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.

No I honestly hardly ever spend more. Some weeks I buy more beans if they are on offer for example so don't need much the next week and we might just happen to eat less eggs some weeks so there's a few left. I bought some tins of coke zero this week as they were on offer I wouldn't normally. It varies. I can see we aren't eating as much as other families. I just asked my friend with 3 boys how much they spend and she said £100 a week and she's super tight so yes I must be bad ha!

But its interesting isnt it, are you hungry or underweight? Same for your husband and kids?

Because if not, then yes your calorie intake is correct (albeit not very healthy calories)

So all you would need to tweak is the type of food you're eating and that may, or may not, come with extra costs. It would be interesting to find out.

Bit late to the thread OP and you've had loads of good advice.

We're a family of 6 and probably spend around £200 per week on average and that's with everything including cat food.

I use SMOL tablets and reusable bottles for cleaning products.

I use own brand non bio washing powder which is a lot cheaper than Persil but if I do buy branded I'll get it from B&M.

We eat a lot less red meat and meat in general than you. As others have said, use pork and beef mince for Bolognese/lasagne (it's higher fat content so very tasty!).

Dishes which have a similar vibe to yours but not necessarily as pricey - macaroni cheese, carbonara, veggie lasagna, veg curry, pasta puttanesca, fajitas with chicken and loads of peppers and sweetcorn.

The other thing I find really useful is using frozen onions or veg base mix. Really bulks out the dish and I don't have to faff about with prepping all the veg.

I'd say that as a household we eat very well even spending £100 less a week than you.

Yes but now you've gone from' were a family of 6 spending £95 PW so £300 seems madness... ' posts, to 'oh we don't actually feed 6 people for £95 a week, because we actually have a takeaway each week too'....and now you're saying that no that £95 isn't even for 3 meals a day....

I'm assuming from your latest, the kids are perhaps having school meals not part of the £85 ..so there's potential additional costs there and perhaps the adults are buying lunch at work a few times a week etc

So your initial statement was far from what you actually spend, and not comparable... what was the point in offering the comparison? 🤔

It would be interesting to know how much you're spending on takeaway each week, plus any lunches at school (even if free, they have a value) and any lunches or meals out.

Perhaps the cost would be nearer £200 or whatever. Then that's the fair comparison.

Then as OP is feeding 14 people once a week, we can presumably add another £40 or so to your bills... Then it might come to a similar amount.

Plus you still haven't got any bloody vegetables 😂😂

According to My Fitness Pal I had 1667 calories today. That's typical. Unfortunately I am not underweight. Average-if not carrying a bit from Christmas! Husband is a cyclist and very fit compared to me. Kids are all slim but not big eaters and no not underweight either. Just 'normal'. I would like to see OPs shopping list now!

Id like to see you and your kids eat some vegetables instead of sugar cereal and biscuits all day...

Happy to share. We had a meal out this Saturday for valentine's and that was £80/90 but most weeks it's a £30 take away. School dinners are free until age 11 here for everyone so only big girl gets £4 a day for school (4 days as half day Friday). Baby eats at playgroup 3 times per week too (free).

So its just swaps then, so instead of snacking on biscuits or crisps, perhaps, cheese and crackers, nuts, avocado on a cracker, apple and peanut butter

Sounds boring but I often make myself a mini cheese salad if I get picky in the evening, chucks of cheddar, cucumber, spring onion, mini toms, bit of beetroot if its sitting there. Sometimes a splodge of pickle.

Or perhaps Im trying to mimic a cheese board!!

Im trying to stay away from chocolate and trying to run my cupboards down. I must have countless variations of olive tapendade and flavours of pesto, legumes in jars, greek week tins of veg stew from Lidl, sauces of all nationalities.

I wont set out my shopping bill as its virtually zero!!!

Well stop bloody doing 21 loads of washing a week for a start, not least because that is absolutely awful for the environment and so unnecessary!!

The meals you described making do not cost £300 a week from tesco and lidl even with a Sunday roast chicken for 14, so I think you need to be a bit more honest about what you're buying on top of the ingredients for stuff like lasagne etc. I'm guessing it's lots of pre packaged snacks the teenagers want such as crisps, snack bars, boxes of cereal etc. Because there's no way your spending 300 a week on ingredients for basic meals such as you've described. A couple of XL chickens for the Sunday roast might be £15 total, the veg probably comes to a fiver in total, maybe £6-7.

What would be the cost equivalent of that though?

Its already another £16 for your big girl and then how much would you say for a school dinner (or equivalent packed lunch actually as I think school dinners are a complete bloody rip off) I suppose you would need more bread and more cheese/ham/houmous?

Yes absolutely I appreciate that. I actually don't know how much school dinners are for primary as I've never paid for them they are free up to P6.

I've added my receipt for my weekly shop this week. On top of this I spent £30 in B&M on cat food and Weetabix. I also went to Morrisons and spent £30 on the bits I couldn't get at Lidl (nice pasta, mozzarella, fancy drinks etc). I think there is more "junk" on there than normal as it's half term and I've got some extra bits with the kids being at home. I won't need to do a top up shop.

I also cooked for 12 on Sunday (veggie curries - 1 cauliflower and spinach and 1 Dahl with salsa, homemade nan, raita, rice and a blueberry and pear crumble with ice-cream and custard).

So around £200 with fairly similar circumstances to the OP.

Staffordshire oatcakes with filling of your choice.

Do a lentil cottage pie rather than a meat one.

Gnocchi alla Romana. Semolina is cheap. I use an Italian recipe but I see Rachel Roddy has one in English (though I serve it with tomato sauce instead of sage, which is what she has). Make the tomato pasta sauce - I use the River Cafe recipe which is just olive oil, garlic and tinned tomatoes. I have never known a child decline to eat this.

Soup and nice bread rolls. We often make a soup out of all the veg left in the fridge at the end of the week.

For cleaning products, we stopped buying them and just use cleaning vinegar from our local refillables shop. The only other cleaning products we buy are bleach and the HG mould spray for when it is needed.

I always say this, but we switched to bar soap a few years ago and have saved lots of money and feel like we get a better quality of product, so would always recommend that!

Ive done 4 washes this week already, not sure 3 a day is excessive. I did 2 yesterday which was just the king size bed as I do the duvet cover on its own

Ive done 2 today which was some big jumpers which need space and then a second one with shirts and PJs.

There'll be more later in the week.

The other bed hasnt been changed yet.

So it's

£85 weekly shop
£10 top up
£30 take away
£16 oldest lunch
And we'll say school and nursery meals are £3 per meal equivalent (out school meals here are £3.45)

£9 for baby
£15 per child school lunches , 2 other kids presumably having 5 lunches at school... so £30.

So your weekly spend is likely at least £175 and probably more, as you haven't said if adults are buying lunches at work etc.

5 bean chilli - buy dried bean mix and cook a big batch (see pack for instructions), make a huge batch of chilli including celery, carrot and onion plus beans then freeze appropriately. One bag beans should make 3 meals easily with veg.

add chickpeas, butternut squash, red pepper, mushrooms and spinach to lamb to make a curry, just a little lamb adds so much flavour, it will cost approximately £10 to feed 6 people generously if you apportion the spice costs, obviously spending more the first time means you will have a stocked store cupboard

School meals are a complete rip off though I think

I think a better comparison would be to see what a family could prepare and create for that size family using, ahem, a few more vegetables!!! With good fats and protiens, not losing any calories from what they're eating now

This sort of stuff isnt taught anywhere really

Even the odd household advice is really just about 'bulking out' or recipes which is fair enough and something I would advise but its hidden costs and portion sizes that people need to understand how their day to day shopping and consumption is being used.

Its common to read on here, just like that poster 'we only spend xxxx', but you really need to break it down to work it out.

this is why I get confused when people post their budget or think mine is expensive
mine is £240pm for just me so £60pw for everything except washing powder and loo rolls (buy in bulk)
I take my lunch to work every day

but if I’m making say a quick pasta for a few days I’ll be adding 1-2 broccoli heads to it plus frozen peas, probably Parmesan
a salad is 2/3 of a bag of salad plus spring onion, tomatoes, cucumber, pickles, peppers etc so lots of veg

I think its common to want this to be true, that I only spend xxxx

Its like when people post outlandish journey times for journeys that I know would take me double the time.

Yes that's correct no other bought lunches. Don't most families (such as OP) have children eating at school also though and have take-aways even if they are spending £300? I think most families would have similar extras.

This hits the nail on the head. It's not realistic to claim spending just £85 a week on feeding a family of 6 when it'd obvious the true cost is much more - I'd guess the reason that posters 4 girls don't eat much dinner - 250g of prawns between 6 people anyone?! - is they've eaten a cooked lunch at school, had cereal for breakfast and then probably eaten another bowl of cereal after school because they seem to go through a load of junk chocolate cereal. That poster is only spending so little because she's mostly feeding her children cheap cereal and biscuits and a school lunch each day, it's a poverty diet.

We are very careful with what we buy, eat meat free several days a week, and cook almost entirely from scratch and spend around £130 a week for a family of 4. And that's with some weeks spending more like £150 if the cupboard is a bit low. And I think you'd struggle to get it much below that while still eating a nutritionally healthy diet.

No, in England children only get free lunches in infants so many of us make packed lunches for kids every day. All 4 of us in my family take sandwiches, fruit, yoghurt etc to school/work each day rather than buying extra on top of the main shop.

Less meat. I'm feeding more people for less than half the cost! We have four cats. No snacks although people can freely eat bread products. Instigate a toast night...beans, cheese or egg. I wouldn't buy frozen pizza. Don't make over the portion amounts. Increase the amount of carbs if you need to. We don't buy yogurt unless it's a bit pot of greek type yogurt

And takeaways are not a weekly thing in our house, we probably get a takeaway around 4-6 times per year at most.