Can I eat for a week for 25 Euro ?

Ish66

(Mods, Move this to another forum if not suited.)
I will post every evening, but I will have to jazz up the description a bit as is my norm...:D
Right, Fridge barren, I have an oven ,hob, slow cooker and a microwave and need
a shopping list. I know it will be have to be a mostly pasta ,fresh veg stir fry type of mix but a cheap meat has me a bit flummixed.
I have the the basics like condiments and also coffee, butter etc so bear in mind
its for 1 for a week for one,. So far on list..
2 packets of pasta
several jars of pasta sauce @69c
Chicken Thighs
Pork mince
49c microwave in bag baby spuds x 3
I still have about 15 euro left so please add to my list.
I will post the end result every evening. Thanks
Mark

sammyjo90

How can we give you a shopping list? Nobody knows what you will and wont eat

Gloomtastic!

If you avoid meat, you can eat pretty cheaply imho. Don't forget lentils, they're a great mince substitute.

Dizzyblonde

Mod note:
I've given this a thread of its own

You've given yourself quite a challenge! With regard to meal ideas, you should find inspiration in the Weekly Meal Plans thread:
https://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2058125401

endacl

Make your own pasta sauce. Will be cheaper and healthier.

PARlance

Ish66 wrote: »

(Mods, Move this to another forum if not suited.)
I will post every evening, but I will have to jazz up the description a bit as is my norm...:D
Right, Fridge barren, I have an oven ,hob, slow cooker and a microwave and need
a shopping list. I know it will be have to be a mostly pasta ,fresh veg stir fry type of mix but a cheap meat has me a bit flummixed.
I have the the basics like condiments and also coffee, butter etc so bear in mind
its for 1 for a week for one,. So far on list..
2 packets of pasta
several jars of pasta sauce @69c
Chicken Thighs
Pork mince
49c microwave in bag baby spuds x 3
I still have about 15 euro left so please add to my list.
I will post the end result every evening. Thanks
Mark

You could eat extremely well for a week on €25 imo.

Spaghetti carbonara or Spaghetti aglio e olio
Bangers & mash with onion gravy
Chicken stir fry
Spanish omelette and salad (or chips)
Chickpea and potato curry
Homemade meatballs and mash

You'd probably have enough for a nice steak come Sunday.

I don't think it's much of a challenge if you like cooking and are prepared to eat less meat. I'm a meat lover but have found myself having more and more veg days, and generally feel the better for it.

I would be relatively confident that you could feed a family of 4 well for €25 a week, but that would be a challenge.

con747

Chicken breasts usually 5 for €5 so that would do a pasta dish, curry, and stir fry all for less than €10 with just 4 days left. And possibly some chicken left for something else. Big pack of minced beef and you have a chilly, shepherd's pie, beef nacho's all under €10 for 3+ dinners. Carrot's and parsnips make a big pot of soup for lunches for a few euro. No shortage of ways to eat well for €25 over a week. Maybe you need to lower your budget. :pac:

Bicyclette

Get some Tomato Passata. Add some herbs and some veg and simmer. You will make a much nicer pasta sauce than any of the bottled ones. Passata can also be thinned down and supplemented with veg for a lovely soup. Or you can add herbs and put it onto a pizza base.

Hillmanhunter1

One tip and one question:

Tip - make a list, but be flexible - if something is on offer buy it rather than sticking to the list

Question: Is there a freezer section in your fridge?

Cheshire Cat

Vegetarian Chili. Eat with rice, in a wrap or over a baked potato. Super cheap, super healthy and filling. I always make only half the recipe, it's loads! You could eat it three times during the week and freeze the rest.

https://www.jamieoliver.com/recipes/vegetables-recipes/kerryann-s-chilli-con-veggie/

NSAman

Ahh heyar... one takeaway chicken curry is loike 10 yo-yos!

5x

Is this €25 to be spent on only dinners, or for all meals? (Breakfast, lunch, dinner, snacks)

If it’s the latter, don’t forget the snacks otherwise it’ll make the entire experience much harsher than anything else such as the drudgery of eating the same thing for days on end! So definitely buy teabags/coffee, something to munch on during the day (like carrots or celery, they’re cheaper than crisps or nuts) & something sweet for the evening (for dessert, or sweet cravings; lidl/Aldi do cheap multipacks of bars, one or two of those’ll do you for a week).

As for meat: the cheapest meats are a whole fresh chicken and tinned tuna. A whole fresh chicken would have way more meat on it than both the packs of pork mince & chicken thighs combined you mentioned in your OP. And it’ll be cheaper too.

Next cheapest would be a roast joint of ham/bacon. Dirt cheap, and leftovers can be sliced up for lunchtime sambos too.

As mentioned elsewhere, Lentils are a good meat substitute too, and very cheap. But you’ll need spices and patience to prepare them which could get too pricy or frustrating. So only go for lentils if you know what you are doing with them.

If you can hack it, the most economical dinners would be simply 1 meat, 1 source of carbs, and one veg. It’ll be bland and boring so you’ll have to be diligent and stick to the plan, because if you can’t resist temptation you’ll never meet your €25 goal.

If you do it right it’ll be easy to avoid being too boring, you could change things up because potatoes are so versatile: chips one day, mash the next, etc.

Shop bought sauces are a waste of money for someone spending €25 over 7 days. You need to focus on maximising your nutritious-calories per euro spent, rather than taste, unfortunately!

Potatoes are by far the cheapest carbs. Ditch the fancy (expensive) microwave packs and buy a 5kg or 10kg bag. The bang for buck in terms of calories/euro for potatoes is way better than pasta. Ditch the pasta too. Pasta also has virtually no other nutrients whereas potatoes are packed with vitamins and minerals. (Also, pasta is only really good when it’s eaten fresh. Which isn’t great for leftovers, whereas potatoes are. You could reheat any potato dish the next day and it’ll taste fine. This way if you have extra, you can cook a lot and have leftovers for lunch).

(I’d definitely echo the above poster who suggested ditching the pasta sauces too)

Breakfast & lunch could be fine with just a loaf of bread, a jar of jam and peanut butter. You’d probably need two loaves, one bought midweek. Jam for breakfast and peanut butter & jam for lunch.

Homemade bread will be way cheaper than shopbought. But it can be a lot of hassle, so don’t begrudge yourself a loaf of bread lol.

Here’s an example that combines everything I described: From just one chicken you can make at least 4 day’s worth of dinners, and then you can stretch that out to a week if you’re diligent enough:

(NB none of the below ingredients should be bought in microwaveable bags lol. Buy the raw stuff as you get far more food per euro that way)

Ingredients:
1 chicken
1 5/10kg bag of potatoes
1 bag of carrots
1 pack of celery
1 loaf of bread
Butter
Salt/pepper
Paprika

Monday:
Chicken breast fried/baked, mash, carrots
Tuesday
Use the second breast to make Chicken nuggets (assuming you’ve got some flour & oil), chips, some chopped celery
Wednesday
Chicken thighs & legs fried in a tin of plum tomatoes with some paprika/spices and a chopped stalk of celery, would go with either bread or mash or chips or boiled potatoes, depending on your mood.
Thursday
(Preferably made on Wednesday night) Chicken soup with the carcass used as stock and any leftover meat, carrots & celery chucked in. With mash.

Add a jar of jam & peanut butter, and a multipack of chocolate bars and that’s your 3 meals per day for 4 whole days, plus snacks. (And realistically, you’ll probably have leftovers to freeze from Wednesday and from Thursday so you can stretch those days out to fill the rest of the week’s dinners too, that’s at least 2 more dinners and maybe 3.)

That entire menu is cheap as chips, and not too bad taste-wise. And best of all, it’s quite nutritious too, and easily covers all the bases regarding your nutrient needs for the short term.

Then repeat that menu for the next few days, or until you’re loaded again

limnam

Don't forget your porridge.

Breakfast of champions for little or nothing.

25 / 7 = 3.5.

So that's three €1 hamburgers from McDonald's per day, and a saving of €3.50 in the pocket (or you could go mad, and get four burgers on three of the days).

KevRossi

Tin of anchovies from Lidl/Aldi - €0.99
Handful of black olives
Capers

Make yourself 'Puttanesca Sauce' for the pasta.

Agree with above; never buy ready made sauces. Always buy passata as it has no added sugar or salt etc. in it.

Tar.Aldarion

This is trivial focusing on legumes for protein. A tin of kidney beans is 23 cent, chickpeas a few cent more etc. You can even get giant bags of lentils for cheap. !0kg of potatoes being 6 euro in my local shop etc.

The Nal

500g of passata is 49c in Tesco. A kilo of spaghetti is 90c. Cannellini beans 29c . Theres 10 dinner sized portions of pasta for €1.68

A 500g bag of carrots is 49c - Soup.

A can of chickpeas is 29c (falafal).

2kg of flour is €1.50. A kilo of rice is 99c etc etc

Could very well for 25 quid a week. A real challenge would be eating for a week on a tenner!

limerickabroad

I made Irish stew this week, and got four substantial (and healthy) dinners out of the following;

Stewing beef - Є4
Carrots - Є0.49
Celery - Є0.49
Onions - Є0.49
Baby Potatoes - Є1
Beef stock - Є0.69

It can be done! Chuck in some red wine, Worcestershire sauce, etc., and it would be even better . . .

PARlance

The Nal wrote: »

....A real challenge would be eating for a week on a tenner!

Messed around with an online basket earlier and I could do breakfast, lunch and dinner for 4 people for the week, for under €40. Some slight cheating by using already bought spices etc. But a varied menu that wouldn't have the kids or herself looking for a new father/husband.

I wouldn't want to be doing it every week as there's no fun in that and I'd prefer to spend more on some ingredients, but it would go unnoticed for a week imo.

Breakfast:
Porridge, cinnamon, raisins and honey. Our kids won't eat anything else so that's the easiest meal sorted.
Under €5 for the week approx.

Lunch:
We make our own bread occasionally but that would be on the cards for the full week. Cost is insignificant really as we buy flour in bulk.
Carrot and Corriander soup for a few days.
Tomato and Basil soup for others.
Some dinner leftovers to be used as well.
Approx €5 for the week.

Dinners:
2 different spaghetti dinners (Carbonara & Aglio e Olio) There would also be eggs left over for scrambled eggs at lunch / weekend fry.
Approx €5 euro for the two.
Mashed Potatoes, Bacon and Cabbage. Approx €6 with some leftover bacon for lunch sambo.
Chickpea, Potato and Spinach Curry with rice and homade naan. Approx €6 but enough for 2 days.
Pizza night on Saturday, plainer than normal but €6 for 2 garlic bread and 4 pizzas.
Roast chicken on Sunday, approx €7.

Think that's about €40 as a rough guide, deleted the basket earlier but it was under €40 and also had things like frozen berries, bananas and yoghurt for smoothies in it, as well as a small fry at weekend.

€10 for one person would be doable imo but with a lot less variation. Economies of scale and all that.

Gloomtastic!

^ Great 1st Post! Welcome to the Food Forum.

PARlance

Some of the (frugal) recipes from the above post

Potato and Chickpea Curry
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYnwYjGefPE

Spaghetti Alio e Olio
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0EyzJsf1eo

Spaghetti Carbonara (using the cheap pancetta cubes sold in the supermarkets instead)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3AAdKl1UYZs

PARlance

donalsim wrote: »

Impressive how many calories would that be per day?

Not sure but I don't think you would be in any danger of piling on the pounds.

High in carbs for sure and I know some people worry about that... but I look to Italy and their high carb diet and them having the lowest overweight/obesity levels in Europe.

The most important thing for me is that there's practically no processed foods and all cooked from scratch.

biko

You get 16 McD cheeseburgers for 25 Euro.
Not healthy but it could be done.

The Nal

donalsim wrote: »

It is healthy, no arguments from me, I don't think it's enough calories myself, which isn't the end of the world, better too little than too many.

Anecdotally I have heard it said that high carb and low protein diets from birth can affect your height and muscle development. Alot of people think the reason Indian's are so short is because of that rice based carb diet and scandinavian and Icelandics are so tall is because of high protein calcium meat and animal based diets, I think better nutrition plays a part for sure

Spanish are small and they eat ridiculous amounts of meat.

Accidentally

If you live alone and you have a freezer, do some batch cooking, and then break up into individual freezer bags. Works out very cheap, and great for the evenings when you just don't feel like the hassle of cooking. Chilli, tagine, and curries work brilliantly for this.

Oranage2

As many said, 25euro a week is simple. You should try 25euro for the month. That would be really character building.

Ish66

Sorry, I had to go out for a few hours so to answer a few questions
I eat everything
The 25 has to cover all my food bar fresh milk bread etc. I have a seperate 5 euro for that stuff
I have gathered tons of info from your posts and am heading to Aldi @6. I will post up what I got when I come back. This should be interesting...for you lol !
Check back in a while and thanks again all, Mark:D

micah537

A pack of chicken oyster thighs and around a kg of chicken wings are €4 in total and would do one person for 4 days. Serve with sweet potato fries or make egg fried rice. That's 4 dinners for €6.

Prawn jambalaya would do for two dinners. Prawns €3, a €1 pack of rice will cover over a week of dinners and some peppers and chorizo.

Chilli cor carne/ shepherd's pie/lasagne are all super cheap to make. A €3 pack of mince would do 4 portions.

Stew or preferably Guinness stew will last three days in the pot. Price of Guinness varies but we'll sat €2. Steak chunks probably €3 some carrots parsnips and potato would be €2 or €3 and beef stock is cheap.

18 eggs, some bacon (rashers) , cheese, lettuce and bread would be under €10 for lunches. Tomato puree, canned tomatoes and kidney beans for the week probably €3.

Weetabix from Aldi is €2 for 36 and 3l of milk is €2.

I have ya fed for about 12 days on €30ish with fairly healthy meals.

Ish66

micah537 wrote: »

A pack of chicken oyster thighs and around a kg of chicken wings are €4 in total and would do one person for 4 days. Serve with sweet potato fries or make egg fried rice. That's 4 dinners for €6.

Prawn jambalaya would do for two dinners. Prawns €3, a €1 pack of rice will cover over a week of dinners and some peppers and chorizo.

Chilli cor carne/ shepherd's pie/lasagne are all super cheap to make. A €3 pack of mince would do 4 portions.

Stew or preferably Guinness stew will last three days in the pot. Price of Guinness varies but we'll sat €2. Steak chunks probably €3 some carrots parsnips and potato would be €2 or €3.

18 eggs, some bacon (rashers) , cheese, lettuce and bread would be under €10 for lunches. Tomato puree, canned tomatoes and kidney beans for the week probably €3.

Weetabix from Aldi is €2 for 36 and 3l of milk is €2.

I have ya fed for about 12 days on €30ish with fairly healthy meals.

Genius, Thank you.

con747

Ish66 wrote: »

Sorry, I had to go out for a few hours so to answer a few questions
I eat everything
The 25 has to cover all my food bar fresh milk bread etc. I have a seperate 5 euro for that stuff
I have gathered tons of info from your posts and am heading to Aldi @6. I will post up what I got when I come back. This should be interesting...for you lol !
Check back in a while and thanks again all, Mark:D

Aldi mark down products from 6 onwards so keep an eye out for 50+% off items.

Ginger83

5kg pasta and a large bisto gravy