250 pound weekly shopping/food

[Whome91]

Please try not to judge. We are a family of 5 two adults 7 4 and 7 months kids. Some of that is takeaways that me and dh have at night. I have a Diet Coke habit (20 for cans) I cook meat for the kids most nights. It’s including nappies for two kids in full term and baby milk. Help please

Ok there’s loads of changes you can make here.

1. £20 on Diet Coke is insane! How much are you drinking?

1. Less takeaways, even ‘make your own’ pizzas from Asda or the ‘takeaway’ bags/ boxes from the supermarket are better.

1. Your DH’s portion sizes are huge! Does he have a very active job or is he very overweight?

1. Does the 4 year old have SEND that means they still need to be in nappies full time?

Anyone can cook. Just follow basic recipes. You will save a lot by not buying all that pre-prepped stuff. Cutting up vegetables isn't hard! How often are you having takeaways?

Does your DH drive? Can you get an online food shop delivery? Do you have a freezer?
My children love mash, I buy a big bag of potatoes once a month and I cook a big batch of mash on Sunday and freeze it in portions. It actually freezes very well.
If you have a decent freezer you could cook in bulk, then every second day you could use your freezer stock, however that would mean meal planning and shopping lists and staying away from the shops every other day.

Look in charity shops for cookbooks, there are always loads. Delia is good for her basic cookery books. Or, you could start a Pinterest board & collect a load of recipes on it (I do this). Free, & takes up zero space in your house. Mary Berry also has quite a few decent recipes that would be pretty good for a less confident cook.

Do you buy a lot of snack stuff? We do trying to cut down but kids are hitting the teen years and eating like locusts!
Went to Asda today. Spent about £80 and didn’t have any meat!!! Was mostly fruit and veg, some tinned stuff, cereals, crisps and other snacks as well as juices, milk, bread etc.

Can you and DH not have a couples meal on the weekend and eat as a family the rest of the time? I think it’s really important for kids to sit and eat with adults and eat what they are having - with some adjustments like chilliest added to the adults meal after serving, salt added when on plate not when cooking etc.

Invest in a slow cooker. Make large meals that feeds all!

Prepping veg is really easy once you get the hang of it. Get a small cookbook of simple recipes and get started.

Just takes some time to get into a routine. Stop shopping daily. You end up with things you dont need and just spend because you can.

Absolutely ridiculous, I spent 120 for four adults and two cats. My two freezers are stuffed and my fridge is full, I have an excellent and full larder cupboard which has taken a long time to build up. I buy two bottles of wine a week, we eat very well.

I cook from scratch, not perfect and not religiously but most of the time. I can make a meal from scraps in the fridge. Small hard piece of cheese and an egg? Make some pastry for nothing from the larder cupboard, flour butter and water. Beat the egg and grate in the cheese, add a drop of milk.

Cheese and egg pie for four, with a few veg or some baked beans.

Yes, You need to learn to cook.

First and most obvious thing to do is to cut out the coke - gradually if you'd struggle to stop suddenly.

Secondly I don't know how often you have a take-away but we have one every couple of months.

Here's how I do it each week in case you need ideas:

• Sunday night - meal plan for the week ahead. Fresh, healthy meals 6 nights a week and on one of the nights my fiancé likes a cheap shop bought pizza (on these nights I usually have a jacket potato or something).
• I use the meal plan to write shopping lists.
• I spend £40 a week at Aldi / local plastic-free shop.

-£10 a week buying a combination of bits that Aldi doesn't sell at Sainsbury's and I also go to the fish mongers for fresh fish. -£15 green grocers for fresh fruit and veg. So no more than £65 a week in total for me, fiancé and one and a half year old ds (excludes cleaning products, toiletries and milk).

We have a biscuit tin and occasionally chocolate but generally eat healthily. We drink a lot of tea but there are never fizzy drinks in the house and I drink a lot of water. Ds usually has what we're having for tea (but obviously at an earlier time!).

Good luck reducing your food bill. I honestly think getting rid of the coke could be a great first step

OP you could try and cook one meal from scratch a week, something you and the kids can eat you can just have yours later. Then once you’re comfortable with that add another cooking day in until you are confident with a few recipes. I spend 30mins planning our meals for the week on a Sunday and then get my shopping delivered based on that for the week. I have to limit myself to one can of Diet Coke a day to save money, and I really look forward to it all day haha!

The diet coke may work out cheaper if you buy 2L bottles instead of cans. You may even be able to cut down a bit that way by not having to drink a whole can's worth at a time.

I find it easier to control the amount I spend if I do it online - you can see what you're spending as you go along, and weigh up the various options of quality (or brand) vs price. You may save time and effort by buying ready peeled/chopped/prepped foods, but you're paying for the luxury, too - may as well get a decent food processor and get it to do the chopping etc. for you. Cooking from scratch is easy if you can read - there are recipes for literally everything online, and definitions of cookery terms - and videos to follow, too if you're lacking in technique.

If you don't learn to cook, you won't be able to teach your children how to cook either, so they'll 'inherit' your problems in the kitchen. You don't have to cook from scratch every night - once or twice a week would be enough to start with, and to see a difference in your grocery bill.

The meals I produce are far nicer than anything ready-made, no matter how 'luxury' it is! I'm a food lover, but I'd struggle to spend that much on food every week, even if I tried! We eat things like duck eggs, speciality cheeses, high quality free range meat and seasonal vegetables, loads of grapes, good coffee and tea and so on - not budget food (I know, we're lucky, and I appreciate that), and most weeks the bill (including household stuff like loo roll and washing up liquid) comes to around £100 for 2 of us, plus two dogs and a cat. I'm sure you could cut down your food bill without sacrificing quality, if you were willing to try a bit of cooking!

If you're not confident cooking start with something super basic. Pasta, pesto and some mixed frozen veg. Add some cheese and/or tuna (or better boneless sardines as they're sustainable and healthy) for some protein. Comes to about £4 for the whole family.

Once you get more confident go on BBC good food and look up recipes. The highly rated ones are always safe.

Cut down on takeaways.
Replace canned coke with big bottles (or even better swap to Asda cola if you can bear it!)
Have 2 or 3 meals a week which are very cheap - eg jacket potatoes with cheese and beans, pasta bake with little or no meat, omelette and oven chips.
If you can, cost some meals to work out how expensive each meal is. Then choose the cheaper ones!
Learn to make mashed potato and other veg. Carrots are very cheap. Sweet corn and peas are great frozen. Most veg only needs to be boiled or shoved in the oven.
Chicken thighs are much cheaper that chicken breasts for stir fries.

Finally, ignore MumsNetters who claim you can feed a family of 10 on £30 per week...!

We can probably give you more help if you tell us what your family eat in a typical day?

Why are you cooking two different meals?

Can you find an ASDA receipt (as many as you can find) and post it on here?

Nappies for two?

So you tell us you can’t cook, a lot of stuff is very easily learnt, maybe buy a basic steamer, and msybe a slow cooker a 6 ltr i suggest .
Start by googling basic mash to make, then easy slow cooker meals, you could order online ( tesco seems good value and are ok).
Maybe a good place to start with is based chopped ingredients such as peppers, onions and other basics.
A lot is easily learnt, and cheap veggie meals easily and cheaply made.
Good luck, br brave and go out of your comfort zone
Another question do buy a lot of drink?

Why are you cooking a meal AND getting a takeaway of an evening?

Have a look at Jack Monroe's books - A Girl Named Jack is one of them. Cheap family recipes that are easy to make. You don't need to learn to cook - you just need to be able to read and follow instructions!

I think you could do with shopping around.
I make little changes for example the other night I was shopping picked up some stir fry noodles and stir fry sauce from the chilled section.
I strolled into the noodle aisle and saw stir fry noodles ready to go in the pan so they wasn't the ones that you have to boil first for half the price and BBF date was in Sept! The stir fry sauce was also more than half the price!
It's only little things sometimes but can make such a difference.
Do you have a lot of waste left over?
Maybe limit yourself to one takeaway a week if you can.
And of course try and cut back on the fizzy

Ready made mash when your husband eats a whole pot to himself? Not a good idea. Starting with those things will save money.

Trust me, anybody can cook. I'm a Nanny and when I started I told them I can cook from scratch and well I'd never done it but that's how I learnt just went for it lol.

I just made a quorn cottage pie now with loads of mash! Was so easy

Frozen veg like others have said is always handy and cheap.

How many takeaways are we talking? I've cut right down on these lately as I'm losing weight and I feel a bit more flush already.

We spend a lot on food. We don't really keep a track of spending as it's so sporadic. We buy loads of stuff in the 'cheapie section'. I got 6 packets of minces the other day for £1 each (the 5% stuff, I'm on SW!).

I batch cook and make meals last. I did a chicken and chorizo stew and portioned a load off. Then also mashed a load up for soup for lunches.

There's rarely 'nothing in the fridge' to quickly add to some rice and pasta to make a meal.

We buy all our veg from Aldi / Lidl - you do have to use it fairly quickly so I'll often stop on the way home from work for the bits I need to add to whatever I've taken out the freezer and grab the milk and bread and fruit etc at the same time.

We probably spend less than £40 a week on food for 3 of us. DD is in Year 1 so gets lunch at school.

Everything in my freezer has a yellow sticker on it

Your bill is very high. Are you using cheaper supermarket branded items rather than brands? Also have you considered Lidl for things like washing powder, washing up liquid, chocolate bars, orange juice. Much cheaper and the quality is excellent.
Also meal plan and online shop. I reckon that would cut your bill massively. I cut mine a lot as soon as I stopped browsing round the shop and adding items to my trolley.
My weekly shop for 5 adults (eqv as I have 3 older teens) is £85 a week. That includes food plus everything, all household items like washing powder, bin bags, etc plus all shower gel, shampoo, etc.

Do you waste a lot or are you consuming everything you buy? Can you get delivery from Asda if you are buying a lot of impulse things that end up being wasted when shopping in person. Although if you have time to walk to the supermarket it's not the biggest waste of time going - fresh air and exercise and all that.

Asda is probably the cheapest supermarket except Aldi and Lidl, especially if you stock up on offers.

Would your DH be amenable to eating fewer sausages and add some baked beans or veg? Similar for any 'meat and potato' meal - replace at least half the meat with baked beans or similar, or veg if he'll eat it.

Does your DH want to change or does he want to keep his 'pile of meat' diet, even though it's not good for him and expensive?

Does he do his share of the cooking? Can you both learn to cook together, either off the internet, or looking for learn to cook classes locally?

I'm sure you know that diet coke is bad for you and expensive. Can you at least reduce what you drink and find a cheaper place to buy it.

It's a shame that Eat Well for Less is off air at the moment, as you'd probably benefit from watching a few episodes.

Why not do an online shop then you can cost it as you go. Look for the offers.
Work out some simple meal plans and order the ingredients.
Also cut down on takeaways and use the money saved for a meal out and babysitter.
Good luck.

I spend 60 per week. Same amount of people. Do you buy a lot of extras? - Cds magazines, supermarket clothes, homeware, candles, bedding etc?

Lidl freeway diet coke tastes the same as Diet Coke and I think a can is about 30p

Frozen mash is just as nice as fresh and £1.20 a bag.

It’s been a while since mine were in nappies but Lidl nappies used to be great, not sure if they still are?

Just seen you n on the shop daily so that's one of your issues.
And you buy ready chopped vegetable that's about a pound a packet and you get much less.
If you buy about 4 carrots it ends up being 50p so get a lot more out of it