How much food, for a fiver?

Arch

Arch

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Listening to The Archers earlier, Ed and Emma are short of money, and she was in Borchester on the phone to him in a panic because she only had a fiver until Ed got paid next weekand they had no food at home.

Which set me thinking. Assuming Borchester has a Sainsburys (I think it's big enough), with a fiver I could get: (assuming Basics brand mostly)

2 x Spaghetti - 78p (39p each)
2 x Tinned tomatoes - 62p (31p each)
2 x Baked Beans - 56p (28p each)
2 x Loaf Brown or White bread - £1.00 (50p each)
Dried red lentils - £1.05
500g Cornflakes - 31p
Strawberry Jam - 35p

That lot comes to £4.67, so there's a little bit more to play with, maybe another bag of cornflakes. It would feed me, albeit boringly, for a couple of weeks, so I reckon it would stretch for two people and a couple of small kids to nearly a week. (Ed runs a dairy herd, so I'm assuming free milk!)

How would you maximise a fiver?
 
Arch said:
How would you maximise a fiver?
Click to expand...
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Bar of chocolate - 50p
  • Drink - 30p
  • V.Small Bar of chocolate - 20p :roflmao:
 
To give a more serious answer, I probably wouldn't do very well with a fiver. I'm just not good at being thrifty and get hoodwinked by the packaging and brand names - and, of course, the higher price tags.

I'd probably end up with a £3 sandwich, can of coke, bag of crisps and feed myself for one meal. :(
 
Arch said:
...
2 x Spaghetti - 78p (39p each)
2 x Tinned tomatoes - 62p (31p each)
2 x Baked Beans - 56p (28p each)
2 x Loaf Brown or White bread - £1.00 (50p each)
Dried red lentils - £1.05
500g Cornflakes - 31p
Strawberry Jam - 35p

That lot comes to £4.67,
How would you maximise a fiver?
Click to expand...

Be slightly more creative.
  • 1.5kg bag of flour - make your own bread. Need to add yeast, you that could be a store cupboard essential - at least it should be on a farm. There are 3 loaves and probably cheaper & nicer - even waitrose has a 1.5kg bag of flour (admittedly not necssarily bread flour) for less than 2 loaves of bread - think it was something like 69p last time I looked.
  • Upgrade to a 4 pack of tomatoes and get an onion or 2 as well. pasta with tomato, onion, some lentil should be a nice filling meal. now add in some herb & spices (assuming that store cupboard essential again) and you can vary the flovor for weeks if needed, but here you only have 4 tins of toms, so only 4 evening meals.
  • You could ditch the spagetti and change it to rice - not sure what the cheapest is nowa days because I only buy it in 10kg bags so it works out for me at £1.50 for a kilo of Tilda Basmati rice. You would only need 1/5 kg here and rice can double for breakfast/lunch and evening meal and snacks as well mixed in with some flour, milk and make into griddle cakes.
  • I would also ditch the cornflakes and go with porridge oats. Nicer breakfast IMO and much more filling than Cornflakes, easier to make last a week and with free milk, you have plenty... (you can grind the porridge oats to flour, add with milk that is now yoghurt (you're on a farm!) and find some windfall apples and have an apple smoothie or even apple crumble, (flour, oats, some butter from free milk).
  • And given all that free milk, you can have all sorts of sandwiches, involving the loaf of bread you made, the butter you made from the free milk (surprisingly easy to do) and either keep the jam or use the windfall apple stew you have made...
  • any spare money could be used in the freezer section to obtain some very cheap frozen mixed veg to add to the spagetti or rice tomatoes sauces you have made from tinned tomaotes, onion, lentils and herbs/spices.
Guess what we lived on cycling around the world... endless varitations of tinned toms, onion, + another veg with pasta or rice!

PS - does this farm have any hens?
 
All good tips!

Mostly. I live on a pasta sauce made of onion, pepper, courgette and tinned tomato, plus a protein (cheap mince, tinned tuna etc). For me (as a single person) one tin of tomatoes, one onion, one pepper, half a courgette and, say. a tin of tuna, makes enough sauce for 3 or possibly 4 meals!

No, I don't think Ed and Emma have hens, only cows. Although I think every other bugger in Ambridge has hens, except Lynda, who has llamas.

(between you and me, Emma's not the sharpest brick in the picnic...)
 
I can't imagine Emma out of The Archers riding a bike anywhere....

Hope you enjoyed your ride!
 
OK - some figures.

1.5kg Self raising flour - £0.52
1kg porrige oats - £0.54
Strawberry jam - £0.35
1 kg Rice - £0.44
400g tinned tomatoes - £0.31
1kg Frozen mixed veg - £0.75
400g Baked Beans - £0.28
Packet of Red lentils - £1.09
4 baking potatoes - £0.90

Regretfully that comes to £5.18 and you only have 1 of everything... so nice as the jam is, ditch it in favour of another can of beans. I am also going to ditch the lentils, and same 20% of the budget, and purchase more tinned tomatoes instead.

1.5kg Self raising flour - £0.52
1kg porrige oats - £0.54
1 kg Rice - £0.44
4 * 400g tinned tomatoes - £0.31
1kg Frozen mixed veg - £0.75
2 * 400g Baked Beans - £0.28
4 baking potatoes - £0.90

= £4.95

Breakfast - porrige each and every day. 1kg should be enough for the week for 2 people going with an average serving with farm milk.
Baked beans on jacket potatoes, will cover 2 nights for 2 people.
rice, tinned tomatoes, with some frozen veg (defrosted) will cover another 4 nights with some left over for lunches.
Flour can be made into bread (unlevan or with yeast if in cupboard) and also used with porridge oats (ground up) and rice to make griddle cakes for lunch to dip into remains of previous nights meal - though to be honest unless you suppliment with milk and butter you are going to be loosing weight quite quickly!

Perhaps slaughtering a cow would be useful at this stage!
 
I wonder what proportion of people in modern Britain can even think of getting more than one meal out of a fiver?

It's quite possible to spend most of that on one sandwich!
 
I was chatting with a woman in Vancouver who, when she was broke for a while, bought oats from the pet supplies and lived off that as it was considerably cheaper then 'human quality' oats.
 
I would be just fine with a fiver here in Spain. It converts to just over 6 Euro, and with that, I could buy a trolley full of vegetables from the market, including fresh tomatoes for pasta and curry sauce. Fresh tomatoes are about 80 cents (65p) a kilo. I could also buy a small pack of rice, and some pasta, and that would feed us for most of the week. I'd make a big pan of soup, and serve that for at least two days.

For breakfast, I'd collect oranges from the orange groves for free, and have huge glasses of that. We don't do breakfast anyway.
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
found this article today.
How little money can a person live on? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22065978. they reckon on £14.61 for food for a week for a woman (given men need more calories and their limit was £15!
Click to expand...

Hmmm. Looking at that, they list pasta at £1 a kilo. I got spaghetti at Morrisons this week, at 19p for 500g. Previously, it was 24p. So I wonder how many of the other figures could be lower...

I worked out that if I took 65g of spaghetti to work, instead of my 15p instant noodles, it would cost 3p a portion. Even allowing for a teaspoon of pesto or some stock powder for seasoning, that's pretty cheap!
 
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