Monthly food expenses

It's really hard to give a exact amount.
Might have to keep an account of the number just to know ourselves.
My rough estimate is somewhere around $50. to $65 dollars US per week and we cook at home.
Seems we don't buy any boxed meals or too many treats either.
My husband might bake a sheet cake once a week using coconut oil and fresh apples or nuts.
I know we seem to be able to stretch meat out into many meals, we do eat meat now days but just a bit of it. No huge steaks or large roasts.
Bought a 1.5 kilo chicken and made soup and 3 meals with a bit of left over gyro snack with it for 2 people.8 portions of soup and 6 portions of dinner meat and enough for 2 snacks  from one chicken.
We bread the breasts and cut them thin or do HU style paprikas  with parts. Make homemade noodles on the side or millet. Giving up eating much potato or white rice.
We eat mostly Hungarian style cooking and buy what veggies are in season.
I pickle my own fresh beets and we usually have a soup and salad of some sort with every dinner, mostly eat whole grains and veggies with small amounts of meat.
Fish is not so easy to find for sale fresh in Tesco, have to either go to a fish shop or the farmers markets to find fish.
They sell frozen fish in Tesco but we only buy that maybe once every other year and only on quick food cooking days.
We also buy in bulk, flaxseed, millet,sunflower seeds raw and green tea.
Grapeseed oil, coconut oil or olive oil for cooking or once in awhile for frying we use sunflower oils, buy salt from the bulk store too, sea salt or the red salt which I now sort of doubt is really from a mine in Tibet. Not sure a mine could produce enough to supply the entire world really.
Have eat between a cannibal and a veggie freak.
Hard to say the amount spent, 10,000 F here and a couple thousand spent there, sometimes we have light weeks of bean soups and potato pancakes, sometimes fresh beet soup with no meat and other times pork chops.
If you eat Indian foods allot, I know nothing about that but curry, not my husband fave so that hits the table once in a long while.
Plan on say, $70 per week and see how that goes.
Tesco was selling parsnips for 700F a kilo while the farmers market was selling for 300F a kilo, price compare if you have the time.
We are active seniors, do allot of walking and exercise but don't need a ton of calories either. Not running any marathons or heavy weight lifting so a small amount of meat is more then enough. Hard to know the requirements for each individual person, height, weight activity levels and body types are all different. Some people need to eat more and more often.
Some food items in Hungary are very reasonable to buy and others are not. Good quality beef is very pricey here if you are a big steak eater.
One thing I enjoy using is the fresh celery root sold here. Hard to find that in NV. Saw it once and it was going for over $7.00 per pound which would be like 2,500F per kilo if my math is correct. Here it is more like 300 F per kilo. Have to adapt your diet to local way of cooking and shopping if you want to see your money go further.

Since it seems you are coming from India (Profile flag), then I would suggest using one of the available cost of living comparison sites:
https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-livinghttps://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/calculator.jsp

As a single man, I pay about 25,000 Fts/month for groceries.  Chicken and pork are relatively inexpensive; fish and beef are relatively expensive.  There is generally only a small selection of ethnic food items available in most major grocery stores in Budapest.  So while I don't think you'd have trouble finding curry spice or turmeric, it would be more difficult to find a large selection of lentils or garam masala.

Good luck!

Ok, so we just got home from a trip over to the,"Bulk Shop".
They have 3 locations.
www.bulkshop.hu
A 2 kilo bag of lencse is,1,280 Ft.
Brown rice is 540 for 1Kilo
All these items can be seen with pricing online.
A very clean shop with everything pre packaged.
Locations are in the 11th,9th and 13th districts so far.
In and out in a breeze.

Thanks both of you. This information really helps

Vicces1 wrote:

Since it seems you are coming from India (Profile flag), then I would suggest using one of the available cost of living comparison sites:
https://www.expatistan.com/cost-of-livinghttps://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/calculator.jsp

As a single man, I pay about 25,000 Fts/month for groceries.  Chicken and pork are relatively inexpensive; fish and beef are relatively expensive.

That's excellent, thank you!  I like many fine things - salmon fillets; French cheeses, balsamic vinegar, etc., so if I figure 38,000 Ft per month on groceries, I suppose I should be fine food wise; righ?

Marilyn Tassy wrote:

Ok, so we just got home from a trip over to the,"Bulk Shop".
They have 3 locations.
www.bulkshop.hu........
Locations are in the 11th,9th and 13th districts so far.
In and out in a breeze.

Thank you!  Checked it out - very helpful!!!

I can't confirm your budget, as there are a range of vinegars, cheeses, and other products, but it's safe to say that most would be on the more expensive side.

Why not use one of the sites like Tesco's and make your own shopping cart of items that you would normally buy. It will help you check general availability as well as prices!

https://bevasarlas.tesco.hu/groceries/  (It's in English!)

Panni36 wrote:

That's excellent, thank you!  I like many fine things - salmon fillets; French cheeses, balsamic vinegar, etc.,

Most imported items will not be cheaper in Hungary than in other places around Europe. In fact, some specialty items are more expensive in Hungary due to higher VAT here and extra transportation costs.

Salmon and imported cheeses are  very pricey here.
More so then in the US.
They have some nice local fish that is also fresh water fish.
Cheddar cheese is well over 2,000 or more per kilo here.
About the same price as some meats per kilo.
Of course for one single lady a kilo is allot of cheese.
They have fish shops here . Many of the larger grocery chains like Tesco don't even have a fish dept. now. Some do and some don't.
They for some reason closed the fish dept. in a Tesco near us, only frozen fish sold there these days.

Prices on food items seem to be going up lately.
Bread at our local CBA has gone from between 200 or 219 to now over 325 a loaf, about a half kilo size.
The CBA has been sold to new buyers and they raised prices on just about everything since the Easter Holiday.
Tesco has also raised their prices recently, a few forints here and there.
Not sure if this is because we are sort of at the end of the season food wise or if prices are going up on food for good.Some local farmers markets beat the major chain stores but not everyone has the time to check them out.
Cabbages, apples and other items are costly right now and old, left overs from last season.
Overall compared to food costs in the US it is a good 50% less here or more on most items.
Sometimes in large markets the price on say onions can be only 99 F a kilo and then a few days later it is nearly double in price.
This fluck in prices is not something normal in the states.
You must allow a thousand or more forints per shopping trip to adjust to any prices that have changed from trip to trip.

Vicces1 wrote:

Why not use one of the sites like Tesco's and make your own shopping cart of items that you would normally buy. It will help you check general availability as well as prices!

https://bevasarlas.tesco.hu/groceries/  (It's in English!)

This was the best!!!!  I registered by adding in my old address from 45 years ago in Budapest.  I selected everything I could possibly need in one month, then some, plus household items, and beauty supplies that will last me several months and all came to HUF 38,000.  Perfect!  I budgeted about 35,000 Fts

Thank you!