To be seriously worried that the cost of food is getting so scarily high

[thebird]

I am not extravagant I buy shop own brands where I can, I try to shop on a budget, I cook from scratch and have given up buying extras like wine (well just the odd bottle to keep me sane) but still each week the cost of my food bill goes up and up. I know inflation is running at around 4-5% but I cant understand this as many basic items have increased almost 30-50%. When the hell is it going to stop or I really will be living on beans on toast every night(and even they've gone up lots!

Lidl seem to have a special offer on dishwasher tabs. I've never used them previously, but they were the best I've had so far, much better than Finish. I'm moving swiftly away from labels and into own brand stuff these days.

please can some one send me the £30 meal plan?

Gaagh - there is, I think it is connected to the relative poverty indicators, but I'm rusty on these things. TBH, and i'm sure you know this, we are way up near the top - but that is including developing world. Will try to find figures for developed world.

Could someone please PM me the £30 meal planner. Thankyou

Please could someone PM me the £30 meal planner as well. Thank you.

I have just been shopping. I went to the 99p shop 1st [we haven't got a poundland]. Among other things they had utterly butterly [lovely for cakes], quite big bottles of olive oil, lots of different types of cereals and cereal bars, minicheddars [10 in pack], heinz beans at 50p, teabags etc. Well worth looking in there for food. Beware though, some things are dearer so have to have your head screwed on.

Loving all the tips and agree that the cost of food is really hurting us now. Could someone please PM me the £30 meal planner too? Many thanks.

I think if you can squeeze a freezer in somewhere it is worth the money to buy one. I bought mine second hand a few years ago and its never broken. My sister just had an electric line run out to her shed to fit a slimline one in. It just means you can really take advantage of a good offer. I bought 9 chickens (£1.70 each) from the reduced section and also 20 pints of milk that were down to 10p.
If you have a bit left over from a meal but its only 1 portion put it in the freezer. Its great on a saturday you can take out lots of little meals each.
This week I shelled a huge bag of broad beans and peas (dirt cheap at the minute) and have them in portions in the freezer.
Also I throw any bread heals in the freezer and then I can take them out and make breadcrumbs for toppings, meatloaf, stuffing or bread&butter pudding.

Yes, rising food costs is scary. We are 2 adults, 1 x 9 year old and a dog, and I spend on average £100 a week in ASDA. Plus top ups in the week for bread/milk etc.

We eat well, meals from scratch, ds and I have packed lunches, and i buy own brands where I can.

2 adults and 3 little boys under 5 in our household. Have recently discovered lidl - cheaper than major supermarket who I work for even with my staff discount applied. Anyway went last week - spent £100. Went today for a 'small' top up shop and spent £98- WTF. Admittedly I do have full cupboards of juice, past, biscuits, fruit but only 2 bottles of cheap wine in those 2 shops. Also was at co-op midweek for bits and spent £25. So £225 for 2 weeks at lidl and co-op. It just all seems so expensive

I am just loving this thread!

Thanks to all the great tips I have already made a quick spreadsheet showing all our bills and next month I am going to start putting in all other spends on it. I have also instigated a new household budget plan which will involve me and dp both putting a set amount of money in a pot each week to cover all food and general house stuff like toilet roll and cleaners and such like.

I have also got a micro-fibre cleaning cloth from the pound shop today thanks to someone's recommendation. Bloody amazing! :o

I think dp thinks I have lost the plot a bit but is going along with it as he knows we need to change our ways. We are now expecting our first child in march and have decided that after maternity leave we would both want to drop our working hours to 3 days a week. So not only will we have a baby to pay for but our income will drop by 2/5s

It sounds mad but with childcare costs it actually makes some kind of financial sense. I know we can do it and survive but the days of spending whatever we fancied are now over.

Two points:

1st of all, re baking, I always try to choose recipes low in eggs on a cost basis, and regularly substitute marg for butter, or choose recipes where oil is a possibility. I also tend to lower the sugar, on taste as much as cost grounnds; most recipes are too sweet. For example, I have a fantastic muffin book

www.amazon.co.uk/Muffins-Fast-Fantastic-Susan-Reimer/dp/0952885832/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1313932423&sr=8-1

which was recommended to me on moneysavingexpert.com, and never fails. All the muffins I cook from there require only 1 egg for LOADS and can use veg oil instead of butter, so are very, very cheap to make. I've never yet had a failure with any recipe from that book - the kids love them, and they freeze very well too.

Secondly, whilst I agree that prices have risen massively recently - eg Tesco's Value tortillas up by 100% in a few weeks, from 25p to 50p a pack; no longer deserving the 'Value' title. But I think that needs to be set in some historical context - I've just been reading a book, a family saga/autobiography going from the 1860's to the 1960's. What struck me was how incredibly expensive a lot of the consumer items we take for granted are- eg clothes were prohibitively expensive, so one would plough on for tears with the same increasingly threadbare coat because a relacement was impossible. BUT the author and her husband were able to save up for 1 year! and, as a 22-year-old teacher and new journalist, buy a large house in Hampstead! Her parents, a very poor minimum wage type couple, earned £2 a week, which = 24 shillings. So 1 shilling was roughly equivalent to £10 today (assuming a 40 hour week @ £6/hr). Their weekly rent on a house was only 6 shillings, giving a monthly rent of 24 shillings, eg equivalent to £240/month now. But who today can rent a house for so little?

It is sad that rather than the current generation becoming richer and having lots more disposable income, as earlier generations assumed, all that has happened is that non-essentials have become far cheaper, but essentials = roof over one's head, food and heating, have all stayed extortionate. Just the balance has swung away from food, relatively, and towards housing.

I'm sure that if my rent cost £240/month, I'd grumble a lot less if my food cost a bit more.

I also meant to ask, does anyone know a good place online to buy bulk dry goods like pasta and dried beans?

Where I live you can't seem to get dried butter beans for love nor money and if you do find some kind of fluke dried thing it is a tiny bag for stupid money.

And it's harder, in some ways, because we live in a far more materialist socity - hard for everyone to go without lovely food, or gadgets or fashions or whatever - because now TV, advertising, etc is everywhere, telling us we deserve these things, showing us the lifestyles of those who enjoy these things. The poor then had their noses rubbed in it slightly less.

It does feel like we're heading back to the 19th century fast, in terms of numbers of ordinary people struggling to cover basic essentials. Very sad.

For those who wish to stock up on rice, oils, spices and other odds and sods and if you spend over £25 it's free delivery (well worth it IMO) I use this place...

www.theasiancookshop.co.uk/

alphabet that is a super link!

I've been using them for years. Getting a parcel from them is like christmas morning for me.

Please could someone pm me the 30 pound meal plan, thanks :)

Would someone be able to PM the £30 meal plan. Could really use the help in getting he cost of meals down. Thank you.

this thread is very interesting, like everyone else we are trying to save money.
A few tips which help us is don't ever buy fabric conditioner, you don't need it
Wash clothes at a lower temp - unless they are really filthy sports kits, even a quick wash will do the job. Pound shop for household cleaners. Asda own brand toothpaste is 17p a tube, and doesn't come with cardboard box thus reducing packaging. Add lentils to mince dishes to bulk them out.
A cheapo meal which we all love is spaghetti mozarella bake - use one pack Asda or Aldi own brand spaghetti. two balls of own brand mozarella, one tin toms or jar tomato pasta sauce, one onion. You can add to this to fanny it up as you wish but the basic ingredients cost about £1.50 and will easily feed four.
Cook spaghetti and make a tomato sauce by frying onion and adding tin toms. Add herbs, spices, seasonings to boot. Tear mozarella into small chunks. Drain spag, tip into sauce and mix. Put half of this into ovenproof dish, dot with half mozarella, repeat and bake in oven. if you have fresh basil leaves to add to the layers that makes it yummy, or you can add sweetcorn or anything else really. It is a staple for us and dead quick to make.

I have just been to Sainsburys to check out their Basics range -have posted on the Sainsburys thread . Am very impressed and think I will probably be able to get my big storecupboard shop per month down from £150- to about £50 The tea is lovely -fairtrade as well.

dementedma I make a lovely potato and Mozarella bake along similar lines.
Cook some waxy pots until almost cooked-need to still be firm
Layer in a dish with Passata ,basil leaves and Mozarella sliced.
keep some Mozarella back to put on top-drizzle with olive oil and bake
is yum !

Can someone pm the £30 meal planner? DH wage has been cut again this year , so we could really do with some help cutting back. Great tips on this thread btw.

Alphabetty I am in heaven on your Asian cookshop link. There's an Asian food shop near me (in multi-ethnic area) but it's become fashionable with the folks in the posh part of town and their prices have nearly doubled as a result

I am getting my Dal ON!

Could someone send me the £30 meal plan please? Really need to cut my food shopping bill.