Jack Monroe: "Feed a family of 4 for less than £9/week"

[Kitsune]

Link to the main article: http://jackatapinch.com/2015/11/11/feed-a-family-of-4-for-less-than-9week-me-for-the-daily-mirror/

This was originally written for the Daily Mirror, but it's been adapted onto the author's blog; I'm just linking to the main article, but there is a subset for shopping list, breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks/desserts.

Note that I'm NOT posting this to say that people should have to live on this amount, but, for those that have to, it's an excellent resource, and for those who chose to (aka: some of us...), I will vouch that most of the recipes on their site are healthy, tasty, cheap, easy, and quick to make, which is basically the holy grain of weeknight cooking.

[jengod]

Someone here linked to her before and I found her fridge pickle recipe. It's been very useful for rescuing vegetable bits. Thanks for this link as well.

[Squirrel away]

She is quite well known over here in the UK.:) I've tried a couple of her vegan recipes.

[cerat0n1a]

Interesting. I was struggling to see how it was possible based on the recipes until I looked at the newspaper original and realised that it was £9 per person. Quite a bit of her original shopping budget goes on herbs and things that might be expected to last more than a week, so I think following weeks would be even less. Definitely going to try the chocolate and chilli bean soup this week.

[Gerard]

Thanks for the link, Kitsune. Totally new resource for me, and I can already tell I'm gonna enjoy it.

[mohawkbrah]

misleading title, she actually pays £35 a week

it's £9 a week per person. which is still pretty good

[cerat0n1a]

When you take out the stuff that's likely to last more than a week (she buys a bunch of herbs and spices, flour, jam & other things in her initial £35), it works out to not much more than £1 per person per day, which for 3 meals, including a fair bit of meat & fish, is good going.

Home cooked food is one area where I make very little attempt to be frugal - it's just not big enough an expense to be worth me worrying about, but for students, or hose on benefits (or whose benefits were stopped, like the author), this is a great resource. I've made a few of the recipes since Kitsune posted the link and they've all been pretty nice.

At the time of the original post, I could knock a fair bit off her budget, because (in November) there are thousands of apples going free round here; most people don't even bother to pick them. Similarly, I could've had tomatoes, spinach and onions from the garden.