to ask what your family eats?

[Tortoiseonthehalfshell]

The thing is, I have realised, is that talking about dollars/pounds is a bit meaningless, because it's not a straight conversion. Food is more expensive in Australia, and the dollar is really strong against the pound so in pound terms, my food budget has doubled in the last year, but I'm spending the same actual dollars, iyswim. Also we don't have much price difference between supermarkets (near-monopoly situation) and no BOGOF offers, so I have hardly any control over the actual cost of things.

So can I tell you what we actually eat, and can you tell me if it's on a par with what you eat or if I'm wildly extravagant? All food cooked from scratch unless specified.

This week is probably a bit more frugal than usual, because I'm trying hard, but not far off the norm.
Friday night: rotisserie chicken, cherry tomatoes, Brie and crackers, canned lychees. This is our post-supermarket-shop supper meal; this week just DH and DD, I was out.
Saturday breakfast: french toast with bacon and onion. Lunch: something my DH calls bobo, which is mince and rice and bits of vegetables simmered together. Dinner: 1.2kg pork roast with potatoes and carrots and pumpkin. Half the pork went to leftovers.
Sunday breakfast: boiled eggs for DD and me, muesli for DH. Lunch: leftover chicken from Friday, salady bits. Dinner: beef stirfry with rice, baby corn, beansprouts and sugar snap peas. Peach and strawberry crumble; the topping was a failed flapjack attempt mixed with flour and spread on top.
Monday dinner: chicken curry with potatoes, peas and cauliflower with rice.
Tuesday dinner: soup made from leftover roast meat and vegetables with pearl barley and more root veg added.
Wednesday dinner: cheese and cauliflower pie.
Thursday dinner: special fried rice with diced leftover roast pork, shrimp and spring onions.

Weekday breakfasts are toast (us) and porridge (DD). Lunches are sandwiches or leftovers from dinner. Puddings and snacks are fresh fruit or popcorn, I think we have a little bit of vanilla ice cream in the freezer as well. No chips or sweets in the house apart from that. DH drinks nice squash or fruit juice, I drink water, DD is allowed one small fruit juice a day and is still young enough to have quite a lot of milk.

What does your family eat?

FattyArbuckle - I don't buy anything organic, and while my budget is $900 it's often $1000+ . So frustrating!

Trying to leave - I will def check Aldi out! I used their nappies for a short time when DD2 was younger but I had a pack where the sticky bit to do it up ripped off on about 10 nappies in a row so I gave up on them. I now buy Pampers when they're on special at Coles (when they're $25 or $30 for a box instead of $50!). I still have to have proper English Cadburys chocolate but I buy that out of my own money... $11 for a 200g bar (or $33 for a 1kg bar when they have them - yum!)... I love my English sweet shop LOL

I'm in NZ and we spend a huge amount on food too. Normally $250, this week $300. That's for two adults, DD 2 who goes through one tin of $30 formula every two weeks and a cat.

We're just back from Sydney and felt like costs were 1NZ$ to 1AUS$.

It annoys me that we pay GST on food. I think this hits poorer folk here in NZ very hard.

We tend to eat dinners like stew and pots, curry and rice, rissoto with left overs, pasta. I think you have to cook more from scratch here as there just aren't any convenience foods that are at all tasty. The only prepared food we have is tomato sauce for pasta which is our standby meal. I really miss M and S food! I think we eat well, but it does cost....

We get a lot of vegetables from my FILs garden and freeze them as well as deer and fish that DH gets, so it's hard to do an exact cost but...

Most of our meals are very simple - brown rice with some veggies, olive oil and a bit of parmesan, for instance. DS and I have that for lunch a lot. Simple broiled fish, home made baked beans with toast, etc. I keep a bowl of fresh fruit and we just choose what we want with each meal. We don't often have dessert (maybe once a week DS and I will bake something- cookies or muffins or whatever- and then he will have those for snacks.)

We do chili (can get lots of veg in there), baked potatoes with broccoli and a cheese sauce, shepherd's pie, pasta, burritos. We all love "egg scramble"...I just sautee whatever veggies I've got on hand, pour some beaten eggs on top, maybe mix in a bit of cheddar. (I'm crap at making omelettes.)

But I think food is much cheaper here in the states and we've got tons of bargain places to get it.

Oh and we eat oatmeal for breakfast, and smoothies made from yogurt and fruit. DS loves peanut butter and jelly sandwiches so he has a fair bit of those.

Snacks are fruit, carrots and dip, muffins or cookies if we've baked them, almonds, string cheese, stuff like that. Also DS has breakfast and lunch at daycare five days a week, which helps cut costs! (I work 8 a.m. -noon.)

nooka, you said "cheese here in Canada is expensive and not very good"
In what way is cheese in Canada lacking, choice or quality?

Are you in St. Ives then Tigurr? I couldn't believe when I moved that the Woolies ten minutes down the road was so much cheaper than that one - rather stupidly I assumed that, like the UK, the supermarkets charged the same everywhere.

I am feeding 5 of us including two big hungry boys and find the price of food shocking. I buy meat at the butcher, fruit and veg at the greengrocer etc. and buy specials as much as I can. I bake a lot (bread and cakes, biscuits etc.) and cook everything fresh from scratch.

Our meals are very meat heavy as my children are very unimpressed by the vegetarian option. In the last few weeks we have had beef stroganoff, chilli, chicken wraps, homemade pizza, chicken and spinach pasta, thai chicken and prawn curries, rogan josh, chicken korma, tuna pasta, chicken cassarole, scallop and prawn risotto, bbq leg of lamb and salmon and lentils, all with various veg/salad sides. Breakfast is cereal or toast during the week, pancakes and bacon and eggs or just eggs at the weekend. Lunches tend to be sandwiches or homemade soup. Leftovers don't usually survive my eldest's "pre-bedtime snack".

Dinners, usually pasta once a week, fish twice a week, chicken once at least. Beef or pork once a week. I usually base meals around what meat/cheese/fish is on special, and what veggies look good. So if I make a meat pie, we will have a veggie or two with it, and potatoes. Or I may make a pot pie with the veggies inside it. If it is baked mac & cheese, we will have broccoli and maybe salmon or some other fish. Whatever we have, we will have a couple of veggies incorporated into the meal, and a starch.

Don't have dessert on regular basis, except when we have guests or special occasion, although I do make apple crisp or banana/zucchini/nut loaves once in a while, usually to have with a cup of tea in the evening.

Lunches, usually sandwiches/wraps, tuna, or grilled cheese, or cold chicken/ham. Or soup, beans and toast, mac and cheese. Oranges, banana's, pineapple, watermelon. Dh brings his lunch to work, wraps with meat, cheese, peppers, onions, lettuce, and a salad. And soup.
Breakfasts, oatmeal, or eggs, or bagel.Juice and tea or coffee.

PS No small kids here, only dh and I and ds 23.

We are in Sydney.
Our weekly budget is $300 for all supermarket stuff (so loo rolls, cleaning stuff etc, as well as food). If I am very frugal I can do $200, but can easily spend the $300, and thats without buying expensive cuts of meat or manuch packaged food.

We only eat sandwiches or leftovers for lunch, or occasionally pasta with pesto or cheese for the DC that are home during the day.

DCs at school/kindy take sandwiches, 2 pieces of fruit, a pot of yoghurt and a home made muffin or cupcake - so no muslie bars or lunch box snacks or crisps.

We always have rice crackers, cheese, yoghurts, fruit, raisin toast, sometimes crumpets for snacks. Usually have a packet of plain biscuits - arrowroots or similar in the cupboard for when the home made muffins run out, but not many other packaged biscuits etc.

Dinners are mainly based on mince or cheap stewing meats, sometimes sausages, sometimes stirfrys with a bit of meat but mainly veg.

From your list, I think its probably the smaller things you could cut out - brie and crackers etc. Maybe try to do a couple of 'low meat' budget meals per week - eg carbonara pasta (so just a bit of bacon, no 'real' meat!), or baked potatoes with tuna or beans. Also be a bit more pciky about your veg choices - eg sugar snap peas are always expensive - choose snow peas when cheap (not that often either) or green beans...not as fun I know, but cheaper!

having said that, I don't think your menu looks overly lavish. Tasty though!

When I read your menu it struck me that you don't have any egg based main meals. I've no idea of the cost of eggs in Australia so this may not help you.

Also are you eating only veg in season? I find that really makes a difference. It is a bit dull, especially at this time of year in France but I use frozen veg to provide variety.

WE spend £17 a week on a veg box and then top up in the supermarket about £50 a week. That for 3 of us and we buy organic everything and luxury brands for coffee, chocolate, not from consentrate juice,meat/dairy substitutes like quorn,soya milk (all expensive)we eat

porridge for breakfast and banana. For a treat we have mackeral and poached eggs.

Lunch is usally snacks throughout the day rather than a big meal. Like breadsticks,veggies,fruit,dreid fruit, oatcakes, soups.

dinner is curries,pies,fajitas,stews,all made with veg. OR fish with veg/potatoes. DH soemtimes eats meat.

I think your menu sounds fine the only way i think you could cut back is less meat because its so expensive.

iscream it might just be where we live (interior BC) but I've yet to find a really good strong cheddar that I could buy in a large block for a reasonable price, and we only buy specialty cheese for a treat now (specialty being anything other than cheddar or mozzarella really).

The (very dull) store brand medium cheddar in our fridge now cost $9 for 450g, I see at Sainsbury's I could buy the equivalent for about £3. For something tastier here I'd have to pay about double, whereas in the UK I'd pay a pound or two more a kg. Purchasing Power Parity is about 1:1.5, so in effect cheese is twice the price.

I expect that there are things that are cheaper here too, and if we lived in the city there would probably be more options (although you probably wouldn't be able to go out and shoot deer, or smoke your own fresh caught salmon like some of my neighbours :))

Hi nooka. Thanks for your reply. Firstly, I love BC! You are so lucky to live there! All of BC is so beautiful, we drove through it, and it was breathtaking. We have family in Salmon Arm, Victoria area, plus in the gulf islands. We live in Ontario, and I have never bought cheese outside of Canada, so now I am wondering what deliciousness I may be missing out on. We buy various cheese, based on sales, extra old cheddar and mozzarella I like to have for cooking,also monterey jack, Havarti, Parmesan, and cream cheese, but not huge blocks. And goat cheese with peppercorn. At Christmas we get brie and blue cheeses. Usually they are common brands like Kraft Cracker Barrel, or Tre Stella, I buy No Frills cream cheese. My dh and ds eat most of it, I mostly like a bit of old cheddar or cream cheese on toast.

Hi iscream, we live in Kamloops, so not too far from your family in Salmon Arm, and yes it is a very beautiful part of the world (we still wake up and look out of the window and think 'beautiful British Columbia' and we've been here over two years now :)

Cheese is lovely stuff (IMO) and in the UK we have a lot of it, and then so does the rest of Europe. Apparently there are over 700 different varieties of cheese made just in the UK. So perhaps you can see why I find the cheese counter here uninspiring

nooka, I lived in Kamloops for 6 weeks many years ago. But better not high jack the thread, as I could go on a long time about BC!

To cut down the cost of shopping We do a "monthly" big shopping for all things that do no perish quickly + arround 1 week of fruit/veg we also get all the meat in one go and freeze it (have meat about tice a week). 4 packets of biscuits are also baught , suppose to last for the month but if they do not, no more are baught. We top up on bread , fruit veg and eggs as and when needed.

I found that making menus for the month actually helps greatly when shopping and in the day to day organisation.

This week was/is/will be

(children and myself have cereals, DH has bread and butter for breakfast)

sat- lunch : HM vegetable lasagna +salad
supper: Lentil soup+ bread+apple tart (the only way to convince the cs to have soup is by offering desert after)

sun- lunch : meatballs with couscous (chick peas and veg in the meatballs sauce)
supper: grilled fish +dauphinoise potatoes + salad

(during the week Dcs and DH have packed lunche,I either have the same as them or have left overs if any)

mon- lunch : rice salad (I bung in a can of tuna, a can of sweetcorn, olives capers,celery,1 red pepper, cucumber) + 2 fruits +yogurt
supper: vegetable casserole +HM bread

Tue- lunch : HM vegetable pasties (made previous evening)+1 cereal bar + 2 fruits
supper: mushroom rizotto + salad

wed- lunch :salami sandwiches + on pocket size cheese+ 2 fruits
supper: spanish omelette (with potatoe, peppers, onion and cheese)

thu- lunch : pasta salad (tuna, sweetcorn and mayo) +raisins and 2 fruits
supper: lamb shops +mash+ veg strirfry

Fri- lunch : cheese sandwich +cereal bar +2 fruits
supper: vegetable bake +tomato salad

I don't think your menu sounds extravagent; it sounds very similar to our family's (in NZ). Like most Aussies and Kiwis you have a lot of meat in your diet. My mum's advice was to have two fish/seafood meals, two vegetarian meals and 3 meat meals a week. Vegetarian meals made with beans or chickpeas are really good for you and very cheap. For example, we love chick pea curry in our house.

Also muesli and cereal is v expensive, and while nutricious, can be full of hidden fats and sugars. Porrige made from wholegrain rolled oats is v cheap and v v sustaining for kids.

Do you have space for a garden? Things like sugar snap peas are expensive at the supermarket but are (apparently) quite easy to grow? (non-green thumbed disclaimer)

Family of 2 adults, one 14yo and one 10yo. We run a basic schedule of two vegetarians and one fish dinner a week. Dh and ds drink water, dd and I drink milk or water. Toast for breakfast. Dh takes sandwiches and leftovers to work, dcs eat school dinners. Typical week's dinner might look like this:

Saturday: lentil soup, apple crumble

Sunday: roast chicken, spuds and peas.

Monday: leftovers of chicken- risotto or hash.

Tuesday: baked pilchard (from tins) and boiled spuds, lettuce

Wednesday: goat's cheese lasagne

Thursday: chops (1 each) and boiled spuds with veg

Friday: meatballs and boiled spuds, grated carrots

tbh we all know we could live more cheaply- we used to- just by cutting a few recipes off the menu, but atm we enjoy being able to afford a varied diet.

Snacks are fruit, biscuits, cake, occasionally youghurt.

It's the meat that ups the budget. I try to vary it so nice meat meals (roast chicken etc) are followed by vegetarian the next evening. Lentil curry, ratatouille, some kind of hearty salad. I also do tofu stir fries and home-made pizza.

I vary the meat meals between expensive ones e.g. lamb chops and cheaper ones using mince or stewing steak as well. Bone-in meat like oxtail or lamb shanks is always cheaper, so a beef stew will be a mix of that and some braising steak. I buy free range chicken but choose the cheapest cuts, either a whole chicken to cut up or a pack of thighs and drums.

I don't buy fresh fish unless it is on offer or for a special treat. Frozen fish is much better value.

I love this sort of thread!

I live in Brisbane and have two teenagers. DH works away. I spend about 200 dollars a week I think. I used to do Aldi and the markets but started working full time and just did Coles or Woolies. Now I am unemployed but find that Coles can be quite reasonable and it saves on petrol not having to shop around.

I do a menu plan and find that helps me cut down.

Breakfasts are toast or cereal.
Lunches: DC have canteen (about $5) or sandwiches or leftovers. I have leftovers or a sandwich.

Dinners:
So a typical week:
Monday: Spag bol
Tues: Chicken and mushroom risotto with roasted red peppers and sundried tomatoes
Wed: tbones, baked potatoes and three veg like carrots, broccoli, snowpeas
Thurs: Lamb cutlets, potatoes, veg
Fri: beef and veg stir fry with noodles
Sat: Lasagne
Sun: homemade lamb pide

I cook mostly from scratch as I enjoy it. The kids do not like takeaway. Most of the above is fairly straightforward.

DC have pudding: yoghurt, custard, fruit or icecream.

We snack on fruit, biscuits and sometimes cake. Kids refuse meat free dishes but I tend to be sparing with the meat and always buy on special. I buy free range chicken.

My easy meals are Woolies or Coles curry (expensive but delicious) and fresh Latina pasta, sauce and garlic bread.

We rarely have leftovers as I have a 15 year old son who is 6ft 1 and very sporty with hollow legs.

We also buy a lot of semi skinned milk but the supermarkets have been having price wars and milk is cheap. I buy good bread but when it is 2 for $6. I have a lot in my freezer.

It is really interesting seeing what other MNs eat and it has given me some new ideas, so thanks for this thread OP.

I meant semi-skimmed milk... mind boggles at semi-skinned!!!! [shock}

Doesn't seem to me that you are being extravagant with what you eat. Australia seems to be hellishly expensive for food.

I'm really enjoying this thread as well for some new ideas. I sometimes think we seem to eat the same thing day in and day out. Almost always cook from scratch as I enjoy it, lucky enough to have the time, live in Italy where there really is no convenience food and the only takeaway for miles around is awful. DS has lunch at school, DH lunch at work (lucky enough to have a great restaurant at work), I usually have sandwich or soup

This week for us (me, DH and DS who is 6 and two weeks)

Monday - Pork steaks with shallots and gravy, oven baked sliced potatoes, cauliflower
Today - Tartiflette with green beans (not for the health conscious but DS loves it and has football today so is always starving when comes in)
Wednesday - Mackerel, baked potatoes and homemade coleslaw
Thursday - Beef stir fry with noodles, beans, peppers etc
Friday - Salmon with rice and rocket salad
Saturday - Lunch - probably eat out but probably only sandwiches, dinner - Shepherd's pie with carrots
Sunday - Lunch probably eat out but a 'proper'meal this time. Dinner - if eaten out will be bread, cheese, olives, tomatoes with basil and olive oil, salami. If not eaten out pasta with homemade sauce of some sort.

I TRY to do a weekly shop but don't always. When DS was younger we lived in France where people often food shop daily and I got into the habit - used to spend a fortune sometimes. When I don't do it weekly I always spend more, same as if I don't plan for the week. I use the Lidl equivalent here for lots of things, much cheaper and the quality is fine (often very good). Rarely seem to have any leftovers, not sure if that is down to buying only what we really need or if we are a greedy family - suspect the latter. If there are any leftovers DH refuses to eat them so I usually have it for lunch the next day.

I am very sceptical that Oz food costs more - do you realise how much food has gone up recently in the UK - it is beyond belief

Some food in NZ is hugely expensive. Mozzarella $12 (6 quid) a blob. Last time we were in the uk it was 69p. I almost wept in Tesco's.

Bread is about $4 (2 quid) as standard. 500g of cheese is about $10 (5 quid).