If you only had to buy food for just yourself…

[Indigo Blue]

Dh is out of town, so I’m doing nothing today except for a few things here at home…. and starting threads. 😁

 

Since he’s gone this weekend, I was thinking….how much would it cost per week if I only had myself to buy food for? I have always thought that I could live very cheaply and still buy decent food. AND hardly have to cook!
 

Breakfast

overnight oats with pecans, blueberries , and almond milk

Lunch

banana, beans, red rice, kale, sweet potato

Supper

strawberries, kiwi, quinoa, more beans, sweet potato or carrots, etc. 

snack 

peanut butter on rice cake

dates and nuts

 

I would just eat this way everyday and buy beans, rice, oats in bulk. Maybe some herbal loose tea in bulk. I could buy premade quinoa from Aldi and it would still be cheap. 
 

Not wishing Dh to be away! Just pondering how cheap I could get by if it were just me.  No lunch meat, fruit cups, cheese, meats. I think it could be pretty minimal and cheap. 

 

[MEmama]

Other than dinner, I eat just about the same things every day.

Breakfast: smoothie (either blueberries, pumpkin or spinach)

lunch: low carb tortilla with an egg, cheese and kimchi, side of fruit if I'm still hungry

Snack: chocolate and nuts

Dinner: I just don't care any more, anything is fine

DH is currently out of town so I'll pick up takeaway Chinese, which last me several nights. Perfect.

[Rosie_0801]

It costs me more to feed myself than it costs my brother to feed himself and dd, because prices are lower where they are.

It costs me less to feed myself when I am well than when I'm not.

 

[Faith-manor]

I would definitely save money. Mark is a big meat and expensive cheese eater.

Alone I would eat eggs at breakfast, hummus and veggies at lunch or something similar, maybe a chef salad, and suppers would consist of meatless chili, Mexican gumbo with brown rice, chicken vegetable dumpling soup, rice and beans, risotto and roast brussel sprouts, homemade Mac n cheese with roast broccoli, or a loaded baked potato and salad.

I make excellent food, and can cook very well, yet am not a foodie. He is a primo foodie person, so are my oldest and youngest children. The middle two, like me, are just fine with tasty simplicity.

[Indigo Blue]

3 minutes ago, Faith-manor said:

Mark is a big meat and expensive cheese eater.

Same! I would no longer need milk or yogurt, either. 

[SKL]

I really don't know.  Mostly all I eat is OPLs (Other People's Leftovers), cereal, fresh fruits & veggies, and coffee with milk.  I don't have any dietary restrictions.  So I think that the most expensive stuff I eat is the fresh fruits & veggies (organic if available).  If I were alone, I would probably replace the OPLs with plain rice, noodles, eggs, and tomato sauce / butter.  A few cashews here and there to keep things interesting.

I admit that I don't know the current costs of everything I eat.  I am usually not the person buying the produce these days.  I just eat whatever's here (usually whatever looks like it'll go bad if I don't eat it).

[Pawz4me]

I eat the same things almost every day for breakfast and lunch --

Breakfast is overnight oats with a dash of cinnamon, 10 grams of raisins and almond milk

Lunch is a huge salad and Triscuits or a piece of homemade sourdough bread

Dinner is whatever I'm fixing for DH and DS, with extra veggies for me. If I weren't cooking for them I think dinner would most often be some sort of veggie/bean based soup. I'd probably fix a lot of different ones and freeze portions in meal sized amounts so I would have a good variety to choose from. And we always just have fruit for dessert, that wouldn't change except I'd need less.

 

[Kanin]

If I had to survive on only my income, I'd need to eat really cheaply. If I had access to my normal grocery budget, I'd probably still spend a lot. I love grocery shopping and trying new things 🙂

[mmasc]

I could eat black beans and rice every day. there’s a cold quinoa salad with fresh veggies that I like that lasts several days in the fridge. I could do overnight oats, peanut butter toast, or avocado toast every morning. Mainly, I’d love to never prepare another piece of meat again. It’s completely unappealing to me. 

[Laura Corin]

We save money when Husband isn't around because he drinks wine and eats more meat. I mostly cook vegetarian meals and I don't drink.

[Clarita]

In absolute terms it'd be cheaper to feed just me, because DH eats more and needs more meat/protein in his diet (he works out a lot). However he encourages me to make more foods from scratch than I otherwise would so calorie-wise I'd spend more per calorie. 

[kathyl]

If it was just me, I could probably eat simpler, but not sure about cheaper?

Dh says he can do without the meat, but at some point, after I've made a really good veggie dish, he looks at it and says in a supposed joking manner "But where's the MEAT??"  And I don't think he considers seafood 'meat'.  For him it has to be beef, pork, or chicken.  And he loves cheese which I can do without.

I could live off of veggies, rice, pasta, and some seafood every now and then.  (I love shrimp creole.)  I'd also want to make a homemade dessert every so often, too, because I love some desserts like a really good cake.  But I don't do breakfast much anymore.  Mostly a banana or an apple along with some chocolate if we have it.  And water.  I always drink filtered water from our water pitcher.  Dh drinks coffee, cokes, tea, etc. 

Now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I could eat a lot cheaper if it was just me.   

[livetoread]

It would be cheaper, but we eat pretty similarly so it would mostly just mean less of what we eat now. We have shifted mostly plant based  from vegetarian and are eating less processed stuff too. I like a variety and I like to try new things so I'd still be buying weird ingredients for recipes and just continuing what we're doing now.

[City Mouse]

It would be cheaper just because of the lower volume of food, but I’d likely make the same kinds of things I do now just with more left over for later.

[Annie G]

Before dh retired we lived apart for several months while I renovated our retirement home.  I ate better quality, cooked far less often, and it still cost considerably less than half what dh and I spend together.  I was able to cook twice a week- roast veggies, grill chicken and salmon, cook beans and rice. Then ate those things for 3-5 days. Breakfast was fresh berries and a fried egg. Lunch was either roasted veg w protein or salad. Dinner was some combo of veg/protein/beans/rice.  I treated myself w a square of dark chocolate after a long day of renovating. 
 

Dh grew up w meat and 3 veg style meals, and he likes starchy veggies.  He likes snacks and has a sweet tea habit.  

[KungFuPanda]

DH says he “needs more protein” when he means he “wants a steak.” It doesn’t matter how much protein is in a vegetarian meal he’ll swear it’s not enough even though he’s never done that math. He’ll eat it, but not for too many meals in a row.
 

I like to make a big salad and graze from it for days. Currently there’s a Mediterranean-style salad with couscous in my fridge that he hasn’t touched but I’ve been eating for three days.  I also like beans a lot more than DH does.  He didn’t grow up on them but my family regularly ate so many different kinds of beans. We also had a garden and ate a lot more fresh veggies. 
 

I’ve made the Chipotle-style tofu from Rainbow Plant Life for my burrito bowls and find it completely satisfying. I rarely crave a solid hunk of meat so, yes, I definitely eat more cheaply than DH. 
 

(I also live near a Latino-Asian grocery store and everything is cheaper there)

[Bootsie]

When I have been feeding just myself for an extended period of time, I shop much differently than when I am preparing for DH and myself.  And, I know that when DH is by himself for an extended period of time he shops differently than if it is both of us at home.  I would eat many meals of yogurt and fruit, scrambled eggs, oatmeal, peanut butter and jelly, and odds and ends from the freezer.  However, I don't know how long I would do only those tpe of things becasuse there are other items that I enjoy cooking and eating.  I would save money not buying some of the things DH likes: juices, specialty olives, sour cream and onion dip, energy drinks, hydration packets, Ding Dongs...  But, if I am not home, DH will eat tuna fish (I am allergic), or heat a can of stewed tomatoes for dinner.  So he would say that he would save money by not buying soda stream canisters, nice olive oil and vinegars, Mexican vanilla, pomegranates, red bell peppers...

[Corraleno]

I'm mostly shopping and cooking for myself, and I average ~$100/week for food (which also includes a few things for DD, either to eat when she's here or take back to her boyfriend's house).

The biggest expense is just lots of organic produce, but it also includes a pretty wide variety of spices, sauces/specialty ingredients, fresh herbs, olive and avocado oils, good balsamic vinegar, nuts, seeds (pumpkin, chia, flax, hemp), "heirloom" beans, different types of rice (red, black, wild, brown), organic sprouted tofu, various chai teas, soy and oat milks, etc. I'm sure I could get it down to ~$50/wk or less, if I had to, but I also think that when you're eating a fairly simple WFPB diet, having high quality ingredients makes a much bigger impact than it would in a diet with a lot of hyper-palatable sugary/salty/fatty foods. 

Breakfast is usually overnight oats with hemp and chia seeds, cinnamon, vanilla soy milk, fresh or frozen berries, and pecans. Sometimes I'll do a tofu scramble with nutritional yeast and lots of veg.

Lunch is usually a big salad with lots of different vegetables and some kind of beans or lentils. Or if I just made a loaf of bread and DD hasn't walked off with it, it might be hummus, avocado, tomato, and micro greens on grilled whole grain sourdough.

Dinner is always some combination of veggies with a whole grain and a legume. So it could be stir-fried tofu and veggies with buckwheat soba noodles; Buddha bowl of roasted veg, spiced chickpeas, and garlicky greens, over quinoa with lemon-tahini dressing; black bean chili with corn bread or tortilla chips; red lentil and vegetable curry with brown basmati; minestrone with 2-3 types of beans and garlic-rosemary focaccia, etc. (I cook the same things for dinner when one or both kids are here; they can eat it or make themselves something else.)

Snacks = fresh fruit, nuts, dates, popcorn with nutritional yeast, dark chocolate, frozen cherries, and an occasional nondairy ice cream treat (like TJ's Calamansi & Mango Sorbet or Yuzu Ripple).

[Arcadia]

Much cheaper. I won’t need to buy milk and I tend to eat a late lunch and supper per day. My husband eats breakfast, lunch, dinner, supper and his portions is at least double mine. For example, he eats a big bowl of rice for lunch and dinner while I eat at most a third of that amount. Same goes for meat and vegetables. Electricity and gas consumption would also go down since less cooking and less boiling of water for coffee. 

[Carrie12345]

I don’t know about the specific items or cost, but I do know it’d be a dream to go to grab something without finding my hand in an empty box! Or to know how many strawberries are left. Or to not lose my shrimp cocktail behind a pile of tortillas in the fridge. Or to not wonder if my 13yo is going to have a major growth spurt or a hunger strike this week.

[Eos]

Definitely. And even when I'm gone. Dh was gone for two weeks and I ate things like lentils for breakfast, nuts and veggies or fish for lunch and salad for supper. He came home and now I'm gone for two weeks and I left him with two weeks worth of freezer meals: stir fry pork, veggies, and rice, chicken mushroom stroganoff, soup, roasted veggies and chicken curry. He also buys cookies, chips, and canned soup which I don't eat or buy for myself. He's another one who grew up with meat at every meal and likes processed food.

 

[DawnM]

We have three large grocery stores near me (one is a Whole Foods, the other 2 are regional) that have hot food bars!    Whole Foods has chicken tikka masala!   I got some Friday.     The other two have salads, Chinese food, Italian food, Indian Food, and some American fare.

I think I could "meal prep" there pretty well!    I with they had been around more when my dad needed me to cook his food a week at a time!

The hot bar is $10/pound at Whole Foods, and I think $8/pound at the other store.   I could make a pound last 2-3 days at least and add a pot of rice at home.   Add a salad in a bag, and I am good!

Other than that, I eat things like yogurt, crackers and cheese, salads, granola, PB&J, bagels/bagel pizzas, easy stuff.

I can cook, I just don't like it.

[Katy]

12 hours ago, KungFuPanda said:

DH says he “needs more protein” when he means he “wants a steak.” It doesn’t matter how much protein is in a vegetarian meal he’ll swear it’s not enough even though he’s never done that math. He’ll eat it, but not for too many meals in a row.
 

I like to make a big salad and graze from it for days. Currently there’s a Mediterranean-style salad with couscous in my fridge that he hasn’t touched but I’ve been eating for three days.  I also like beans a lot more than DH does.  He didn’t grow up on them but my family regularly ate so many different kinds of beans. We also had a garden and ate a lot more fresh veggies. 
 

I’ve made the Chipotle-style tofu from Rainbow Plant Life for my burrito bowls and find it completely satisfying. I rarely crave a solid hunk of meat so, yes, I definitely eat more cheaply than DH. 
 

(I also live near a Latino-Asian grocery store and everything is cheaper there)

My DH is the same. And he’ll eat 3-4 chicken breasts if I set out a platter of them. But if I make him a plate, slice the chicken 1/2” thick, and spread that over the top of whatever else I made, it’s suddenly “so much” food. 

[bolt.]

If it was just me, I think I'd be more free to indulge in higher-end foods. Buying a small amount of a luxury good 'just for me' is less impactful than the way I feel if I was trying to feed a family that way. Also higher end foods tend to come in smaller packages, and I'd need to carefully not over-buy anything perishable. I'd also lose the unit-price cost savings of buying in bulk for a family.

In my family, I definitely enjoy good steaks, other meat, fine cheeses, fancy herbs and spices, out-of-season fruit and veg, artisanal bread, etc. much more-so than the other folks around here. I'm glad I'm in charge of the groceries around here, and nobody else really sees the price of having strawberries and brie in the house (or complains when I enjoy a good steak).

[alisoncooks]

DH leans carnivore/low carb, while I lean veg-heavy. I also have more of a get-er-done/food as fuel approach, while he’s…particular about flavors being just so. So when he’s not around, I make one big pot of soup or beans and eat it for days. My oldest is currently out of town, so I actually had fun planning a minimalist menu for just me and my youngest this week. 

[kbutton]

I eat low carb with lots of veg and more meat than some people. Being GF, I eat few prepared foods because they are expensive (and the low carb makes that hard).

DH and the kids eat good food plus junk, lol! But they expend tons of calories, and one is still growing, so some cheap and easy calories make sense. I don’t bake with gluten (probably could mask to avoid inhaling it), so they buy more prepare stuff than I prefer. One kids likes to bake but is busy and hates the clean up.

I would save a ton on snack foods, gain a ton of cupboard space, and then maybe be able to buy most things organic instead of picking and choosing.

I might also spend some money on cooking classes to learn to cook some things at home that I can’t pick up from a recipe book—stuff like Indian food where you use xyz spice mix, and those mixes aren’t all the same!

I would buy as much local stuff as is practical, such as a local farm box if I could find one that is not 50% or more greens in the spring and fall as I am oxalate intolerant.

If we lived somewhere with superb farm markets that weren’t a ton of extra gas, that would be my preference.

 

[dsmith]

If it was just me I could probably get away with $50 -75 a week, but $100 would be more realistic. I rarely eat meat, but I do like the expensive tuna fish that has just tuna and salt, no added water or oil. I love rice and beans, lentils, veggies, etc. For just me I would buy only organic but for our family of 5 I can't afford to do that, so I avoid the dirty dozen. It bothers me when we get inexpensive meat, because there's a reason it's cheap. When I was following a certain diet I only bought grass-fed and finished for myself, but I can't afford that for 5. But even if it was just me I wouldn't go back to that - meat doesn't like my body any more. Beef bothers my stomach a lot, but chicken is worse. If I eat meat it is only 2 - 3 ounces. I doubt I would buy it at all if I was just cooking for myself. I would be tempted to try some kind of meal kit service, or something like Hungryroot. There's also a local CSA that has a small share of organic fruits/veggies that would be tempting.

[prairiewindmomma]

Dh and I eat very differently, each for health reasons.  He eats a low carb diet of meat proteins (fish heavy) and nuts and veg. He cannot tolerate beans or lentils or whole grains.  I tend to eat pulses, veg, with some fruits and whole grains on the side (ie salad with a slice of sourdough, veggie lentil soup, oats with fresh berries, etc.)  His side of grocery tab is way higher than mine at this point. 

That said, I'd probably still budget $75-100/week for groceries if I could afford it because sometimes I really like picking up takeout as a break from cooking, especially during an autoimmune flare. I keep a stash of meals in the freezer for bad days, but it's nice to break that up with a fresh salad or to luxuriate in some (local halibut) fish and chips on a cold and rainy day.

[Ausmumof3]

I wouldn’t cook a tonne.

I’d possibly buy boxed salads or make a bulk lot of grainy salad and work my way through it.

Honestly the thing that makes me feel most feminist is having been responsible for the family meals for like 20 years. Having to do all the cooking and then not even being able to make foods I like without getting complaints sucks.