Need to get my shopping bill down, any ideas of cheap meals?

[elliejjtiny]

6 of us usually, do a roast dinner for 14 on Sunday. Shopping bill around £300. I normally do the same meals for dinner each week. Lasagne, spag bol, jacket potatoes with cheese/beans, frozen pizza, roast chicken, cottage pie, sausages and mash. Every dinner served with either salad or cooked veg. Dc go to breakfast club in term time, breakfast at home is usually toast and/or eggs. Pudding only on Friday. I am terrible at snacking in the evening so going to try and reduce that to save money.

Cooking for 14 every week must take up a lot of your weekly budget. Can you do it less often?

Wait what?

3 loads of washing a day for 6 people? Why? How many times a day does everyone put new clothes on?

New mould spray needed every 3 weeks? Sort out the damp problem! Open windows, do less washing, don't dry washing indoors

Under £100 per week for 6 people for all meals AND cleaning products??

Shopping list?

Have you watched Diary of A Cheapskate on Tiktok? It's totally unhinged frugal content and I can actually believe some families live on that budget if they really want to. They use the Olio app a lot so you get tons of free food. She collects free condiment and sugar sachets, and friends & family even save up theirs to give to her. She waters down the milk when making Weetabix and doesn't boil the water to make pasta (boils it for a second, turns down the heat and just let the pasta sit in there). Most meals are literally pasta with a handful of grated carrots thrown in.

To be fair, none of the things are extremely unhealthy but the lengths some people go to save money on food is mind-boggling.

Miserable!

Fancy stealing sugar and whatnot just to save a few £ ... Id bet a million she can afford the £1.50

Beef mince is SOOO expensive at the minute! I'd either reduce it and bulk it out with lentils or other veg, or swap it out for veggie.

We used to buy fillet steaks for a treat. They used to be £12 for 2 from M&S. Now they're £12 for one! I buy venison steaks instead and actually prefer them!

Or, buy in even bigger bulk and do a load of meal prep, so you're making two weeks worth of lasagnas at a time and freezing half, if it makes it cheaper.

£300 divided by 7 is roughly £42 a day

£42 a day divided by 6 people is roughly £7pp a day

realistically I’m not sure you can reduce it down

maybe consider buying meat packs from your local butcher - I’m sure you could get a great chunk of meat for £100

buy washing tabs from Aldi

soap powder from Costco

2 Sainsbury's Choco Rice Pops 375g £1.90
substituted with 2 Sainsbury's Chocolate Hooplas 375g £1.50
1 Alpro Dark Chocolate Flavour Dessert 4 x 125g £1.85
1 Alpro Greek Style Plain Dairy Free Yoghurt Alternative 400g £1.35
1 Alpro Oat Milk No Sugars Chilled Dairy Alternative 1L £1.60
1 Aquafresh Fresh & Minty Toothpaste 75ml £0.95
2 Belvita Breakfast Honey & Nut with Chocolate Chip Cereal
Biscuit Snack Bars Pack 5 x 45g £2.00
1 Blue Dragon Medium Egg Noodles 250g £1.20
1 Blue Riband Original Wafer Biscuit Bar Multipack x6 108g £1.00
2 By JS Digestive Biscuits 400g £1.18
1 Coca-Cola Zero Sugar 6x250ml £2.50
1 Dairylea Dunkers Ritz Cheese Snack 3x43g £1.50
1 Dairylea Snackers Cheese & Crackers with Mini Oreo 56.5 g £1.60
1 Genius 6 x Gluten Free Scotch Pancakes £1.85
1 Green & Black's Organic 70% Dark Chocolate Bar 90g £2.75
1 Hovis Seed Sensations Seven Seeds Medium Sliced Seeded
Bread 400g £1.00
2 Jammie Dodgers 140g Cherry Flavour Biscuits £1.50
1 Jason's Sourdough The Great White Bread 450g £2.20
0.512kg JS Broccoli Loose £1.12
2.08kg JS Fairtrade Bananas Loose £1.98
0.146kg JS Onions Loose £0.14
1 Ko-Lee Instant Noodles Chicken Flavour 70g £0.30
1 KTC Chopped Tomatoes 400g £0.45
1 Lee Kum Kee Honey & Soy Stir Fry Sauce 70g £0.50
1 Marshall's Cheesey Macaroni Pasta 190g £1.25
1 Naked Rice Long Grain Rice Japanese Katsu Curry 78g £0.75
1 Oreo Lunchbox Vanilla Cookies Multipack 6 x 22g £1.25
1 Peppa Pig Kids Strawberry Yoghurt Pots 6x45g £1.20
1 Roysters T Bone Steak Multipack Crisps x6 £1.50
1 Sainsbury's 640g British Fresh Skinless & Boneless Chicken
Breast Fillets £4.42
1 Sainsbury's Baby Plum Tomatoes 325g £0.89
1 Sainsbury's Baby Potatoes 1kg £1.00
1 Sainsbury's Baked Beans In Tomato Sauce 200g £0.35
1 Sainsbury's Blossom Petals Gel Air Freshener 120g £1.25
2 Sainsbury's British Cooked Honey Roast Ham Slices x10 115g £2.20
1 Sainsbury's British or Irish 5% Fat Beef Mince 250g £2.69
2 Sainsbury's Choco Hazelnut Squares Cereal 375g £1.72
2 Sainsbury's Chocolate Hooplas 375g £1.50
2 Sainsbury's Coconut Rice 250g £1.50
1 Sainsbury's Ginger Snaps 300g £0.59
2 Sainsbury's Little Ones Organic Pear & Apple Smooth Puree 6+
Months 70g £0.90
1 Sainsbury's Little Ones Sensitive Botty Wipes x60 £0.59
1 Sainsbury's Pesto, Red 190g £0.89
1 Sainsbury's Pitted Green Olives 120g £1.75
1 Sainsbury's Pure Pineapple Juice 3x200ml £1.40
1 Sainsbury's Ready Salted Multipack Crisps 6x25g £1.10
1 Sainsbury's Red Kidney Beans in Water 215g (130g*) £0.45
1 Sainsbury's Red Pepper £0.70
1 Sainsbury's Roasted Red Pepper Houmous 200g £1.35
2 Sainsbury's Scottish Semi Skimmed Milk 2.27L (4 pint) £3.30
1 Sainsbury's Small Whole Cucumber £0.70
1 Sainsbury's Soft Medium Sliced White Bread 800g £0.74
1 Sainsbury's Thin & Crispy Hawaiian Pizza 385g £1.85
1 Sainsbury's Thin & Crispy Pepperoni Pizza 305g £1.07
1 Sainsbury's Tomato & Three Bean Soup, Be Good To Yourself
400g £0.63
1 Smiths Frazzles Crispy Bacon Multipack Snacks Crisps 6x18g £1.65
1 Stamford Street Co. Double Strength Apple & Blackcurrant
Squash 750ml £0.49
1 Stamford Street Co. Mini Apples x6 £0.99
1 Stamford Street Co. Mixed Size British Eggs Free Range x10 490g £1.95
1 Stamford Street Co. Prawns 250g £2.54
1 Stamford Street Co. Toilet Tissue Double Rolls 4 Equals 8 Rolls £1.65
1 Stamford Street Co. Tortilla Chips 200g £0.57
1 Stamford Street Co. White Rolls x4 300g £0.75
1 Wagon Wheels 6 Jammie Biscuits £1.25
Order summary
Delivery cost £2.00
Subtotal £93.49
You've saved* -£7.65
Total paid £85.84

Copied from last week's order. I don't know if this is allowed as it names brands?

Do you live on a farm with your own cow to milk, chickens for eggs and veggie patch to suppliment?

Swap to Aldi OP I did and it is quite a lot cheaper especially compared to Tesco

Crikey we are a larger family by another 4 plus 3 cats and a dog plus ages 2-16 so need alsorts of extra nappies etc your going wrong somewhere if your spending that amount a week regardless of visitors...and the amount of washing is boggling me to once a day for us unless I'm bed changing

I've posted my last delivery receipt. No farm here.

I’d be emabarreswd to have posted that as food for a week. It’s well known that unhealthy calories are half the price of healthy ones

How does that stretch to all of you over the week, lots of it seems like snacky bits, are you eating 3 meals a day?

I didn't say I was healthy I just didn't like being called untruthful.

Nothing embarrassing about feeding your family, just worried @Mumstheword1983 is going without for her children.

Yes we do. Girls do get school dinners (3 of them) I do normally have to top up midweek around £10 as we run out of bits.

What sort of meal plan can you put together with that lot?

Don't you eat fruit and vegetables?

Each person has per week;

• 1 single mini apple
• ⅙ of a cucumber (so an inch?)
• 2 bananas
• 2-3 floret of broccoli
• A few baby tomatoes

My 6 year old would eat more than that in a DAY.

(Oh and maybe a bit of onion in some sort of chilli/Bolognese)

Trying to work out your meals.
You clearly are all having lots of chocolate cereal, biscuits and puddings etc.so
Cearlnand toast for breakfast.

What are you making for lunches and dinners for 6 people,

with 1 pepper.... A head of broccoli... 70g of instant noodles... 600g of chicken etc.

Not really a meal planner and don't want to derail OPs thread either but we commonly have chilli and rice, a pasta dish, a curry, pizza and salad, prawn stir fry as you can see from my list! We do have a take away on a Saturday 😃

Sometimes if I felt we've spent a bit much for the week I look on the Olio app for my lunches, people have plenty of bread, potatoes or fruit that can be frozen or made up for a meal on the day, you'd be surprised what you can find on there.

Also about a kilo of animal protein, plus some prawns, no cheese which is fine, people might not like cheese but very short on substance, just snackyish foods

looks like a student shopping list of a 18 year old who is doing fairly well for their age!!

Well its hardly a derail if OP can emulate what you're cooking per person for that money

The prawns are 250g so thats very very small amount for a stir fry for the family, are your portions quite small? (nothing wrong with that by the way)

This made me laugh. My husband says the same. I do top up midweek mostly on bananas, cereal and apples. Admittedly I don't really eat fruit. That's for the kids. They only really like apples and bananas. Obviously each week there is some food left over for the next so it varies but that's. Typical Friday delivery for me.

It's just inconceivable that 6 people are sharing a single pepper...half a cucumber etc all in one week.

They seem to eat lots of cereal (6 boxes?) with only 8 pints of milk? They each have a box of cereal a week?

Presumably milk is the thing she tops up on though.