Credit crunch weekly meal planner
Family dinners for a week for £40
With food prices continuing to rise, you may find that there's a lot less in your shopping basket for the same money than there was a year ago. In fact, mysupermarket.co.uk has found that a basket of basic staple food items including bread, milk, pasta, minced beef, orange juice and eggs has increased by 21% - that's £1,092 a year!
To help you beat the credit crunch, we've put together a week's worth of cheap family recipes that will feed a family of four for just £40. Some websites offer meals for under a fiver, but when you try and buy the ingredients, you realise that you can't just buy single eggs and tablespoons of milk, you have to buy a box of eggs, and a half-pint of milk and suddenly your meal isn't looking so cheap.
But we've done all the sums for you and added together what you'll need for the week without cheating on the quantities you have to buy products in. You really can make dinner for a week for a family of four for £40!
Here are the week's meals:
Monday: Spicy pork chops
Tuesday: Eggs Flamenco
Wednesday: Quick fish pie
Thursday: Fusilli with egg and broccoli
Friday: Chicken Madras curry
Saturday: Goat's cheese and spinach pizza
Sunday: Chicken roast
On the next page is your credit crunch shopping list, with all the ingredients you'll need, to print out and take to the shops with you.
By Anna Penniceard
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Dawnie, 5 months
Some good recipes there, but have to agree with others, what do you feel your family for the other 2 meals?
Report this commentdonna, 7 months
i think that £20per head is quite expensive for a week. i run a cafe supplying an alternative to meals on wheels but i make them nicer and bigger portions and i can do this for just over £2.00 per person per meal. this works out at £14.70 per week. and dont forget that you still have to buy for breakfast,lunch and any snacks so be careful you've checked all the extras also.
Report this commentElaine sanders, 10 months
the recepies sound nice but i cant have spicy food due to health problems
Report this commentFoodwitch, 12 months
This is great. Randomly, I've created something similar called "Credit Munchers: Get your weekly food shop for under £20" with a weekly meal plan, recipes and shopping lists for 1 & 2 people: http://www.foodwitch.com/pages/blog.html I plan to update this each week, but only if enough people are interested ;0)
Report this commentjanet, 12 months
yes this is a good idea, but not if you are on a gluten and dairy free diets, then the costs of buying the speicel foods you need it has almost doubled, un less you are one of the lucky one's who get most of the basics from the doctors, if not you are looking at £60 plus for a week
Report this commentJo, 12 months
I agree, great idea doing the shopping list and everything, but is there only ever going to be this one week's shopping? I did this over a month ago and i've had to fend for myself since!!!
Report this commentMelanie, 12 months
great stuff! But are you going to carry on giving us weekly menus ?? I'm certainly going to give this one a try. Thank you
Report this commentAndy, about 1 year
Recepies are excellent but one meal a day doesn't feed a family for £40.
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Dawn, about 1 month
Good idea and i have tried and tested a few of the recipes but i agree - it's expensive and one meal per day definately doesn't feed my family for £40.
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