Groceries on $20/week

I read a variety of food blogs these days, and one of them, The Lunch Tray, recently posted a call to action: a reader had mentioned that she had $20/week to feed her family and was living on basically fast food and peanut butter (she's not eligible for foodstamps.) To make things even more complicated, the woman can't tolerate gluten, and her husband can't tolerate beans - so, two of the staples I'd ordinarily rely on are out. I thought this was an interesting challenge, so I headed over to Peapod's site and started creating a shopping list to see what I could buy for $20 that might fit her restrictions, but also feed a family for a week. Pickings are very, very slim....but this is what I came up with:

Banana 5 @ $1.95
Carrots 1 LB BAG $.99
Centrella Milk Fat Free 1 GAL $2.99
Dutch Farms Rose Acre Eggs Grade A Medium 1 DOZ $1.49
Birds Eye Spinach Chopped 10 OZ PKG 1 $2.49
Our Family Quick Oats Rolled 18 OZ CAN 1 $1.89
Our Family Rice Brown Long Grain 16 OZ PKG $.89
Our Family Pumpkin 15 OZ CAN 1 $1.39
Our Family Tomato Sauce 29 OZ CAN $1.49
Our Family Tuna Chunk Light in Water Pouch 2 - 2.6 OZ PKG $2.00
Quaker Yellow Cornmeal 24 OZ CAN $2.49

(assuming available salt, pepper, sugar and potable water, this came to $20.06 without tax or delivery, neither of which should be applicable anyway.)

These could be made into:
Breakfasts: eggs, oatmeal sweetened w/banana, oatmeal w/pumpkin
Lunches: Eggs over spinach, pumpkin risotto, carrot sticks, tuna over rice
Dinners: Polenta or grits with tuna, spinach and tomato sauce; Spinach/Carrot stir fry w/rice & poached eggs. Spinach omelet. Pumpkin skirlie.

So, what would you buy? Bop on over to Peapod.com, and see what you can do for $20, and post it below.

$20/wk on food

I use pea pod often but they are not the cheapest and there are delivery fees. Id suggest more Aldi shopping to stay within budget. I think she can eat rice. what about quinoa?

My point was not to use Peapod to actually shop: I can only assume this woman does not live in the Chicago area, and it's likely wherever she is, she doesn't have the opportunity to shop around for the lowest prices.

The idea behind this thread is for people to cut and paste lists from Peapod to share the shopping lists they created, with prices, as a kind of template for a $20/week food budget.

I realize you're restricting yourself to what's on Peapod, but a couple items stand out, price-wise:

The spinach at $2.49 for 10oz seems expensive. Peapod has the Our Family brand at $1.19, and 1lb bags of other veg at $1.69 -- spinach once cooked doesn't yield as much belly-fill as a mixed veg, for instance. I will admit that spinach is more versatile.
The tuna in pouches is going to be a lot more than canned -- I don't buy it often, but the aseptic pouches do tend to be expensive. I just checked Peapod, and Bumblebee light chunk in water is 5oz for $.89. That's just more than 1/4 the price per oz.

With that spare cash, I'd get a bunch of cilantro and a red onion ($.89 and $.99 respectively). Not much on nutrition, perhaps, but big on flavor. Make extra rice one night, and turn it into a salad the next. Maybe a $.60 cup of plain yogurt.

The gluten- and bean-free makes it tough, or I'd be recommending lentils and bulghur.
Perhaps potato flakes? $4.29 for a 1lb box would have to be spread over several weeks to pay off.

I did point out in a comment on the original post that you have to look at $20/wk as $80/month, so you can plan for purchases like that (I was thinking I'd to nonfat dry milk, it's expensive but more for your money) including bulk potatoes and onions. For some reason when I did the search, the pouched tuna came out as cheapest, so point taken - doing better homework is important.

I did notice that things generally seem more expensive, I'm guessing Peapod has something to do with it, but I also think that it makes it easier to find pricing that might work nationally.