The Budget
So here we are, as you may or may not know the challenge is create a decent menu for people on a budget, that's tasty and healthy. The budget was set at £14 for the week, this includes breakfast lunch and dinner.
My plan is to make meals in bulk so that it works out cheaper per serving, and freeze the remaining unused portions for lunch and dinner in the following weeks. So I have a budget of approx £56 for the month give or take a day or two.
I am going to test out splitting the budget in to £12 for breakfast for the month, £20 for lunches and £24 for dinners. I have an inkling i may have been a bit generous with the lunch budget so that might change and adjust into the dinner budget. We shall see how we get on!
The first shop
With this project being National we had to take into consideration the location of the supermarkets we would use. They had to be available for the majority of people to travel to. Also we decided that we could not use the deals or offers that were on at any given time, due to them not always being available. I do however think that you should look at these deals for yourself if there are any good offers on, it would be crazy to pass up the better quality products at the lower prices... Just don't exceed the budget people!
Sooo Hannah and I did some research into the various supermarkets checked the ASDA and Tesco websites, spoke to a few people about where they shop etc and came to the conclusion that we would do the majority of shopping at Lidl and whatever we couldn't get there we would use the value products from somewhere like Tesco, ASDA or Sainsbury's.
However as we were passing by Morrisons we thought it would be rude not to pop in! We bought the majority of breakfast food on Friday night. The main contenders for breakfast being 6 'M savers' crumpets at 37p, 1 kg 'M savers' porridge oats for 75p (Beast!) and 'M saver' Cornflakes for 31p
I'm thinking the porridge is going to go a long way, and i'm hoping the cornflakes taste ok! Ive weighed up a bowl of cornflakes and i recon 30-35g is a reasonable portion which works out you can have 16 servings from the one box. (So thats half the month right there!) The porridge oats around 40g per serving thats provides you with 25 servings and thats nearly a whole month! happy days!
Now I know that will probably get a bit boring so lets mix it up a bit and add some fruit and honey.
Banana bunch of 4 at 39p and runny honey £1.24. Milk is cheaper the more you buy of it, but remember it doesn't have a long shelf life only buy as much as think you will use. We bought a 2 litre (4 pinter) for 97p and of course you cant start the day without a very British cup of tea! tea bags Morrisons savers 80 for ...27p! Butter 250g for a £1(ASDA) and raisins 500g for £1.49(ASDA) Orange juice 1l £1(ASDA)
Total budget for the month £10.40
This leaves us with £1.60 to either think of another breakfast option or transfer into the Dinner budget.
I think it might be nice to have eggs at some point so I will look into that option in the coming weeks.
Just to note also the next few weeks shop will be cheaper again due to some of the items lasting longer than a week.
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| First Breakfast Shop |
As for now week 1 will be as follows...
Cornflakes with sliced banana and orange juice
Porridge with half milk half water and honey to top and a cup of tea
Wednesday
Crumpets with butter/honey and Orange juice
Thursday
Porridge with banana and a cup of tea
Friday
Cornflakes with honey and orange juice
Saturday
Crumpets with honey and cup of tea
Sunday
Porridge with raisins and orange juice
so thats breakfast sorted, lunch to follow....
It's a fantastic idea and you have clearly worked very hard at researching it, but I know from personal experience of both myself and friends that it is more expensive if you live in a rural area - either more expensive convenience stores must be used or travel or delivery costs added to the price of the ingredients. A good example of this is garlic which costs 4 times the price where I live!
ReplyDeletePerhaps you could try a more 'expensive' area if you will have less to buy next week?
you mentioned lack of milk shelf life = know cravendale milk is abit more = But because its filtered it lasts way longer than you thought possible !! & tastes better
ReplyDelete