Interesting.
I thought our spend was going up quite a lot (earlier in this thread I posted £60 per month per person, or £15 a week each). Definitely not just rice and beans and that number includes most alcohol and all cleaning/toiletries, but a decent amount of our fruit and vegetables are foraged/grown (let's not go into how much my time costs and how these ways of getting food are infinitely more expensive than the shop).
BUT, I've just had a look at our spending since I came back from uni/work travelling on the 13th March and we're on £132.70 (£66.35 each) for the period 14th March-14th April
or £116.78 (£58.39 each) since the lockdown started. We'll most likely not shop again till the weekend.
Seems it really is a case of what you're used to!
We did start with a full freezer(at least half of it fruit and vegetables from the plot, but I also like to freeze meat, fish, bread and dairy when I come across cracking deals. We also had a decent 'stockpile' affectionately known as 'the Brexit Stashe'. At least, it's decent by the standards of people who live in Scottish flats less than a 5 min walk to the supermarket. I'm sure many across the pond would be horrified by what I call a well stocked kitchen. How can that include just 4.5kg of rice?!
Having plenty on hand (apart from flour - why did I not buy extra back in January, WHY???). This has given us the flexibility to not have to substitute too much when we're in the shop, but we've been replenishing the pile at the same rate as we've been eating, just slightly different stuff.
We do feel the need to be more organized and disciplined. I'm usually someone who loves to take inspiration from the random yellow sticker veg on my way home from work and we usually only buy 'snacks' if the plan is to eat them that day. Now we're 'rationing' the oaties (how can milk chocolate hobnobs from lidl be sooo good? things that cost 41p should not be allowed to be so incredible).
I'll have a go at the breakdown of food for today:
breakfast: moka pot coffee with milk, stewed rhubarb, oats and milk (err 15p for the coffee 10p for the milk, 2p for the bit of ginger and the sugar in the rhubarb, 5p for the oats) = 32p
lunch: leftover potato and chickpea curry with rice, a poppadum and some spiced onions (homemade, except the poppadum, which I did deep fry myself) - call it 50p per portion
dinner: swiss chard, green lentils, fresh herbs and yoghurt/cream cheese, with spiced sweet potato wedges (possibly some boiled eggs on top of the creamy/herby /lentilly/swish chard mush) - err 80p
snacks: 3 cups of tea, 1 apple, 1 chocolate oatie, 1 crackebrod thingy with homemade pumpkin and ginger jam, handful of raisins - err 50p?
In the past week or so we've had things like:
nettle soup,
gnocci with a nettle, basil and sprouted pea 'pesto' and sprouting kale (as good as purple sprouting broccoli)
roast vegetable, chickpea and feta 'salad'
pasta with anchovies, chilli, sprouting kale and parmesan
creamy potato and leek bake
3 bean chilli, with rice, in tortillas for lunch and as a 'Mexican soup'
southern indian seafood soup
In the past week I've also made hot cross buns(Easter) and brownies(it was my sister's birthday, I sent her a picture)
I get that it's a little lower in protein than many would go for, but it doesn't feel too monotonous and probably isn't what people imagine when you say £15 a week