Is it possible to eat normally, spending 1,500 rubles a week on a family and still feel comfortable? An entrepreneur from St. Petersburg asked herself this question and tried to reduce family food expenses to a minimum. What came of it, read on.

Further, in the words of the author: Three of us can eat for 1,500 rubles a week. To do this, you must be ready to gain weight by one and a half kilograms, spend at least one and a half hours a day in kitchen work, give up additives “oh, it’s so tasty, well, one more bite,” don’t feed guests. If you are determined, then you need to act like this ...

According to the terms of the game, by the beginning of the experiment, our family of slobbers had no food left, except for salt, sugar, a handful of lingonberries frozen to the freezer, vegetable oil, vinegar and spices.

Eating three for one and a half thousand a week is not the same as eating one for five hundred. And if I had a mustache above my upper lip and five children (hello, grandmother!), My table would be much more diverse - two and a half thousand per week would fit more seasonal vegetables, types of cereals and meat. I could even sprinkle grated cheese on my pasta while my kids set fire to the mailboxes in the stairwell!

I made a mistake at the menu planning stage (and planning is what you definitely have to do). I made the main mistake by buying 4 kilograms of potatoes, and not a single one - rice or buckwheat. With this, I doomed myself, my family and my followers to dumplings (with potatoes), baked potatoes (with potatoes), casserole (with potatoes), and zrazy (potato). The first thing I did after the experiment was to go to Teremok and make two servings of buckwheat porridge with cheese and stewed cabbage.

Soups (thick, cook in large pots, eat rumbling). I made chicken noodle soup, mashed chicken corn soup, and spicy goulash soup.

Meat semi-finished products. One whole chicken was enough to make two soups, chicken zrazy, chicken potato casserole, hearty chicken curry oatmeal, and fried chicken. A raw cut of meat that could complement chicken spree was not in the budget, so I bought a pound of ground beef without veins and trans fats from a trusted seller.

Kasha in the morning. It's economical, it's delicious, it's the only stronghold of a healthy diet in the realm of dough and potatoes. From one pack of oatmeal, I got one cottage cheese and oatmeal casserole, four types of oatmeal (plain oatmeal, oatmeal with banana, oatmeal with apples and caramel sauce, oatmeal with chicken and curry), corn soup puree and oatmeal pancakes.

Flour products. Russian women have been saving on food for centuries by producing pies, pancakes, dumplings and dumplings on an industrial scale. Saving the filling made it possible to feed a family of three to four people with a glass of flour, one egg, one onion and five potatoes (vareniki), or a glass of flour, a glass of milk and two eggs (pancakes). Flour is much cheaper than bread, and one kilogram was enough to bake pancakes, make dumplings with potatoes and make homemade noodles all week. I refused yeast baking, looking longingly at the New Year's dress. If you do not have a New Year's dress, bake pies and rolls. It's the cheapest food imaginable.

Spices. Curry, herbs de Provence, anise, bay leaf, ginger, cinnamon and chili expand culinary horizons and allow restaurants to sell a side dish of one potato and half a carrot for 180 rubles. Use it! My spicy goulash soup wouldn't taste so good if it wasn't spicy. Cinnamon in pancakes stuffed with grated apple makes you feel like you're in Starbucks. Berry juice with anise and ginger can replace dessert. Curry in oatmeal, bay leaves in chicken broth, thyme in fried chicken - and now you are no longer a loser, but a young miracle chef who prefers home cooking experiments to going to a burger joint.

Caramel sauce. My eleven-year-old daughter knows how to cook it, my cats lick off drops that have fallen on the floor, you can do it too. For caramel sauce, not only fatty expensive cream is suitable, but also ordinary milk. Three tablespoons of sugar and 100 milliliters of milk are enough to decorate your ascetic meal. We drizzled caramel over pancakes and apple oatmeal. It was delicious.

Interesting recipes. The limited budget does not allow to turn around in full force. Nevertheless, you can come up with something interesting. Charcoal the onions and carrots in a dry frying pan before tossing them into the chicken broth. Thicken the soup puree with oatmeal. Prepare the most delicious cottage cheese casserole with oatmeal and bananas. Take it easy and cut the ingredients for the goulash soup into the same restaurant cubes. Boil potato slices before baking them with oil and spices. Learn to weave a pigtail on dumplings.

As Confucius would surely say: “If you got fifteen thousand a week for food, don’t go to the casino. Lift your chin up and buy a kilo of flour."

Alexei Zyryanov, a student at St Petersburg University, lived for a month on a scholarship of 1,572 rubles for the sake of the experiment, and as a result, he lost weight from 73.5 to 68.5 kilograms. In this way, he wanted to “unleash the potential of underestimated products”, make people think about their diet and show nonresident applicants and children from poor families that one can survive in St. Petersburg on a scholarship.

The idea for the experiment came about when Zyryanov brought buckwheat with eggs in a container from home to the student canteen. His classmates noticed that such food costs 50 rubles a day and with such food it is possible to live for a month on a regular scholarship, like Alexei's - 1572 rubles.

On February 23, the student started the experiment. He spent 100 rubles on household items: soap, toilet paper, tissues, toothpaste, washing powder and a pack of wet wipes. 1472 rubles were left for the purchase of food.

Rosbalt notes that students from low-income families receive social scholarships in addition to academic scholarships - as a result, 3,518 rubles come out.

“1035 rubles are spent on a travel card, about 300 rubles for telephone calls and 200 rubles for hostel fees. Thus, the visitor has about 2,000 rubles left for food and household expenses. The amount Alexei spent on groceries is even less than this.”

Zyryanov's meals were three times a day, he spent from 13 to 53 rubles a day. The student's diet consisted of oatmeal, dark chocolate, bananas, buckwheat with eggs, and carrots with cabbage.

Alexey claims that the transition to the economy mode was almost painless, but it was difficult for him to give up kefir after playing sports.

“During this month, I ate about 3 kilograms of oatmeal and buckwheat, 1 kilogram of peas, 150 eggs and 5 heads of cabbage, 3 chocolates, 10 bananas and 3 packs of goats. I have 1 ruble left on my balance.

After a month of the experiment, the young man lost 5 kilograms - however, he explains this by the fact that he was used to eating little, and says that, if desired, he could double the portions of buckwheat and oatmeal.

“He gets enough fat from eggs, buckwheat, peas and dark chocolate. Proteins - from eggs, buckwheat and peas, and carbohydrates - from buckwheat, bananas and peas. Alexei's diet lacked iron. But the problem could be solved by eating apples.”

Zyryanov wanted to "unleash the potential" of certain products. For example, he believes that instead of muesli it is better to buy a pack of oatmeal and dark chocolate: it will be healthier and cheaper. Cabbage is better than chips or popcorn: it is “delicious and just as crunchy.”

The student told the Rosbalt correspondent that he was not going to continue this experiment, and summed up his results.

“There are no health problems. I would say it got better. Always lightness in the stomach, acne disappeared, it became faster to fall asleep. There are certain disadvantages with vitamins, but they are formal and very conditional. Another thing strikes me. People who consume five times the norm of fats and carbohydrates for many years, eating store-bought dumplings, mayonnaise and Snickers, do not worry about their health. I think that going over the norm by five times is much worse than missing by 10 percent.” Share this article with your friends!

Apr 12, 2018 Oksana

It was listed as $ 35 and somehow slipped through that they say you can eat for a week with this money. And immediately, a lot of emotions and objections. I got really interested.

So I decided to show that you can eat for $ 35 a week and at the same time not be satiated alone.

To begin with, I want to say that for several years (since 2010) I have been leading and looking, I saw that more than 7 tr / month (1750 rubles / week) food costs did not rise. The exception is the months in which we celebrated some holidays at home.

Let me remind you that we live together and eat very diversely. Anyway We do not have semi-finished products at home.

So, now, closer to the menu and diet. I will not paint the dishes, I will simply write the products that we most often buy, usually 1-2 times a week, as we spend.

1. Chicken - 150 rubles.
2. Potatoes 3kg - 50 rubles.
3. Cereals (rice, buckwheat, bulgur, couscous, semolina, millet) - 200 rubles.
4. Vegetables (carrots, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage, greens) - 150 rubles.
5. Tea - 50 rubles.
6. Butter 200 g - 80 rubles.
7. Pasta - 50 rubles.
8. Sour milk (ryazhenka, snowball, yogurt) — 100 rubles
9. Cottage cheese, sour cream — 150 rubles
10. Frozen mixed vegetables — 50 rubles
11. Chocolate — 50 rubles
12. Eggs 10 dozen - 50 rubles.

Total: 1130 rubles or $33.

Prices are rounded, and in most cases up.

Of course, we replace something, we want something, we don’t want something, but the essence remains about the same.

The dishes that we (well, like us .. mostly my wife, for which we are very grateful to her!) Prepare from these products in some ways the same type, in some ways different.

On breakfast:

• Eggs: boiled, scrambled eggs, scrambled eggs;
• Kashi: more often bulgur, couscous (very tasty!), wheat, millet, less often semolina, oatmeal;
• Cottage cheese;
• Muesli, extremely rare, but sometimes just too lazy to cook something.
• + to this, tea with something, but in general, drinking food is harmful, so we try not to drink tea after each meal.

Lunch and dinner intersect in everything except soups, soups are only for lunch:

• Various soups, borscht;
• Cereals: buckwheat, rice;
• Chicken with vegetables or cereals;
• Pasta with fresh or frozen vegetables;
• In general, everything with vegetables;
• Less often casseroles, homemade pies.

Well, something like this. He said that I would not paint the menu, but he himself laid out everything

During the day we eat at work, but we take food from home.

Maybe our food is so economical also because we lead a healthy lifestyle and eat healthy and lively (in moderation) food.

So, for example, we don’t eat, and therefore we don’t buy:

• Dumplings, dumplings;
• Instant porridges and pasta - ala doshirak;
• sausage;
• Sausages, wieners;
• Sweets in large volumes: cookies, cakes, pastries;
• Ketchups, mayonnaises, chemical sauces.

These products, not only are they harmful, but, as it turns out, they are also more expensive than normal food.

Of course, anything can happen, and what I wrote is maybe 70% of our diet. In addition to this, we sometimes eat at our parents' house, in a cafe, on vacation or somewhere else.

Well, do you still think that it’s impossible to eat normally for $35 a week, but you can only eat “doshiraks”?

All good and health!

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Briefly about the main thing: three of us can eat for 1,500 rubles a week. To do this, you must be ready to gain weight by one and a half kilograms, spend at least one and a half hours a day in kitchen work, give up additives “oh, it’s so tasty, well, one more bite,” don’t feed guests. If you are determined, then you must act like this.

What to cook

According to the terms of the game, by the beginning of the experiment, our family of slobbers had no food left, except for salt, sugar, a handful of lingonberries frozen to the freezer, vegetable oil, vinegar and spices.

Eating three for one and a half thousand a week is not the same as eating one for five hundred. And if I had a mustache above my upper lip and five children (hello, grandmother!), My table would be much more diverse - two and a half thousand per week would fit more seasonal vegetables, types of cereals and meat. I could even sprinkle grated cheese on my pasta while my kids set fire to the mailboxes in the stairwell!

I made a mistake at the menu planning stage (and planning is what you definitely have to do). I made the main mistake by buying 4 kilograms of potatoes, and not a single one - rice or buckwheat. With this, I doomed myself, my family and my followers to dumplings (with potatoes), baked potatoes (with potatoes), casserole (with potatoes), and zrazy (potato). The first thing I did after the experiment was to go to Teremok and make two servings of buckwheat porridge with cheese and stewed cabbage.

In any case, the basis of the weekly menu should be:

Soups(thick, cook in large pots, eat rumbling). I made chicken noodle soup, mashed chicken corn soup, and spicy goulash soup.

Meat semi-finished products. One whole chicken was enough to make two soups, chicken zrazy, chicken potato casserole, hearty chicken curry oatmeal, and fried chicken. A raw cut of meat that could complement chicken spree was not in the budget, so I bought a pound of ground beef without veins and trans fats from a trusted seller.

Kashi in the morning. It's economical, it's delicious, it's the only stronghold of a healthy diet in the realm of dough and potatoes. From one pack of oatmeal, I got one cottage cheese and oatmeal casserole, four types of oatmeal (plain oatmeal, oatmeal with banana, oatmeal with apples and caramel sauce, oatmeal with chicken and curry), corn soup puree and oatmeal pancakes.

Flour products. Russian women have been saving on food for centuries by producing pies, pancakes, dumplings and dumplings on an industrial scale. Saving the filling made it possible to feed a family of three to four people with a glass of flour, one egg, one onion and five potatoes (vareniki), or a glass of flour, a glass of milk and two eggs (pancakes). Flour is much cheaper than bread, and one kilogram was enough to bake pancakes, make dumplings with potatoes and make homemade noodles all week. I refused yeast baking, looking longingly at the New Year's dress. If you do not have a New Year's dress, bake pies and rolls. It's the cheapest food imaginable.

What makes a thrifty life

Spices. Curry, herbs de Provence, anise, bay leaf, ginger, cinnamon and chili expand culinary horizons and allow restaurants to sell a side dish of one potato and half a carrot for 180 rubles. Use it! My spicy goulash soup wouldn't taste so good if it wasn't spicy. Cinnamon in pancakes stuffed with grated apple makes you feel like you're in Starbucks. Berry juice with anise and ginger can replace dessert. Curry in oatmeal, bay leaves in chicken broth, thyme in fried chicken - and now you are no longer a loser, but a young miracle chef who prefers home cooking experiments to going to a burger joint.

Caramel sauce. My eleven-year-old daughter knows how to cook it, my cats lick off drops that have fallen on the floor, you can do it too. For caramel sauce, not only fatty expensive cream is suitable, but also ordinary milk. Three tablespoons of sugar and 100 milliliters of milk are enough to decorate your ascetic meal. We drizzled caramel over pancakes and apple oatmeal. It was delicious.

Interesting recipes. The limited budget does not allow to turn around in full force. Nevertheless, you can come up with something interesting. Charcoal the onions and carrots in a dry frying pan before tossing them into the chicken broth. Thicken the soup puree with oatmeal. Prepare the most delicious cottage cheese casserole with oatmeal and bananas. Take it easy and cut the ingredients for the goulash soup into the same restaurant cubes. Boil potato slices before baking them with oil and spices. Learn to weave a pigtail on dumplings.

As Confucius would surely say: “If you got fifteen thousand a week for food, don’t go to the casino. Lift your chin up and buy a kilo of flour."