$25 Menu Challenge

How much “should” your food budget be??

Here is something to think about. We all have different ideas as to what constitutes a good food budget. It, of course is dependent on the type and amount of food we buy.

While browsing the net for nutrition guidelines, I came cross the Australian Government’s ” Eat for Health” website. The site has the (current) official dietary guidelines. It lists some sample menu plans for Men, Women and Children, as well as a really good guide to what makes a “serve” of various foods.

As an exercise, I decided to take the sample meal plan for women and price it up to see what the Government suggest we spend on a healthy diet. Here is what I came up with… ( to download a pdf of this table click here )

This sample meal plan is for women aged 19-50 years of average height, healthy weight and light activity.
Meal / Food	Weight / portion size	Food group and number of serves	Costing	Explanation of costs
Breakfast
Wholegrain breakfast cereal, with reduced fat milk	60g cereal	2 grain serves	$0.09	Home Brand Oats (900g pkt @$1.39)
Wholegrain breakfast cereal, with reduced fat milk	1 cup (250ml) reduced fat milk	1 milk/yoghurt/cheese serve	$0.25	$1 per litre milk
Reduced fat yoghurt	100g yoghurt	½ milk/yoghurt/cheese serve	$0.36	Coles Brand Yoghurt (1 kg@ $3.60)
Morning break
Coffee with milk	200ml (small coffee)	¼ milk/yoghurt/cheese serve	$0.10	Home Brand powdered coffee + milk
Lunch
Sandwich with salad and chicken	2 slices bread	2 grain serves	$0.15	Home Brand Whoelmeal Bread @ $1.50
	40g chicken	½ meat and/or alternatives serve	$0.40	Chicken fillet meat @$10.00/kg
	1 teaspoon margarine	5g unsaturated spread (½ serve)	$0.01	Home Brand Spread @$1.60/kg
	1 cup salad vegetables	1 vegetable serve	$0.30	Based on an iceberg lettuce @ 2.00 each
Apple	1 medium	1 fruit serve	$0.30	Banana @36c or 1/2 Orange @ 53c
Afternoon break
Unsalted nuts	30g	1 meat and/or alternatives serve	$0.80	scoop’n’pack Almonds @$23.75/kg
Coffee with milk	200ml (small coffee)	¼ milk/yoghurt/cheese serve	$0.10	as above
Evening meal
Pasta with beef mince and red kidney beans, tomato and green salad with olive oil and vinegar dressing	1 cup of cooked pasta	2 grain serves	$0.15	Home Brand Pasta (1kg pkt @$0.72)
	65g cooked mince	1 meat and/or alternative serve	$0.60	Mince @ $8.00/kg
	¼ cup kidney beans	½ vegetable serve	$0.19	1/4 can Coles Kidney Beans @ 75c
	1½ medium tomato	1½ vegetable serve	$0.50	Tomatos @ 35c each
	½ onion	½ vegetable serve	$0.25	Onions @ 50c each
	2 cups green leafy salad	2 vegetable serves	$0.60	as above
	2 teaspoon unsaturated oil	14g unsaturated oil (2 serves)	$0.03	Home Brand Vegetable Oil 2L @$4.80
Evening snack
Plums and reduced fat yoghurt	1 cup stewed plums	1 fruit serve	$0.80	Plums @ 38c each
	100g yoghurt	½ milk/yogurt/cheese serve	$0.36	as above
		TOTAL $$	$6.34
		x7 days
		WEEKLY TOTAL	$44.38

$50 Fortnight Weeks 3-4

As planned, I have a bit of a food stash left over from the last fortnight’s shopping. We can add some fruit and sweet things this fortnight. 🙂
I have bought sugar and flour!! So there will be some baking happening this week 🙂

I know a lot of you will be missing something sweet.

Left Over from last fortnight

2 large Potatoes

1/2 bag of Pasta

1/2 tin of diced Tomato

3 cups of Rice

Curry Powder

Loaf of bread (minus 2 slices)

3 rashers of Bacon

200g Tuna (1/2 Tin)

6 carrots

250g Cheese

3 small onions

This fortnight’s Shopping List

Item	Budget
For 1 person	For 1 person
pasta	$ 0.65
Chicken Thighs 1kg	$ 4.99
Mince 500g	$ 4.00
Fetta 250g	$ 2.95
Butter x 2	$ 2.78
Chickpeas	$ 0.75
Broccoli/Cauliflower	$ 2.15
Salad	$ 3.00
Mixed Vege	$ 1.59
Pumpkin 600g	$ 2.38
Potato 1kg	$ 2.95
Sugar 1kg	$ 1.00
SR Flour 1kg	$ 0.75
Tea	$ 2.50
Eggs	$ 2.79
Milk 3 Litre	$ 2.70
Oats	$ 0.99
Custard 1L	$ 1.89
Dates	$ 1.79
Odd Bunch Tomato 1kg	$ 1.77
Odd Bunch Apple 1kg	$ 2.98
Tinned Apricots 850g	$ 3.30
	$ 50.00

Final menus should be up tomorrow.

$50 fortnight menu Week 2 – Days 3,4 & 5

Hi all,
Firstly I apologise again for the late post. 🙁
Work does tend to get in the way.
I have 3 days, meals here for you today…. so let’s jump straight into it.

Day 3
Breakfast
Omelette.
My omelette today had a bit of chopped onion and a bit of grated cheese.

Lunch
Leftover Pumpkin Curry.
As with most curries, the flavours of this had mellowed and just got better the next day.

Dinner
Chicken, Pasta with Bacon and Tomato
I cut the meat off 2 large thighs (and kept the bones for my pumpkin soup later in the week)
Cut the chicken into bite sized pieces and fry off in some butter with some chopped onion and 1/2 rasher of bacon.
Meanwhile boil the 1 /2 cups pasta until al dente.
When the pasta is cooked, add it to the pan with the chicken/bacon and gently stir in about 1/2 can of tinned tomatoes.
Heat through and serve.
(This made enough for 3 good sized servings.)

Day 4

Breakfast
Baked Beans on Toast

Lunch
Leftover Chicken Pasta from last night

Dinner
Fried Rice.
(I actually cooked the rice for this last night. I find fried rice is always better with cold cooked rice to start)
Boil 1 cup of rice . Once cooked, spread out on a try and leave to go cold. Overnight in the fridge is good.
In a pan, melt a tablespoon of butter ( you actually need a fair bit of butter, because you do want to actually “fry” the rice) Sautee off some chopped onion,diced carrot and bacon. Add in the cold rice and stir until everything is coated in melted butter. I also added in a cube of frozen spinach that I defrosted and roughly chopped.

Day 5
A simple day today with minimal cooking required 🙂

Breakfast
Poached egg on Toast

Lunch
Fried Rice Leftovers

Dinner
Omelette

Bulk meat buying at Meat City.

I promised here a little while back that I would post our bulk meat shop from Meat City. We venture down the highway for the 50km drive because of the consistently low prices and great quality.
We do a big stock up once every 3 or 4 months. If you are reasonably local, do have a look at Meat City’s website and sign up to receive their weekly specials. (I am in no way affiliated with Meat City other than being a regular customer)

This trip’s buy produced the following. All of which goes straight in the freezer.
We will not go back until we have eaten all this batch.

Click on the picture to see it full size

The number of a meals is a minimum estimate. I have estimated a minimum of 4-6 serves from each lamb roast ( not including leftover sandwich meat). There is also 500g of “lamb scraps”in the freezer which will be turned into curries.
The chicken wings have been made into 20 serves of soup/stew for lunches.
We buy whole loins and have the butcher cut them into chops. One of the loins had a really thick layer of fat, so we got the butcher to cut the skin off and score it ready to be made into delicious crackling (YUMMMM) As you can see, we paid $7.99/kg. I was in Woolworth’s recently and they had pork loin chops on “sale” for $15.99 kg
The T-Bones are quite big, so we only need one between the 2 of us.
Mince gets frozen in 250g portions.
The Eye Fillet was a “buy one – get one free” so averaged out at ~$18.00/kg and has yielded 8 meals.
The beef cheeks are also being made into soup/stew lunches
The price of supermarket meat has been the biggest surprise to me while doing this challenge. The cheapest red meat I can find in Woolies is mince at $8 or $9 a kilo.

	price	kg	meals
Lamb
Half Side	$ 27.17	3.022	10
Half Side	$ 29.06	3.232
Whole Leg	$ 33.27	4.164	6
Chicken
Drumsticks	$ 6.75	2.258	13
Drumsticks	$ 7.58	2.536
Wings	$ 3.46	1.740	20
Wings	$ 2.47	1.240
Pork
Pickled Pork	$ 10.65	2.668	6
Loin Chops	$ 21.17	2.650	10
Loin Chops	$ 20.31	2.542
Leg Chops	$ 8.12	1.628	4
Beef
Mince	$ 9.92	1.988	12
Mince	$ 10.09	2.022
T-Bone	$ 46.75	3.342	8
Eye Fillet	$ 34.99	1.984	8
Beef Cheek	$ 7.59	0.584	10
Total	$ 279.35	37.600	107

Average price per kilo
=$279.35/37.6kg		$ 7.43

Average price per meal ( 2 people)
=$279.35/107		$ 2.61

$50 Fortnight Week 2 Days – 1&2

Two days menus here in this post.

I am getting through the food basket I have put aside for these challenges. I am more than confident that there is plenty of food to last the week.

I am working on the next fortnight’s shopping list and menu plan as well. I am hoping to get these posted in the next day or so.

So, on the last couple of days meals.

Day 1
Breakfast.
Scrambled eggs today. ( You know I love my eggs )

Lunch
Pasta with Bacon, Tinned Tomato and the last remnants of the packet of mixed vege.

Dinner
Potato Frittata.
I always think that “Frittata” is such a fancy name for what is basically eggy potato bake 🙂
Most traditional recipes make frittata in a pan and then finish under a hot grill. While I have made them this way, I invariably end up breaking the frittata trying to turn it out. I prefer to make the dish in a small casserole dish an oven.

Slice a large potato as finely as possible.
In a jug or bowl, mix together 2 eggs, 1/2 cup of milk and 1 cup of grated cheese.
Butter the bottom of a small oven proof dish and place a layer of potato.
Pour over a little of the egg/cheese mixture. Add another layer of potato.
Repeat. Make the layers thin, you want lots of layers with a little egg/cheese mix between each layer.
When you have used up all your ingredients ( try to finish with a potato layer.) Dab over a bit of butter and place in a 180 degree oven for about 30 minutes, or until the potato is tender.
Remove from the oven and allow to cool a it before running a knife around the edge of the dish and turn out onto a plate.

Day 2

Breakfast
Baked Beans on Toast

Lunch
Leftover Frittata

Dinner
A new recipe that I found online here and adapted to what I had.
I made this for both the Man of the House and myself and allowed enough left over for a lunch the next day as well.

This is my Roasted Pumpkin and Chickpea Curry on Rice. (serves 2-3)
Cut pumpkin into approximately 2cm cubes ( you want about 3 cups of pumpkin cubes) and place into a hot oven for about 15 minutes or until tender and just starting to brown

Meanwhile, in a pan melt a tablespoon of butter and sautee off a diced onion and a level tablespoon of curry powder. Add a tin of undrained chickpeas.
Stir until the liquid comes to the boil, then lower the heat until the liquid reduces to a “saucy” consistency.
Add in the roasted pumpkin, stirring gently so as to not break up the pieces.

Serve on rice.

This is going to be a very versatile recipe. For those not on as strict budget as $25 per week, add chicken, meatballs or even sausages cut into pieces the same size as the pumpkin. Some baby spinach leaves would be good added and allowed to wilt down just before you add the pumpkin.
Top with a good dollop of sour cream or yogurt