I wondered how much you could buy with £9? Enough food for a week? It would be interesting to see.
I know lots of people have done the £1 a day challenge in the past - which I freely admit I could never do and this £9 shop is purely theoretical too - I doubt I could stick to it for real.
This is what I "bought"
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| willow spread 78p |
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| 5 bananas 69p |
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| 4 Baking potatoes on offer at 50p |
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| Chicken thighs £1.70 |
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| Cheapest way to buy cheese £1 |
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| cheapest bread 32p |
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| 70p |
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| cheapest spaghetti 20p |
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| 2 tins at 28p each |
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| 70p for 100g of the cheapest coffee |
OR Cheapest tea-bags at 55p for 80
Next take the spare £1.85p/ £2.00 to Asda and buy a Smart Price Tin of 565g Pineapple for 68p and
ASDA Frozen for Freshness Broccoli Cauliflower & Carrot for 99p
use the rest to buy 2 onions .
I think this would go a long way to providing a bit of protein and filling 1 person for a week but would mean eating the same every day - Peanut butter on toast for breakfast. Cheese sandwich and fruit for lunch. With a variation on chicken/vegetables/ spaghetti and a tomato sauce with the onions and tinned tomatoes. Variety would cost more.
Much too short in the fruit and vegetable department and I would want milk too but if there was only £9 to spare it wouldn't be too bad but I bet YOU could do better!
Back Tomorrow
Sue
Your sentence "variety would cost more" jumped out at me. We've come to expect a different menu every day. My other query regards growing your own veg - do you ever work out much you spend each year on seeds etc versus the amount of produce obtained?
ReplyDeleteVery interesting Sue and makes me feel ashamed that I have never had to consider how much I spent on food - not that I have unlimited money but Imean I have enough to have a varied and healthy diet and can change it each week. And it is a very long time since I grew my own veg. But when I think back to my parents - my mother always economised and my father grew all our veg and we always, always ate well - nothing unusual and never a recipe book, but always good healthy food.
ReplyDeleteI'm not so sure I could, Sue, not now. I did do a pound a day (£30 for a month - which makes it a lot easier) several years ago and the challenge was fun, but I wouldn't fancy it now, not the way prices have gone up.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, variety adds cost.
xx
Years ago when I was really skint I might have bought some of those things, but not now. It's not the fact that they are cheap which puts me off, but what is actually in them.
ReplyDeleteYou did a great job, not a fan of peanut butter so I would have changed that for jam or marmalade. Baked beans I would also have added they are full of nutrition and filling.
ReplyDeleteI have not used coins or notes for ages. Cards over the phone and contactless have done the trick apart from Vets bills that were very much over the £45 limit!
ReplyDeleteCoins? What are those? I have some lurking somewhere. I wonder how much more you could have bought if you'd had access to yellow stickers and no browsing restrictions?
ReplyDeleteRP - I have £4.96 in my purse from the first week of March and it hasn't had an outing since! They wanted to make us all just do card payments - looks like they have got their way for the moment!
DeleteBovey Belle, I have actually written 3 cheques! I can't get to my bank, or a cashpoint, and my £9.56 isn't going to pay the workmen! All were happy with a cheque. Maybe they'll make a comeback?
DeleteMilk and bread and you could eat like a king all for free!
ReplyDeleteTo answer your question - "No, I couldn't do better, but I'm sure a certain Sue in Wales would have a go".
ReplyDeleteI probably would manage to lose some of my 'lockdown lard' if nothing else...actually with the fresh fruits and veg from the garden and some local eggs we're managing rather well at the moment...x
ReplyDeleteI have a good store cupboard at the moment so would probably blow the lot on fresh fruit and veg. None of us drink coffee, or eat peanut butter, so those would be out, and I make my own bread, and have lots of tins of tomatoes in store. I could blow the whole lot on cat food tbh, with 7 hungry mouths to feed!!
ReplyDeleteYou did remarkably well with your 9 pounds and could PROBABLY keep a human in the required number of calories, but balanced/healthy it ain't. And that is a lesson to all of us about how 'the other half' may be obliged to live week after week after week. The cheapest food should be the UNPROCESSED stuff WITHOUT any packaging. A pound a day might be do-able for a while if you have a cupboard with 'notions' in it (flour, sugar, herbs & spices) etc, but people who have to live on a pound a day have empty cupboards as a starting point. Angela's point about the cost of grow your own is also a very real one for many people with straitened budgets. Growing your own in any meaningful way means a BIG garden, lots of attention to it, and often a fairly hefty starting investment (tools, seeds etc, allotment rent). I have managed to live off my allotment and the contents of freezer and preserves and 'dry stores' cupboards for weeks at a time over winter, but yes 'variety' became a bit of a challenge. I also seriously missed cheese and crunchy freshness (I could never grow carrots, so turnips were my 'apple' substitute). When the teabags ran out the devotion to the exercise evaporated;for me it could. For many it cannot. So thank you for illustrating that so well for us.
ReplyDeleteI thought it looked quite a healthy collection myself. Bananas, tinned tomatoes, potatoes, chicken and cheese and bread and spread and peanut butter etc. Oh well.
ReplyDeleteWhat always troubles me is how can they possibly do five bananas for 69p? It doesn't seem right.
ReplyDeleteI'm with Tasker...five bananas in the US cost me £1.36. All those prices are way below current US costs...even for the most inexpensive ones out there. Still, good job on finding things that (theoretically) might work for your £9.
ReplyDeleteMost British and European food prices are well below ours. We spend part of the winter over there and I'm always amazed at how far my food budget will go.
DeleteTry Canadian Prices! The equivalent comes out to about $15 Cdn. - a litre of milk is $3 - teabags would be at least $5 - even the cheapest bread would be $3 and peanut butter I only buy on sale when its about $4. The only thing we get a good buy on is bananas - my No Frills store often has them for around 60cents a pound.
DeleteSupermarkets exploit the British farmer and all food producers at home and abroad and have been allowed to get away with it for decades. The supermarkets don't carry these reductions, they pass it on to the producers and just say to the, tough, this is all we are paying you. They have a lot of power.
DeleteYou did really well there, swapping the chicken, butter and cheese for other things I think my foods would have been pretty similar. Now you just have to DO it. :-)
ReplyDeleteTo be honest after my just finished two week long Challenge it's good to be having a rest.
To tell the truth I've been itching to do a little Challenge shopping with my vouchers. Which came in two lots (2 x 2) from M&S and Tesco and haven't been used as yet. I just can't justify loitering around the shops and without mysupermarket.com you can't plan ahead from home and write out a list properly can you. I dare say I have enough to be able to eat for a month, at a lower cost than my Morrisons Vegan Box, which did have a lot of posher foods.
My sort of challenge Sue. I thought you did well.quite well balanced I thought.x
ReplyDeleteI suspect the cheap bananas were part of the '5 fruits/vegetables @ 69p each' which the supermarkets often offer at a bargain price to attract customers.
ReplyDeleteAs a pensioner with no private pensions I do have to spend sparingly, BUT I draw the line at cheap, nasty coffee or tasteless, lardy spreads. I'd rather eat less and enjoy what I'm eating. I look for the bargains in energy suppliers, or phone providers, rather than trawl the shops. And I have little treats as well - wine, flowers and the best thing - a week away in October when the rates are lower and beaches are dog-friendly. (Still hoping this year's booking will be available with no Covid interference.)
You did good with that shop. Protein foods tend to be more expensive and you have those included at a good price. In fact all those prices are much better than what it would be here in the U.S.
ReplyDeleteWow! The prices are so good. Food in America is SO expensive! Even the 'cheap' places don't have prices that good. I know that when I visit Mum I can eat for a lot less lol
ReplyDeleteCooking for one with "real" food leads to many frozen meals ahead and the same food several nights in a row. Actually, both solutions work just fine for me.
ReplyDeleteThose prices seemed very cheap. (I am in New Zealand). At least one bank here no longer accepts cheques.
ReplyDeleteI know I could not do better. You did very well.
ReplyDeleteGod bless.
I wonder how WW2 rations would work out in terms of cost?
ReplyDeleteTHAT'S a good thought :-)
DeleteMy those prices seem really cheap. I'm in New Zealand and live very economically but don't have supermarket prices like that! I;m feeling a little envious:)
ReplyDelete