Aibu to be annoyed the food shop disappears so quickly

Delicious Balkan fillers: spread butter on slice of white bread, then minced meat and in the oven until brown. Or: mix feta with eggs and same procedure - rich, nutritious, delicious, aromatic , could be food or snack or anything

No need to buy snacks, just fruit, nuts and tinned fruit. Make large pasta dishes and soups, tons of bread and you will be always full, healthy and manage more on this humble budget.

Well not just that but theres no need for posters to exaggerate to make a point. Of course making waffles isnt that hard but it is in no way as simple as cracking a couple of eggs in a pan and scrambling them up. Takes two minutes, one pan and one spoon, nothing else.

I think I would rather the kids have eggs than waffles in any case.

You manage snacks on top of other foods for just this price for a family of 5? We are only 3 of us and I eat only bread and vegetables and we still spend 200

You manage snacks on top of other foods for just this price for a family of 5? We are only 3 of us and I eat only bread and vegetables and we still spend 200

Was just quoting OP. If she doesn’t have the brain space to bake, I think that’s up to her surely?

Oh come on. Making waffles is easier than scrambling eggs.

You dont have to cut back on fruit and veg. The cheapest diets are those full of fruit and veg, pulses, legumes etc

Prior to every meal, act continental and have salad. Each day vary the colour, day one green salad with shredded greens, lettuce, cucumber, avocado (not too much as this is pricey), green beans, green olives, etc. Day two - red salad, tomatoes, red peppers, red cabbage, beetroot, radish etc. Day three - orange and yellows with grated carrot, sweetcorn from the tin, orange and yellow pepper, cold roasted butternut squash. Day 4 purples, so beets and purple carrots if you're lucky enough to get them and black olives

The salad gets variety and fresh veg in, you dont need much of it and then fills up a bit before the main meal. Play around with dressings and herbs to make it taste different each time.

OP clearly says she doesn’t bake?

you are missing the point.

I cook meals with lots of veg: carrots, sweet potatoes, cabbage, beans etc.
I have lots of fruit available, apples, pears, bananas.

I do not have bowls of strawberries, blueberries, raspberries and grapes, because they are expensive.
That was exactly the same when I was growing up.
We had strawberries about twice a year, as a treat, in June when they were in season.

Of course it is lovely to have berries, but it is not essential

Growing up the majority of our fruit and veg was bought from the market, that was much cheaper than the supermarkets. I don’t think I’ve ever bought fruit and veg from a market as an adult. I have no idea if the prices are still better or what the shelf life is like.

Budgeting isn't a new concept. 😅

Frozen isn’t isn’t too bad

I tried the 5% from Iceland and actually really nice and breaks down/cooks well

think was was 3 for £10

I can’t do fatty mince tho. The 20% may be cheap but it’s rank and chewy

It is a lot though when it’s a 3rd of peoples wages

You are completely right. He's a tricky one though....very hard work, immune to being reasoned with. There won't be any packets of frozen berries for him any time soon, but he'll be telling all and sundry how ludicrous and petty I'm being 🙄. The sooner he's earning his own money and running his own home the better.

Theres 3 of us eating 3 squares and snacks at home here and we spend more than that per week.
We get through a punnet of fruit / large can / frezzer stewed fruits, 1 banana and a large pot of greek yoghurt pretty much daily. 2 packs of rice cakes. On average 2 bags of crisps. On average 10 snack bars.

I think you are under-buying snack. Is that instead of or as well as dessert? The fruit and yoghurt is dessert in our house so much less snack would be needed if there was some alternative after tea.

Not cut back. Buy more for the same price by making different choices. She is buying fruit which is expensive for small portions. She can buy cheaper fruit and get much bigger amounts.

Yeah, but he ate his siblings' treat food. He could easily have made himself a sandwich or a bowl of pasta.

I come down hard on DS1 if he eats the stuff I've saved for treats (ie the salted caramel spread from France) lest he become the kind of man you read about on here who eats the food set aside for his kids' lunch boxes.

I can do 7 breakfast and 7 dinners for myself, my 14 year old and my 12 year old for around £40/45 a week if we do fully vegetarian. I cannot do it if we have meat; it really bumps the price up. So we have a mix usually. But then it bumps up again from buying things like fruit and ice cream etc, but those aren’t essentially and I can get snacks down to £10 a week with the right choices.

DS1 knows we're on a very tight budget right now, but is moaning I'm not buying the regular packs of frozen berries (he'll hoover up a couple a week, often making himself a brimming bowl with muesli and yogurt that he'll leave half of on the side in the morning 😡). DS2 and I have been out blackberry picking so there's been plenty of stewed blackberry and apple that DS1 has eaten the bulk of, but he won't go out and pick any blackberries himself, or chop up and stew any of the massive pile of apples sitting on the kitchen table right now.
He needs a kick up the arse and a lesson in respecting who pays the bills and in not wasting good food.

Country is a joke when we have mothers asking how they can cut back on fruit/veg for their kids because it’s unaffordable

@Overwhelmedandunderfed How are people eating fresh, nutritious meals for £70 a week?

I couldn't do it easily for £70 without compromising on quality of meat and veg and massively budgeting, I think. I could probably do it for around £85-90 without really having to think too much about it.

I suspect other people eat more exciting/nutritious meals, which pushes the price up, but I could do the following without really budgeting too much:

• Pizza and salad - quite often we cheat with ready-made pizza dough (£4), buy a bag of grated mozzarella (£2.50), passata (65p), a bit of ham (£1) and a sliced pepper (65p). Bagged salad around £1.50.
• Toad in the hole, potatoes and veggies - the batter is just flour, eggs and milk, then sausages for around £2.50, a few potatoes, a couple of carrots and frozen peas (80p?).
• Chicken, roast potatoes and veggies - around £10-15 for a good quality chicken, then potatoes and veggies around £2 on top.
• Spaghetti bolognese - mince (around £4), pepper (65p), onions (20p), garlic (55p, though we normally have one in), stock cube (around 25p), tin of chopped tomatoes (50p), spaghetti (75p).
• Jacket potatoes with cheese/fillings and sweetcorn - potatoes (£1), cheddar grated (around £2 to do enough), baked beans (£1), tuna (65p).
• Chicken stir fry - chicken thighs (£7), noodles (£3), carrot, spring onions, peas (£3), a bit of soy sauce, oil and a few spices (£1).
• Fish fingers (£5), fries (£1) and peas (40p?). (£6.40).

Breakfast is toast (£2.60 for 2 loaves) with peanut butter (£7.50 for 1kg, does a couple of weeks) or cereal (£3) with milk (we get through 3 big ones a week, so £4.95 of milk), and fruit (banana/apple, probably £1 a day if we each have a whole one). Pancakes with strawberries and whipped cream at the weekend (around £5-6).

We do spend more on our shop (around £140-150), but that includes snacks, treats, alcohol and household stuff.

My teenage son was always enormously hungry. He ended up being 6'4" tall, and a lot of that he at around this age.

So I made sure there was always extra food, but it had to be filling, and not biscuits etc.
He often came downstairs and cooked something at 10 pm before bed because he was hungry. And he ate 3 meals a day and that included 2 large bowls of cereal for breakfast (6 weetabix) and a large healthy dinner.

Cheap frozen pizzas were his thing, and bacon sandwiches. I encouraged him to eat carbs and protein, to fill him up, not just bisuits and sweet stuff. He was also allowed to eat left overs from the fridge too.

I remember my brother being the same, he effectively ate 4 meals a day for about 3 years. He is also very tall, and grew 7 inches in one year as a teen.
I do think sometimes teens are greedy, but I do think that sometimes they are genuinely hungry as they are growing so fast.

Both my brother and ds were stick-insect thin until they stopped growing.

That’s bad and greedy!

Buy some cheaper snacks and also make cheap easy snacks like flapjacks(really easy with a cheap bag of supermarket oats) cheap own brand biscuits, encourage the children to have chocolate spread or something on toast as a snack rather than chocolate bars. There’s lots of ideas online. It’s hard trying to feed a family at the moment, so expensive.