Has anyone just gone “fuck it” now when it comes to the weekly food bill?

[tiredandstripey]

usual disclaimer of saying I know we are in a fortunate position to have this choice.

For so so long now I have used the weekly food shop as an exercise in budgeting. I’m very strict and never spend more than £80 a week (me, DH, two DDs age 1 and 3) including nappies etc and have been doing everything I can to try to avoid spending more each week as the prices continue to climb despite the fact that me and Dd2 have allergies (= more expensive “alternative” products) and DD1 is autistic and fairly limited in her diet (and still in nappies).

I currently shop at Asda and I have been dropping down a product level, buying a lot of their essentials range, and cutting out extras/treats or opting for cheaper alternatives. For example DH and I used to enjoy a nice pudding once a week - a roulade with cream, or a sticky toffee pudding etc - but now I just get a block of chocolate to share instead as that’s £1 instead of £4 odd.

But I’ve got to the point where I’m thoroughly fed up with it. The food is increasingly shit quality - mouldy fruit and veg, crap dates on stuff, boring cheap meals all week long. We never go out to eat in the evenings (we have no one who can have our DDs) and I’m so fed up of never having anything “nice” to eat.

if we wanted to we could afford to spend an extra £100 or so on our food shop a month. Has anyone else finally just accepted the price rises and stopped trying to budget? I mean - obviously we would still have a limit, we’re not made of money (and I’ve just dropped my hours at work so will be earning less from next month anyway). But I’d really like to just allow myself to not choose the cheapest option of almost everything for once. There’s some cheaper products that I really don’t mind but some stuff is definitely worth paying extra for (I’m looking at you, Essentials rice pudding - like eating soapy bath water). And I’d happily forego my twice a month takeaway treat in exchange.

Slightly prepared to be flamed because I know some people don’t have this choice at all. But up until now I never allowed myself to buy the “nice apples” etc and now I’m just thinking bugger it.

We don't scrimp on supermarket food, I would rather spend less in other areas like eating out

We have made changes but am still shopping in Waitrose.
We definitely eat out less than we used to Plus I now do a monthly ship in Lidl to stock up on things like Olive oil, grass fed beef, organic chicken, tins of tuna, salmon, tomatoes, sweetcorn etc plus frozen veg, loo and kitchen roll.
So whilst I save money I can then go and spend it in Waitrose on nice things.

I love eating and I would not deprive myself like you describe. Switch to better food. Life is short and you can afford it.

Food is a huge part of feeling happy. I can just imagine the 33p chocolate low point - I've had turning points like that. We don't have takeaways or eat out much, so I've taught myself to cook really well, so we can eat like frugal kings all week

My recent find is frozen vegan hoisin duck - it makes so many great 'Chinese takeaway' style meals. With fresh egg noodles and vegetables, it's a cracking meal in about 8 minutes. With mini wraps and spring onion/cucumber, it's instant Peking rolls, etc.

Eating veggie and using spices makes for healthy meals and once you’ve bought a few spices for a £ each then you can make cheap and delicious meals.
Veggie curries, stews and soups are my faves at this time of year and work out very cheap per portion. Frozen veg works fine in them too and is often better quality than fresh!

We've reduced take aways and eating out because recently it's all been disappointingly bad either in terms of service and / or quality so are just buying what we want in the supermarket. It's more cost effective to go to the butcher and buy steak as a treat and cook it myself than go out and pay £20+ for a bad steak.

Very true but I think that's likely to get worse rather than better, with rising industry costs and tighter household budgets.

If you like puddings, you can make pretty decent mug cakes in the microwave. They're quick to make and will be cheaper than the supermarket. I make a sticky toffee pudding, lemon pudding and chocolate cake. There's probably a way to make rice pudding in the microwave too.

Our food bill’s gone through the roof in the last couple of weeks as we’re currently without a kitchen and existing on takeaways and ready meals. I daren’t look at what we’ve spent and I feel horribly unhealthy.

At the end of the day, we really are what we eat and there are lots of things I’d rather do without than decent food. I can’t wait to have a nice home cooked meal.

We are in the same boat of trying to make £80 a week stretch much further than it had to before.
We've also started buying Asda essentials range and have found some good items which we like but others have been rubbish.
Jamie Oliver did a programme this week on cheap but hearty meals (£1 ish per portion) so we're trying his tray bake with rice this week. We are also having fajitas, a Nando's chicken style meal with spicy rice and coleslaw and Jacket potatoes with beans and cheese. All things we like and would have eaten before and the weeks shop including baby formula was just a smidge over budget.
It's hard work to keep to the budget but we find meal planning really helps!

I usually prefer yellow label item's, so I can sample and enjoy the pricerier, items but cheaper cost

Asda is very shite quality. Switch to Aldi/Lidl, or Tesco (lots of club card deals often make things cheaper than most supermarkets).

Nice to know I’m not the only one feeling like this. Totally agree about Aldi - there are some decent bargains (eg. Fake Pom bear crisps for DD1 for half the price) but I probably end up spending more overall thanks to the bloody middle aisle of shite. DH thought I’d finally lost the plot when I came back the other week with value yoghurts (not paying top whack for the nice creamy ones!) and a bird feeder for literally no reason at all.

@Alighttouchonthetiller made me lol at the medieval pottage. I know exactly what you mean. We both work full time in professional jobs and yet my DH is taking smart price peanut butter sandwiches to work every day because he’s rather have cheese but it is so bloody expensive. Maybe we’ve taken it too far though 😂

Just bit the bullet and ordered an Ocado shop and spent… £57! Felt like I only got about 4 things (joking… sort of) but I will go back in again tomorrow to update and add more stuff once I can be arsed to make a meal plan.

I would never compromise on the quality of food, especially with growing kids who need to eat to develop well.

I'd stop the twice monthly takeaways and spend a bit more in the supermarket, personally.

@tiredandstripey Those bird feeders are decent!

I wish Aldi and Lidl did better veggie stuff. My brother shops there and raves about it!

Oh and thank you for all the good tips. Please keep them coming.

Will definitely try mug cakes, and rice pudding in the slow cooker.

we already eat pescatarian (apart from I do eat meat sausages because veggie sausages are very difficult to get gluten free) so we eat lots of veggie meals. We do also eat a lot of toddler style meals too though thanks to DD - ashamed to say that we have fish fingers with various oven crap once a week. She does eat veg but only if it’s plain ie no sauces. It makes things very tricky - the meltdown that ensued from offering cauliflower cheese rather than plain cauliflower was just not worth it at all! We are slowly trying to expand her list of safe foods but it’s exhausting and we are already tired.

Also, when you make certain meals eg pasta bake, chilli etc, make double what you usually make and freeze the rest. So in weeks where you feel you might need to be more frugal with the food shop, you can use those frozen meals.

If you can afford it or have the space, get a cheap chest freezer so you have lots of space to stock up. We moved house recently and inherited a big chest freezer, so every time we go shopping we now buy some extra bread items, frozen goods or basically anything that can be frozen. We probably have enough now that we wouldn't need to go shopping for 2-3 weeks other than for milk, toiletries and a few other basics.

@TrippyLily if you did want to try aldi is much better for veggie stuff than lidl.

We've just stopped takeaways completely in order to buy nicer food at home.
Tbf I was a bit pissed off today that most of the fruit and big wasn't in tesco, but I still spent £89 on about 2/3rd of a small trolley of food.
The prices of food is shocking at the moment

I used to spend 70/80 now 100 minimum and now I've sort of budgeted these new costs in rather than moan at the shock of what I've spent. Still cutting down and being careful. We're a family of 4.

Having perused the Ocado website, the main thing I’m struggling with is the difference in the price of what I would consider to be not basics but not luxury items. I know they price match asda/Aldi etc on certain popular items but they are undeniably more expensive for stuff like tinned fish, pasta sauce, or anything that they don’t have an “essentials” equivalent for. One of DD’s safe foods is cheese and tomato pizza which is £1 in asda and aldi and in Waitrose it’s £2.20 😯 but then again I do feel bad feeding her the cheap shit. But would the Waitrose one actually be any better quality? Surely a basic cheese and tomato pizza (chilled section not frozen) is pretty standard?

Tbh we shop in asda but only for the cupboard stuff, they usually have pretty good deals. Anything fresh gets brought elsewhere as we learnt a long time ago that fresh from there is shit.

We are close to £200 a week for two of us but that includes meet friends our butcher, wine and I have a penchant for fever tree finger beer which is about 2 quid a bottle and I buy about 10 a week. Used to be about £140.

shop at Waitrose and m and s

not about to start economizing. Life is too short