Yet Another Cycling Forum
Off Topic => The Pub => Food & Drink => Topic started by: quixoticgeek on 01 January, 2021, 04:35:26 pm
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For those of youewho do not have kids (or they do not live with you). How much do you spend per week on food for home use (not including takeaways, meals out etc...) ?
J
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My Sainsbury's bill is about £60 for the two of us. It's been rather more the last month.
This also includes cat food, toiletries and household wares like cleaning stuff, tissues and loo rolls.
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Probably £70’ish a week. We don’t eat out or have takeaways, and we eat well with a good variety of things.
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Probably £70’ish a week. We don’t eat out or have takeaways, and we eat well with a good variety of things.
Is that per person?
J
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In 2019 our grocery bill (all supermarket and food spends excluding takeaways, meals out and alcohol) was £80 per week for the two of us. This includes non-food items (such as cleaning products) as we don't split our budget that way. In 2020 it was just over £100, but we have materially changed the way we shop (much more locally, better quality and less packaging). Plus we have also been stocking up for the possible Brexit shitstorm.
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From a quick look at the Sainbo's website which only goes back to October, and ignoring December it varies between £80-100 per week, but we have an expensive piña colada and G&T habit. Since lockdown I've also been getting fish delivered maybe once a month which has been about 20 quid a time but does us for 3 meals.
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Something a bit over £100 for the two of us. All our food shopping is done within walking distance. We've given up the supermarket habit.
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For two of us, it's usually between £100-200 a week. It varies a lot depending on whether we're restocking booze or my wife has found another £40 bottle of gin and snuck it into the trolley. Ironically, I suspect it costs a lot more because we buy actual ingredients rather than ready-made stuff (OK, I buy some ready-made curry sauces for no-faff nights). And pies. But we get throw a lot of fruit and veg. I don't recall it ever being under £100 though, even if we claim we don't need much. We don't seem to through much out, other than the occasional flaccid cucumbers and danger yoghurts.
We used to eat out. Never do takeaways though. We also get some beer delivered. And we rarely leave the house without coming back with more gin. Just in case.
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Probably £70’ish a week. We don’t eat out or have takeaways, and we eat well with a good variety of things.
Is that per person?
J
No, 2 of us.
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Our milkman also gets about £7 per week for milk.
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What's eating out?
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I don't think we ate out all of 2020.
Had takeaways delivered around once per month since lockdown started.
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Since I started doing the shopping as bi-weeky visits to Sainsbury's and paid proper attention to the total, it's been in the £50-60/wk range. That's for two of us, including things like bogroll, toiletries and cleaning materials, while slowly adding to the brexit stockpile, but with homeopathic quantities of alcohol. I've certainly been paying more for things like shampoo, which I'd previously have bought in bulk from the likes of Home Bargains,
Canadian Tire Wilko or the weird discount hair products shop.
We don't eat out recreationally (barakta likes to be able to hear), and haven't done takeaway for ages. I distinctly remember visiting a cafe in February as part of a Bike Ride...
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Over £100. Weekly delivery of organic veg, milk, eggs and some meat, plus weekly supermarket shop. Not much alcohol, mainly occasional red or white wine box, as I'm the only (modest) imbiber. Occasional specialist shop for Japanese foods, the most recent being our first on-line purchase of such.
We haven't stinted since lockdown as we're not spending much elsewhere, so focusing on good quality, home-cooked food. Mrs O is an accomplished cook for a worldwide range of cuisines so we don't miss eating out, apart from the social aspect.
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Not eating (and drinking) out saves a small fortune – an evening out for two in London won't leave much change from £100 (if any). We'd probably do more takeout, but in the Surrey jungles it's mostly identikit curries and pizza. I can do better cooking my own. There's a semi-decent Thai that I always think I should order from, but by the time I've picked up the phone, ordered and waited for it to arrive, I could have cooked something. All the India takeaways I've tried around here have been crap, but we're spoiled by having lived near some good ones in London proper.
We used to eat out once or twice a week and I do miss that. But as we're not doing that, I won't scrimp on ingredients for cooking at home. If I want a £30 steak, I'm having it. Though, as a married a woman who doesn't eat red meat, probably not. Not recently anyway.
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Just myself, food only, I budget £25 a week, for that I eat very well, though I do have plenty of time to shop, farm shops and markets mostly. I'll often spend a fair bit less, sometimes an extra weeks money at the end of the month. I don't often have takeaways, fish and chips once a month maybe, it comes out the same budget. It doesn't include eating out, which is either a cycling cafe stop, or a social occasion and a treat, so I like to do so without considering cost.
Is it a competition? I can live on a tenner a week, but it's hard work. OTOH if I had no time and a decent income I'd probably be eating less well for twice the cost.
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Around £70 a week for the 2 of us, with most of it spent at the local Aldi store which is just a 3 minute walk from home, unless we slum it and go to Lidl... which is right next door to Aldi :facepalm:
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Costco has some very reasonable priced Canadian lobster at the moment so these daily budgets people keep quoting seem more than adequate.
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I'm normally thinking in terms of ~£25 per week, with occasional meals out filed under socialising or mental health budgets.
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Our shopping has a fairly high amount of very low prep food because my ability to chop things or even stir them on a bad day is variable but always low. On a bad day I can't even use cutlery properly and am better off eating something I can just use my hands to eat. That means we do spend more on some aspects of food, or eat "less fresh/healthy food" than I would like.
I feel extremely lucky that we have been able to absorb the extra costs of pandemic food and Kim can do supermarket on the bike. I think if we had to rely on deliveries we'd be spending more, juggling combos of food more and as many of my friends have had to do, relying on deliveroo/takeaway to manage low spoons times.
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Probably about £60 per week each. That’s pretty much all in the form of ingredients that need some form of prep, aside from occasional bread. Fish intake probably higher than average, virtually no meat. Copious amounts of fruit, veg and (expensively) nuts. Includes household stuff.
That includes food for work lunches. We don’t drink, aren’t eating out of course, and have a takeaway maybe once a month.
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We'd be running at about 100-150€/week, but that includes food for two dogs. No booze.
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A quick look would suggest that we are a bit profligate! We seem to be averaging about £80 on the main Tesco shop each week, which does include a fair amount of booze, all the cleaning stuff, a Radio Times each week and so on. But we also get a lot of our meat from a friend who breeds sheep and raises pigs, bacon comes from a local butcher, fish from a man with a van, and my beer from the local brewery. And during lockdowns we've been having a takeaway once a week to support the local pubs. Maybe we need to start looking at where the money is going. (Simple answer is the booze I suppose.)
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My shopping comes to £33.77 per week for the last year, slightly up on the previous 2 years due to lockdown. This does not include alcohol, but does include cleaning products.
I always buy organic if that option is available. But I don't eat meat and have never in my life bought a ready meal. I make bread, hummus, salads, etc from scratch. Thirty quids' worth of fruit, veg, pasta, etc is a lot of food - two very full ortlieb panniers at least.
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Normally about £20/week, I live on my own and I don't eat meat. I get cleaning supplies separately.
There was a time that was closer to £10/week, it's nice to have a enough income to enjoy a wider variety of food.
I've been calorie counting for a while so I don't have takeaway's.
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I’m pretty sure my cats don’t get by on £20/week.
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I am in Sheffield, which is likely a contributing factor.
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True. My cats are in Surrey and only eat poached griffin. Organic griffin.
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When we lived in Sheffield our rent was super cheap and yeah other things were too. One day I might manage to move back there! :)
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I fancy moving to Surrey, what does poached griffin taste like?
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I fancy moving to Surrey, what does poached griffin taste like?
Griffin is like extra rancid gammon...
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My shopping comes to £33.77 per week for the last year
I’m amazed anyone can be so precise.
But then my idea of budgeting is checking how much is left in the account before going shopping... this probably explains a lot.
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When I lived in the UK I was on a salary controlled diet. I would goto Sainsbury's with a £10 note, and knew that had to last me a week's worth of food. I'm no Jack Monroe, but I was pretty damn good at making that happen.
Since I moved to .NL, my income went up dramatically. I stopped caring about how much I spent on the supermarket, bought what I needed, etc...
Then I had a spell out of work, so went back on the Salary controlled diet again. Now I'm back in work again I am getting food delivered, which means I am doing bigger shops. So now rather than doing 3 ~€25 shopping trip over a two week period, I'm doing a much bigger order. I also am splitting it with a housemate. The other day we put an order in. It came to €264 from the supermarket, then another €22 from a veg shop (5kg of spuds, 2.5kg onion, 1kg carrots, 1 cabbage, 1kg apples, and delivery). The hope is this will last us at least 2 weeks. Making it 286/4, so €71 per person, per week. Including some alcohol (tho not much), and laundry detergent. But I think we may be able to make this all stretch to 3 weeks (we may need to go get more bread tho), in which case it's just under €50 per person per week. Which feels... a lot... Esp when you consider that we're still using stuff that's in the freezer from previous purchases (mostly meat, there's a load of mince and the like in there).
I think I need more data points...
J
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For three of us our weekly food bill is £80 in total.
It helps that I love cooking and we rarely have anything premade.
Our yearly cookbook bills are probably best not scrutinised though :)
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For three of us our weekly food bill is £80 in total.
It helps that I love cooking and we rarely have anything premade.
Our yearly cookbook bills are probably best not scrutinised though :)
We don't do ready meals, the closest we come would be something like oven chips. Everything else I make from scratch.
J
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I would consider whether food in NL costs more than the UK for the same items - especially fresh food for "from scratch" prep. It could be an interesting exercise to do some basic price comparisons.
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I would consider whether food in NL costs more than the UK for the same items - especially fresh food for "from scratch" prep. It could be an interesting exercise to do some basic price comparisons.
I tried that when I first moved here, the problem is there aren't many foods I can buy here, and in the uk, in the same way. My local supermarkets do not have loose veg in the same way as in .UK. I'd goto sainsburies and buy 3 potatoes. Here I have to get 0.5kg 1.5kg, 2.5kg or 5kg. I'd often buy 1 onion. Here the onion sold in bags are so pissingly small as to be just annoying. Same for the spuds, they are so damn tiny in supermarkets. One of the reasons I ordered 5kg from a specialist online shop is that they are bigger. Esp useful if you want to make jacket potatoes.
Crisps, in .UK I'd sometimes buy a multipack, and then ration them to one pack a day. Here the only multipack is 7 ready salted, and 8 paprika. So I end up getting 120g big bags, and try not to eat them all in one day.
On a per item basis, it's impossible to compare costs. Hence thinking of it from a "How much to feed a person for a week" point of view...
J
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Since The Event I've been doing a well-rehearsed forage at the local Aldi every Monday night just before closing time. Typically comes to about £20. No meat or alcohol, no ready meals, but a fair amount of processed frozen/chilled stuff as I don't really cook anything from scratch.
The pupper who refuses to eat dry food has consumed getting on for that much in a week when she has the fancy tinned stuff (Lily's Kitchen). I've tried explaining to her that's it mostly water, but she doesn't want to listen. Fortunately she's bored of it now.
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..Ironically, I suspect it costs a lot more because we buy actual ingredients rather than ready-made stuff ...
I tend to agree with you, but what a strange world we live in, when cooking your own recipes at home costs you more than buying industrially processed food. I once checked that the price of flour, eggs, butter and sugar was actually higher than the price of a ready made cake.
A
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..Ironically, I suspect it costs a lot more because we buy actual ingredients rather than ready-made stuff ...
I tend to agree with you, but what a strange world we live in, when cooking your own recipes at home costs you more than buying industrially processed food. I once checked that the price of flour, eggs, butter and sugar was actually higher than the price of a ready made cake.
A
Who would have thought it, the economies of scale actually work...
Same reason it's easier to buy a pallet of bricks, than it is to build your own kiln... same as it's easier to buy stuff from ikea, than it is to buy a tree and saw it yourself...
Cooking from scratch, for 1 person, is probably the most inefficient way of doing it.
J
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I’d guess a lot of the price differences between countries come down to local dietary customs and preferences - if you want to eat in a fiscally prudent way, best to go native.
When I lived in France, you could get baked beans but they were strictly a luxury item. I also tended to eat a lot more couscous than pasta, largely for reasons of cost.
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I’d guess a lot of the price differences between countries come down to local dietary customs and preferences - if you want to eat in a fiscally prudent way, best to go native.
When I lived in France, you could get baked beans but they were strictly a luxury item. I also tended to eat a lot more couscous than pasta, largely for reasons of cost.
Recently cooked:
Hachee
Draadjesvlees
Stamppot Boerenkohl..
J
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I once checked that the price of flour, eggs, butter and sugar was actually higher than the price of a ready made cake.
Butter is expensive. I would guess the typical Mr Kipling cake doesn’t actually contain any butter.
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I’d guess a lot of the price differences between countries come down to local dietary customs and preferences - if you want to eat in a fiscally prudent way, best to go native.
When I lived in France, you could get baked beans but they were strictly a luxury item. I also tended to eat a lot more couscous than pasta, largely for reasons of cost.
Recently cooked:
Hachee
Draadjesvlees
Stamppot Boerenkohl..
J
And you and your housemate are even going Dutch on the shopping!
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My shopping comes to £33.77 per week for the last year
I’m amazed anyone can be so precise.
But then my idea of budgeting is checking how much is left in the account before going shopping... this probably explains a lot.
I keep a spreadsheet, broken down into categories.
The main reason was to work out how much income I need to be able to retire - ie, remove mortgage, commuting, etc, how much do I actually spend?
At the start I thought it might indicate areas where I should cut down expenditure, but the opposite is true - I saw how much I spent on gifts and charity over a year and realised I could increase those.
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Today was £198. I've no idea why, there wasn't even that much booze, about six cans and some cider because I sniffed some apples yesterday and got an urge. No gin. The cats set me back about £14 (two packs of posho cat food because the won't eat the cheap stuff and a bag of cat litter for them to kick about the house). My wife did that thing with a box of cherries (£5) where I tell her to put them back and so she takes them out of the trolley twists and makes like she's putting them back on the shelf but instead just puts them back in the trolley. She also puts stuff in when I'm off messing with the Daily Mail (I wait till no one is looking and then put another newspaper on top, usually the Croydon Guardian, so it looks like they've run out). I sometimes try to put her stuff back when she's not looking but it turns out that she's always looking.
A chicken cost me £11 and some duck legs about £7. There's a small ocean of fish (Icelandic cod, salmon, smoked salmon, prawns) which cost shedloads but think of the vitamin D. I'm not risking rickets. Sausages. Fruit and veg is never cheap (broccoli, courgettes, peppers, tomatoes, leeks, spring greens, potatoes, shallots, turmeric (so, so middle-class), all sorts of chilli peppers, garlic, chestnut mushrooms oranges, melons (x2), blueberries, kiwis, those bloody cherries, apples and pears). Pies are expensive (£4.50 each) but Wednesday is pie and mash night and I can't be bothered with the palaver of making my own. Sliced ham, olives, butter, double cream, creme fraiche, and a big tub of plain yoghurt, tuna pate and bread rolls (for lunch), some pastries (for tea), tonic water (medicinal, we've been self-medicating with a daily g&t since the current unpleasantness started and we've not caught covid yet, coincidence, I think not). Some random toiletries and a big pack of kitchen towels. Mini-Cheddars because they're the king of snacks (the red leicester ones though, they're the best).
There was a plant (£10) and two bunches of flowers (about £12). Apparently not for eating.
Some other sundries I've forgotten about, but it all evidently adds up. I'm not sure how some of you get it so cheap. I have tried living in Sheffield (it's true, by Ecclesall Park), it wasn't that helpful.
We're not entirely mental, we do go in with an idea of what we plan to eat the following week (fish curry, pie and mash night, Hainanese-ish chicken, duck leg curry, smoked salmon lasagne, pizza, sausage ragu pasta thing).
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Between £60 & £80 (depending on how much booze we buy) a week for the two of us at the supermarket. Includes cleaning materials and bog roll, kitchen roll, shampoo, etc.
And every few weeks we do an online shop for the bulky and long life stuff, and more alcohol, that varies between £100 & £200.
We certainly could spend less but we like to eat well. And whilst we never threw much out we've been even better the last several months at using everything up. Mostly this means if the veg is a bit too sad for anything else I make a soup.
Don't keep records but I expect we've been spending more lately but that's countered by not eating/drinking out or going anywhere.
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Since I've been working at home our
drink food bill has increased.
We click & collect or get deliveries and it's somewhere between £50 & £150.
We don't buy ready meals but One of us has a brand problem. If I've recently collected a care package from work it's much cheaper.
We did a whole 30 for June, and that was more expensive - 3 meals every day seems an awful lot.
ETA: that doesn't include the stuff we get on Subscribe&Save.
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One of us has a brand problem.
That’s a whole other topic... fortunately, there are only a few things I’m really that picky about, where I’m adamant the difference is noticeable enough to be worth the extra cost.
Pet food is not one of those things though. I don’t know if the dog is happy with Aldi own-brand dry dog food, but the choice is that or going hungry.
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I keep a spreadsheet, broken down into categories.
I’ve tried doing that - or at least using apps like Quicken - but I don’t have the self discipline to keep it up for more than a few weeks at a time. Probably should make more effort. I know it would be beneficial.
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..Ironically, I suspect it costs a lot more because we buy actual ingredients rather than ready-made stuff ...
I tend to agree with you, but what a strange world we live in, when cooking your own recipes at home costs you more than buying industrially processed food. I once checked that the price of flour, eggs, butter and sugar was actually higher than the price of a ready made cake.
Some of that's because the ingredients we'd buy in a supermarket are more expensive for a reason. Mr Kipling isn't buying free-range eggs in expensively-printed boxes of 6 from Sainsbury's. And fresh ingredients have more expensive supply chains than processed food with a long shelf life.
The other thing that's easy to overlook from a middle class perspective is the cost of the energy: Bake a cake at home, and you'll easily burn through a kWh or two. An industrial oven can bake dozens of cakes with the same amount of energy. Cooking a curry or similar from scratch in a pan uses much more energy than heating a ready meal equivalent up in the microwave.
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I bought a 2.5kg bag of white potatoes for 39p, from Sainsbury's, just before Christmas.
I wonder how much this 'bargain' will cost to store and cook...
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I bought a 2.5kg bag of white potatoes for 39p, from Sainsbury's, just before Christmas.
I bought one of those TAAW. So far it's been lasting reasonably well (ie. escaped detection by the local wildlife) dangling in the outhouse with the spiders and gardening tools. (Not the one with the landlord's shitty cooker, strategic meths reserve and assorted Useful Bits Of Wood, as I failed to make clear to barakta before she picked a fight with its very stiff bolt in search of spuds.)
Fearing for their shelf life, I did at least remember to bung a couple of the larger ones in the oven along with whatever I was already cooking the other day, which barakta later re-heated for lunch.
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I finalised a WR order this morning and was surprised how little it was - about £80 for two of us for the week. Then I realised that I had forgotten to put fresh fruit in so have done a Riverford order and that came to another £31. They are expensive...
There was no booze in there.
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There are certain cheap items that we don't need to buy at the moment, because I grew them in the summer. Taters & onions.
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I'm not sure growing food ever counts as cheap, as it involves Gardening, which is expensive both in terms of time that could otherwise be spent riding one's bicycle and risk of stupid injuries.
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The good thing about gardening, when it's your own garden, is that you can do a very little bit every so often. A few 5 to 10 minuteses add up. I would never consider going for a 5 minute bike ride unless it was to the chemist's or something, but they are delivering all our stuff now.
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I keep a spreadsheet, broken down into categories.
I’ve tried doing that - or at least using apps like Quicken - but I don’t have the self discipline to keep it up for more than a few weeks at a time. Probably should make more effort. I know it would be beneficial.
I control and record my spending by using a separate account, currently a pre-paid debit card, I top it up each month to £25 x Sundays in the month. Only used for food and household shopping (When I need cash it comes out of this account) and I don't use anything else for this shopping. I've never run out, though have sometimes had to economise in the last week, which can be an interesting challenge in itself. It doesn't offer the sort of breakdown that could be used for any meaningful analysis, I'm not looking for that. This is how I've managed my spending for the last four years, which is when I last had a regular income, like any budgeting it's just getting into a habit.
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On a per item basis, it's impossible to compare costs. Hence thinking of it from a "How much to feed a person for a week" point of view...
J
I get that pack sizes can be different, but doesn't all supermarket food have a unit cost you can compare?
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I get that pack sizes can be different, but doesn't all supermarket food have a unit cost you can compare?
Yes, but I can't buy the same things in .UK as I can in .NL. I don't buy the same things here as I did in the UK. Sure I can compare a few basics, like a 500ml bottle of milk. But because I didn't buy potatoes by the 2.5kg bag in .UK, I can't compare easily with the way I did. I buy 2.5kg from the Dutch supermarket, and then bin some because they don't keep. A loaf of bread as I buy it here, is very different to how I bought it in .uk. Direct comparison is hard.
J
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I'm not sure growing food ever counts as cheap, as it involves Gardening, which is expensive both in terms of time that could otherwise be spent riding one's bicycle and risk of stupid injuries.
I occasionally grow things – it's a lot of effort for not a lot of meals and I'm sure the cost of that effort, the watering, and epic battle against slugs doesn't make it cost-effective as anything other than a hobby unless I scale up and sign an armistice with the slugs.
I do understand that manufactured stuff is cheaper for the reasons mentioned. If I want to make a pie, a task I am capable of, then you've obtained all the ingredients, cooked the filling, made the pastry, combine and cooked the final produce. That might put it on par with a premium pie at £4.50, but let's face it, you can get one that features Nobby the Dearly Departed Horse for about £1.25.
I usually make pizzas at the weekend – the dough is pretty cheap, though I'm sure my flour is free-range. But toppings mount up. A jar of pesto*, olives, some veg matter, maybe meat, cheese. I've no added up the cost, but I'm sure it's a fair amount more than a cheap supermarket pizza. Titchy little bags of ingredients like pine nuts will set you back the better part of a fiver (yeah, you can buy in bulk, but unless you're a squirrel, who eats that many pine nuts).
The cheaper to make your own stuff mostly only seems to apply to an endless diet of pasta and tomato sauce or constant potato surprises. Which tends to be why it's advocated by people with Agas for people who don't have Agas.
*I've mostly given up making it unless I can get decent basil, the stuff in British shops appears to taste of practically nothing and thus not worth the minimal effort.
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My great uncle emigrated to the Netherlands from Hong Kong, and ran a Chinese restaurant there. They always thought the Dutch are strange about food, especially how much they love fried rice. They seem to live on stuff on bread. Herring and onion on bread, gouda and ham on bread, hundreds and thousands on bread. Still they seem to do well on it, as they're the tallest people in the world.
I've always found the various big mac indexes as the best way to compare rough food prices across the developed world. Essentially how long it takes to earn a big mac in each country working at the average wage. From this, the food cost in the Netherlands does seem higher.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/275235/big-mac-worldwide-cities-working-time/
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We're somewhere around £80-90/wk on average for two adults and two young children.
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They always thought the Dutch are strange about food, especially how much they love fried rice.
Who doesn't love fried rice?
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My parents, who don't eat rice (or pasta). Too foreign. My first taste of Chinese or Indian food wasn't till I was at university.
I've presumed, with no evidence beyond anecdote, that the Dutch love of rice comes from their once-upon-a-time far-eastern possessions. The Indonesians like their nasi goreng as much as I do.
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Nasi Goreng was one of the few concessions to foody cultural appropriation the RAF made in the 1970s, when I joined. It was suspiciously like left-over rice from the curry the night before (the sole other furrin food), including odd bits of whatever meat was sprinkled in the curry, with a fried egg over it to hide the evidence. It was years before I realised rice didn't have to be crunchy.
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Sounds a lot like what I make! Whenever we have rice with our evening meal, I tend to cook far more than is necessary just for the excuse to have fried rice for lunch the following day. I wouldn't call what I make in any way authentic nasi goreng but it's often a rough approximation - it's usually just an assembly of whatever we have available. Uncle Roger would be horrified.
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In my experience, that is the authentic Indonesian approach.
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In my experience, that is the authentic Indonesian approach.
Yes, you're probably right. I was thinking more in terms of the ingredients used than the method.
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I think generally, at least in the more rustic roadside places, they throw everything in the pan and hope for the best. The only non-standard ingredient is the fermented shrimp paste which I had to get from the Chinese supermarket – sambal and ketjap manis condiments are available in any supermarket these days.
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HP sauce is a good substitute though.
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Not sure about that, sir.
I think my jar of shrimp paste is about five years old, I hope it doesn't have a use-by.
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Not sure about that, sir.
I think my jar of shrimp paste is about five years old, I hope it doesn't have a use-by.
I bought a block of dried shrimp paste 10 years ago. The expiry date is July 2016. Still using it, still adds that authentic flavor to my nasi goreng.
(And to answer the original question: about 70 euros per week on groceries. It would be higher if I ate meat, I guess.)
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I was mulling over individual meal costs earlier. They vary quite a lot. I made a fish curry on Sunday night, which involved cod, salmon, king prawns, curry spices, tamarind, coconut milk, plus pilau rice (basmati, peas, pilau spices, and turmeric). Totting that up, I think £8-9/pp. Plus some ready-made starters. I'd say about £10/pp.
I think that's probably the most expensive meal I usually make because the fish costs the better part of £15. It'd probably be cheaper if I got the fish from a fishmonger, but hey ho, the supermarkets killed that.
Inauthentic Hainanese chicken thing the other night – whole chicken, ginger, turmeric, garlic, rice, some stir-fried spring greens. The chicken was £10 (though I'll get another meal out of the legs in some fried rice tonight), but let's call it £7/pp.
Last night, duck curry – duck legs were £4 for two. Garlic, ginger, onions, some spices, chilli pepper, rice. Probably about £5/pp (and the best meal I ate this week).
Tonight will be cheap as it'll be whatever veg needs eating, rice, leftover chicken, and egg. I'm breaking with the lore of the Asbestos Palace and moving pie night to tomorrow in case those chicken legs reanimate.
That doesn't include the cooking costs, the duck curry had to sit on the hob for two hours (next time I'll try the slow cooker), the chicken an hour-and-a-half in the oven.
Generally, it'd be cheaper to eat cheap pub food in £5.99 deals. I don't really buy ready meals so I'm not sure how it compares. Meat makes up much of the cost.
Not sure what the rest of this weeks £200 grocery bill went on though.
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Not sure about that, sir.
I think my jar of shrimp paste is about five years old, I hope it doesn't have a use-by.
I bought a block of dried shrimp paste 10 years ago. The expiry date is July 2016. Still using it, still adds that authentic flavor to my nasi goreng.
(And to answer the original question: about 70 euros per week on groceries. It would be higher if I ate meat, I guess.)
April 2018. I figure it was off to start with. Mind you, I used this theory once for yoghurt and demonstrated by shovelling a spoonful into my mouth. There's off and there's off. It was off. I spoffed foul yoghurt everywhere. My wife made a very adult comment, the sort you'd usually accredit to me about spitting and swallowing.
Anyway, you don't actually taste the fermented shrimp paste in nasi goreng (we call it nasty orangutan), it just adds that umami. I also throw in my signature sprinkle of MSG. Only 9.5kg of that to go before I restock.
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Man, those meals seems really expensive and yeah the meat is a huge factor.
I've had lentil curry with rice the last 2 nights, all in probably less £1/meal. It was delicious and it satisfied me.
I probably spend more on beer than I do on food.
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I probably spend more on beer than I do on food.
What do you mean? Beer IS food!
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Fair point, I just buy it separately, usually direct from a brewery - speaking of which www.magicrockbr...
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I'm sure that I spend more on beer than food but I only drink it at the weekend or on special occasions. But I do have a lock-down G&T which isn't featured in my guesscalations. The duck curry was actually about £3/pp now I think about it (but the last time I had it was £17 in a restaurant and I think I did a fair facsimile). I could have gone down to the lake and spanged a duck over the head, of course, and it would have been cheaper.
I don't really think about what I buy, I was just testing the theory that it's cheaper not to make stuff. I don't feel especially decadent, it's not like I'm gorging on truffles, lobster, and caviar. Some things are best saved until to the weekend.
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Our booze budget is trivial. We hardly drink but bought wine as gift for Cleaning Lady and two 500ml bottles of Kopparberg for Christmas.
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Hmm, I still have five cases of beer in the porch that doesn't yet fit in the house.
For the record, I don't especially like lobster or truffles, and I hate caviar. Eating a lobster is like a secret cinema version of Starship Troopers.