This meal plan based on butter beans, oats and parsnips will feed an adult male and an adult female for 7 days. If you don’t need that many calories, I’m sure you are used to the amounts you need and can adjust things accordingly. Many things will freeze, so you could make the 2 portions, but split it into, say, 3, and freeze the extra for another day. I’ll leave that part of things to you, only you know what you need. I have done the meal plans for 2 adults as I think it gives the most flexibilty. It makes it easier to halve for 1 person, or double for 4 people, more difficult for 3, but doable. For 3, you would need to double most things (bearing in mind the ingredients left over, you would only need 1 bag of sugar for instance), and freeze some leftovers. If you have no access to a freezer, spread the meals over more days than 7 I am assuming that you already have salt and pepper, and there is no tea or coffee in this list, so if you want to buy those things, they would be extra. As at the time of writing (1Nov13) you will need £15.48 in your purse at the checkout, but the amount of food actually consumed (if you follow the plan fully) comes to £13.85, so a shade less than £1 a day per person If you already have some of the items in your larder, oil and sugar perhaps, can I suggest that you use the money that would have been spent on those things to buy a spice eg cumin, turmeric or ground coriander,or a piece of fresh ginger (which can be grated and frozen) or a jar of ginger or garlic; or perhaps a pot of a growing herb; basil, coriander, mint or thyme; or a bottle of lemon or lime juice, which keeps for ages. With things like this in your larder, the options for flavouring your food are that much greater. I offer some variations in each recipe that you might like to try if you have the ingredient(s) available. Don’t forget to check out the price per 100g, those little jars of spices are the most expensive options. [table “MealPlan4ShoppingList” not found /]
this means that the food you have eaten had a total cost of £13.85, and you still have some supplies to start you off for next weeks shopping. I have priced this using mySupermarket.co.uk and Asda prices as at 1Nov13. I used Asda as a typical cheap supermarket. If you shop at the price point given, of course, it doesn’t matter where you get it. I will give as much detail as I can, to enable you to get as much value as you can while doing your shopping. If you don’t have an Asda near you, the budget supermarkets all offer good value. Look at the value ranges of the big supermarkets, or try Costco, Morrisons, Lidl or Aldi. Markets are great sources of cheap groceries, always worth a look. If you can afford to get bigger packs of groceries, please do that, as it will save you money over the coming weeks eg a tin of Allinsons yeast is 125g and costs 64p (51.2p per 100g) against the 14g in 2x7g sachets that we bought (because we can’t afford the outlay of 64p on this budget) which is 4 times as much at £2 per 100g. MySupermarket is really helpful for price comparisons as supermarkets often spread, say, red lentils, over several different places in the aisles making it really difficult to compare the per 100g price, or even find the several places that the item has been ‘hidden’. Bigger packets are not always cheaper, usually best to check the per 100g price. You can always print off your list to take to the shops with you, If you don’t have access to a computer at home, most libraries have them. Indian grocers may work out even cheaper for pulses, rice etc, but again, go armed with the cheapest per 100g price, no point staggering home with an enormous bag of rice and finding it was more expensive per 100g than the little supermarket packet. I recently bought a gigantic 5kg pack of red lentils in Morrisons because I use them all the time, and they were 10p per 100g, against the usual 20p per 100g in the smaller 500g packs. I do hope you have a go at the plan, or take what you want from it. I would love to hear what you think