I've been doing a food challenge that consists of rewarding ourselves by adding to a take-out fund every time I can keep the daily food cost to feed 3 meals to 8 people below $25 (I have an additional $70/week aka $10/day budget for fruits and snack foods that my kids have free choice access to, and my husband volunteers for a food rescue and sometimes comes home with unclaimed food in addition to the moldy cheese the rescue can't distribute. It means we've hardly bought any cheese in weeks).
My full food budget is $40/day or $280/week (which translates to $5/person per day), but since I started tracking my actual per- meal costs I've managed to keep it to an average cost of under $15 for 3 meals a day (again, not including snacks and fruit)
It's been fantastic at keeping me from cooking more from scratch, and I've been staying under budget way easier than I would have if I had just lowered my grocery budget to $200/week as feeling restricted just makes me feel guilty when I overspend.
Total spend was $176.87, and I earned $19 in points towards free groceries at a later date (I have been saving them to spend on food for Christmas and will have reached my goal of $200 of free groceries). I will need to buy more bread, milk and possibly fruit and yogurt before the end of the week, but don't anticipate spending more than another $50, likely closer to $20.
The cereal will last several weeks as we don't often have cereal for breakfast. But as it was on sale plus a buy two get one free offer, it was hard to pass up 6 family size (750g) boxes of cereal for just $21 (non sale price is $8 a box)
The nutrigrain bars (32 pieces) will also last multiple weeks as they are just a snack my kids get when they have sports. They were on sale for my stock up price and earned $1 in points for buying 2 boxes
The meat (5lbs ground pork) was on sale for $3.50/lb so I bought a couple of weeks worth and 4lbs of frozen turkey is always $10 ($2.50/lb)
Same with the ice cream – a sometimes treat I buy when it's on sale and with points for buying two as it was this week.
The onions were a fantastic price, $1.77/3lb bag so I bought two bags. The carrots were also $1.77/3lb bag so I bought 2 of them as well.
This is not the *only* food we will eat this week, as I will add pantry staples in stock up on when cheap such as rice, beans, lentils, canned tomatoes, spices, pasta, potatoes, flour, peanut butter, and also home canned apple sauce and jams to round out our meals as well as so much free cheese and butter that I stocked up on when it was half price.
This morning breakfast was porridge with a dollop of nutella in every bowl, lunch was grilled cheese sandwiches with cucumbers and blueberries, and dinner is turkey and dumplings made with a turkey quarter I bought for $4 and turned into homemade broth (2 onions, 1.5lbs carrots, head of garlic and half 2 cups frozen green beans + dumplings brings the total cost to under $10 for dinner, or $16 for the day (the cost of the blueberries which was 2.99 for 512g came out of the fruit/snack budget not my meal tally)
Other dinners will include lazy cabbage rolls, turkey spaghetti, baked beans, omelettes, sushi (for a potluck and I will need to buy avocados and crab sticks for), black bean burritos, and a vegetarian curry.
by heart4thehomestead
Dining and Cooking