veg and meat will spend a lot more on average than someone subsisting on chips pies and readymeals...

Lol, I still disagree and I'm out to prove it in this thread

I assume you freeze a lot of your fruit before you blend them? I found a nice set of frozen fruit at Tesco recently, 3 tubs for £5, which made smoothies economical again (they had Mango, Mixed berry and Rasberry).

Yep. Those costs I put up for the smoothies are based on Sainsbury's prices. I tend to get my soft fruit in the market where it's a fair bit cheaper, but you have deal with the quantities. Normally after a market run we have to spend some time preparing it to stick in the freezer, otherwise it just won't keep

I need to check out the packs of pre-frozen though. Probably not great once defrosted but they are fine for blitzing up.

 

[Jonny69]

Here we go, frozen strawbs and blueberries are £2.25/400g, which is pretty much half the price of fresh. Bonus!

 

[Jonny69]

I've done a test recipe tonight to check the costs and quantities.

Bean casserole with sausages.

Ingredients (serves 2):
1 red pepper
1 orange pepper
1 yellow pepper
1 courgette 150g
1 carton of chopped tomatoes
2 cloves garlic
1 tin of cannellini or borlotti beans
4 sausages
salt/pepper/chilli to season

Chop all the veg roughly. Lightly fry the garlic in a little olive oil and add the rest of the vegetables. Add the tomatoes, drain the beans and add them too. Season with salt, pepper and a small pinch of chilli. Simmer for 20-30 minutes depending how soft you like the veg. Grill the sausages. Spoon out into a bowl and get stuck in with a nice thick slice of buttered bread

The important bit - the costs.

Ok, so going on Sainsburys prices the total is as follows:

1 red pepper
1 orange pepper
1 yellow pepper = 3/5 Basics pepper pack at £1.35 = 81p
1 courgette 150g = 27p
1 carton of chopped tomatoes = 33p
2 cloves garlic = 1/4 of bulb of Organic 3 pack = 1/12*90p = 7.5p
1 tin of cannellini or borlotti beans = 44p
4 TTD sausages = £1.72

Total: £3.64

My veg came from the market and was substantially cheaper as so:
Red peppers: 4/£1
Orange peppers: 8/£1
Yellow peppers: 9/£1
Courgettes: 5/£1

So my veg costs came to 70p compared to Sainsburys £1.10, not as big difference as I was expecting if I'm honest. My total for tonight was £3.24 and we're both stuffed.

Note that I used Taste The Difference sausages and tinned beans. I could have shaved a bit off that by using cheaper sausages and by cooking the beans myself. This would have needed me to soak them overnight but would have literally come to pennies instead of 44p, because even the fancy dried pulses are dead cheap.

 

[Jonny69]

Buy a massive box of chicken breast 5kg for £27 get about 25 breasts the links in tom_e thread in sports corner then you have say chicken, pasta, chopped tomatoes= ~£2 if that

Sorry fella, that's not what it's about. I'm deliberately avoiding that sort of thing because I want to do it with better quality, better treated meat. I know the pack you're referring to and it's not stated as free range. Besides, it's a pack of chicken breast - I couldn't think of anything more dull to have to eat

I have never seen an orange pepper in a basics pepper pack! And I'm one of those cheap people who rummage through all of the basics pack until I find one with 5/6 peppers in, and as many non-green ones as possible

I don't think I have either, they're usually red, loads of yellows and a green. We do the same, other half doesn't like the greens either

She actually corrected me yesterday too. The peppers from the market are mainly the long pointy Ramiro peppers, so if I'd compared like for like with the supermarket prices there would have been a much larger difference. The difference is the pointy peppers are around 4-5 for £1, whereas the normal bell peppers are around 8-9 for £1.

 

[Jonny69]

^^^At just under £6/kg, free range chicken is cheaper in Sainsbury's. And a lot more appetising looking. Mmmmm.



Edit: I'm sure it's just run of the mill chicken breast. But it's. Just. So. Boring. To. Eat. There really is more to life than living off dry chicken breast and it's so expensive for what it is.

 

[Jonny69]

Another test recipe.

Chunky chicken and vegetable soup (2 portions)

Stock, 500ml (or one Oxo cube @ £0.08)
Carrot, 100g: £0.07
Potato 100g: £0.14
Pearl barley 25g: £0.02
Chicken 125g: £0.54
Total: £0.84

Roughly chop the chicken and vegetables, put everything into a pan and simmer for 30-40 minutes until the pearl barley is soft. Partially blitz it to thicken it up and season with salt and pepper. Dosh it into a bowl and serve with a hunk of buttered bread as per above.

I've been working out the calories as I go as well. There are about 250 calories per serving

 

[Jonny69]

Works out at an average of around 1530 calories a day, or enough for a small child/midget.

Wow, that's pretty poor going. I wonder if they can even get away with that legally, since it's below the recommended daily calorie count?