Tonight I made stirfry, with one of those Asian Wok packet sauces (Chinese BBQ for anyone who cares).
Unfortunately, it really wasn’t that good. The beef was cooked, but it had a weird sort of soft, fleshy texture inside. Cheap steak, I guess – you get what you pay for. I didn’t manage to finish mine, and BF didn’t put much away either.
But he did make sure to eat the onions and veges and gravy and all the rice, so ups to him! Our food budget is definitely going further these days, eating cheaper meats and managing to stay at around $120 a week, INCLUDING lunches.
So right now we have a ton of stirfry meat leftover, and I don’t know what to do with it. I suggested chucking them in some sort of stew, or in a fried rice, both of which BF vetoed (“You need to stop trying to do something with it! It’s CRAP! Just throw it out!”)
But…there’s so much of it! And it’s meat, precious MEAT!
I probably won’t end up eating the leftovers…I can’t stomach much more of it. But I hate wasting (relatively) good food. What about you?
Oh! I don’t feel so bad then. $480 is what you normally spend on food? I thought BF and I were crazy spending $500 – $600/month on food as our regular budget… thinking that everyone else was at $100 or something crazy low.
FB, food prices here are INSANE. I don’t think their food budget is directly comparable to yours in Canada…(but your budget of $250-$300 per person for quality food like you guys make isn’t too bad, I don’t think).
My budget went from $150-$200/mo or less in the US for almost all pre-packaged/made stuff to $400-$500 in NZ with cooking and a moderate amount of pre-packaged/made food…FOR JUST ME.
Out of frugal necessity, I’ve started cooking and stopped buying pre-made dinners, and can barely get my grocery bill down to $75-$90 per week, or about $300 -$350 per month. I also spend about $100 on eating out every month. Again, that’s just for one person.
So, what she’s done here, a $480/mo for two people, is just amazing to me! (even with the New World vs PakNSave grocery price difference…)
I am sorry the meat is awful…I also hate throwing away food, but also know that I’m super-picky, and if ANYTHING is off about the food i’m eating, I just won’t eat it. I would certainly just give it up–I wouldn’t want to ruin another dish with the weird meat.
BTW, I would love to see some recipes for cheap, easy food. 🙂
I am ditching that meat 🙂
Cheap food is us – lots of pasta, Mexican, stews and stirfrys basically. It’s pretty unimaginative! I might post up a sample of a week’s menu.
$120 is pretty much our bare bones. No, we don’t eat all that healthily at this level and our meals get pretty repetitive. We definitely don’t get our 5+ a day (even if I was organised enough to buy enough greens I never know what to do with them, lol).
Produce is SO expensive, most of our veges are canned or frozen. Throw in some decent fresh fruit and veg and we’re looking at more like $150, which happens sometimes, or for a week with more variety, close to $200.
I could so easily wander around and blow $300 and I don’t think it would even be that extravagant!
Sounds like Canadian prices are pretty similar from what you’ve mentioned FB (8.99/kg for tomatoes in winter sounds on par!)