Feed Your Household for Less: The 4-Week No-Oven Food Plan

Eat well for less: 4 weeks of hot, filling, no-oven meals, with every shopping list done for you

This plan tells you exactly what to eat every day for 4 weeks, what to buy each week, and how much of everything to cook. You only need a hob, a microwave, a kettle and a toaster. There is no oven and no grill.

New in version 3: can't buy bread? Make it in a frying pan. Eight pan breads (chapatis, tortillas, Caribbean-style fried dumplings, soda farls, potato farls, Scotch pancakes, thin pancakes and 2-ingredient flatbreads), each costed against shop-bought, plus a "swap the loaf" option for every week with the honest money and time difference. There are 13 new tin-by-tin and store-cupboard recipes (tuna, luncheon meat, tinned ham, sardines, mackerel, corned beef, dried beans and split peas), a Great Store-Cupboard Rescue for when you can't face another tin of kidney beans, and a rebuilt emergency week made entirely from the cupboard.

What it costs (the food in the plan, average per week over the 4 weeks):

• For 1 person: £24.33 a week (£3.48 a person a day)
• For 2 people: £38.87 a week (£2.78 a person a day)
• For a family of 4 (2 adults + 2 children aged about 5 to 11): £68.81 a week (£2.46 a person a day)

Week 1 also includes the flavour toolkit (£13.19): oil, salt, pepper, spices, herbs, stock cubes, soy sauce, tomato purée and lemon juice. Repeating the plan in Month 2 costs less (£18.01, £34.12 or £64.06 a week), because the toolkit and some food are still in your cupboard. Milk for drinks is not included.

Prices are Tesco online prices checked on 8 November 2026 via trolley.co.uk (onions: Morrisons). Prices change, so your total may differ. To see how the plan compares with what you spend now, use the 2-week receipts worksheet inside. We compare with the ONS average for your type of household, but those figures are not directly comparable; the caveat is printed beside them.

Enough food, estimated honestly. The plan gives about 2,100 kcal per adult per day. Children get about three-quarters of an adult portion. This is an estimate worked out from the government's food composition data (CoFID), and could be about 10% higher or lower. The NHS guide is 2,000 kcal a day for an average woman and 2,500 for an average man. For bigger appetites and teenagers there is a box of cheap, costed top-ups.

136 pages (for 1 person), 137 (for 2 people) or 140 (family of 4) · A4 PDFs · version 3, November 2026

What's inside

• Three editions in one download, each its own A4 PDF with only that household's amounts, lists and totals:
  • for 1 person
  • for 2 people
  • for a family of 4
  • an ink-saver copy of each (white pages, outline boxes, same page numbers)
• Start here and Print these pages:
  • the 5 steps
  • your first day as a checklist
  • which pages to print
  • how to print them
• Real life:
  • start any day of the week, and shop the evening before
  • packed lunches and flasks
  • school meals (family edition)
  • what to do with no freezer or no microwave
  • one hob ring
  • measuring without scales
• Kitchen kit and boxes:
  • pan sizes
  • how many boxes you need each week
  • how much freezer space each week needs
• Is it enough food?
  • the energy estimate for every day
  • costed top-ups for hungry households and teenagers
  • how to scale for 3, 5 or 6 people
• 4 weeks, each with:
  • a one-page fridge sheet with nightly defrost ticks and a freezer list
  • a menu with the amount of every side, extra and snack
  • a nutrition check
  • a batch-day timeline with honest times, cooking rounds and a two-evening option
  • batch amounts including total water
  • fridge and freezer notes for each day
  • a priced shopping list with "My price" and "My shop" columns
  • a "repeat this week on its own" add-on list
• After Week 4:
  • Month 2 lists, without re-buying the toolkit
  • doing the weeks in a different order
  • seasonal swaps
  • an own-brand guide for shopping at Aldi, Lidl, Asda, Sainsbury's or anywhere else (no price promises)
  • a blank meal planner and a blank shopping list
• 50 recipes, one page each: the plan's 25 recipes + 4 basics, 8 pan breads and 13 tin-by-tin and store-cupboard recipes
  • your household's amounts, rounded to things you can measure
  • what it costs and roughly how much energy it gives
  • the 14 allergens
  • a "Make it…" line for vegetarian, vegan, halal, kosher-friendly, gluten-free, dairy-free, egg-free, nut-free and Ital
  • method, and what "done" looks like
  • swaps, plus out-at-lunch and no-microwave versions
  • a kids' version on every card in the family edition, plus a costed "safe plate" for picky days
• New: pan breads (no oven needed): dry-pan and shallow-fried breads with "if it goes wrong" help, freezing and reheating, the FSA rule on raw dough and hot-oil safety
• New: swap the loaf: for every week, what it costs and how long it takes to make chapatis instead of buying bread
• New: tin by tin and the Great Store-Cupboard Rescue: world-food recipes from tins and dried food, and dozens of ideas for kidney beans, baked beans, chickpeas, tomatoes, sweetcorn, tuna, luncheon meat, rice, pasta and oats. Dried kidney beans come with the safety rule: soak, then boil hard for at least 10 minutes, and never slow-cook them from raw.
• Also included:
  • food safety rules from gov.uk (FSA)
  • swaps
  • a missed-shop emergency week made from tins, dried food, flour and frozen veg, with amounts for your household
  • more ways to save
  • every source and price, dated

Free with the plan: Everyone at the Table: The Plainmula Food Needs Guide (58-page PDF): allergies, intolerances, coeliac disease, vegetarian and vegan eating, and faith and cultural food rules, with a chart of which of the plan's 50 recipes suit each need.

How it works

1. Buy the plan.
2. Download the zip: your three editions, their ink-saver copies and the free Food Needs Guide.
3. Print the pages you need, or use the plan on your phone or tablet.

No physical item is shipped.

From Plainmula. Checkout by our sister store, Plain Terms.

General information, not financial or medical/dietary advice. Check labels for allergens. Facts and prices checked November 2026.