To think that DH is being totally unrealistic about the weekly food bill!

[goingeversoslowlymad]

Am getting a bit stressed out about my DH and the grocery shop. Our weekly bill is usually between £80 to £100, we would do a top-up shop of about £20 midweek, so max £120 all in for a family of 4. We do not use nappies, this includes everything including toiletries and cleaning products.

Money is pretty tight at the moment and I can appreciate he wants to try to cut down a bit but I seriously can't seem to get it much lower than this, there are no luxuries in this either i.e wine, magazines etc. Everyone I talk to in our situation seems to spend a similar amount but DH seems to think it excessive.

I'm going to give a veg box and meat pack delivery a try. Also going to order online to avoid being seduced by the offers instore. I don't see it being much cheaper but hopefully he'll stop moaning if I prove he's being unrealistic! What does everyone else spend?

Hurrah taking and teapig! My thoughts exactly. I actually mutter to myself like a mad woman whenever I HAVE to go to Tescos for something and see all their crappy value stuff and the special offers. Their value range is generally rank and the items on special offer are still usually more expensive than the equivalent (but better quality) in Aldi.

Titan anyone? (mmmmmmmm)

Oh and wine. I am very much addicted love a glass or two and as far as I'm concerned a bottle of Italian red or White wine for £2.99 hits the spot for me

TB - it's based around a Rose Elliot one, so really easy.

melt 3 or 4 spoonfuls of butter in 1pt milk. When the butter is melted, crumble in 8 slices of bread and mix well. Grease a casserole or lasagne type dish. beat bread and milk until there are no lumps. Stir in half a bag of frozen sweetcorn(thawed), some chopped parsley, salt, pepper, 2oz grated cheese and 4 eggs. Pour into baking dish and sprinkle with another couple of ounces of grated cheese. Bake at 190 for about 45 minutes until set and golden. Serves 6, with careful shopping this can cost less that £3 and only needs veg to go with it.

I would heartily recommend Rose Elliot's Cheap and Easy cookbook for anyone who wants to experiment with quick, easy, economical vegetarian meals - some of the portion sizes are a bit small for in here, though.

I buy these things when I need them. What else would I do? Again you don't need these things all at once. My price rack has everything I need. When something runs out I get it in the next shop.

I don't buy tampons though. I'm a mooncup convert!

Calpol? What are you doing? Drinking it? I genuinely can't remember the last time ds had it. And I don't buy the branded one anyway! Paracetamol is like 20p! We've got a wee first aid box with stuff like that in it.

Please, please believe when I say this isn't impossible. Its what I've always done. Apart from the first shop we done when we set up home and the odd Christmas our shopping is, hand on heart, under the £50 mark. I'm not making it up!

Someone asked up there ^...
My favourite Marguerite Patten book
(which is actually 3 of her wartime books welded together: sometimes you get the same recipe three times which is facsinating as you can track the availability of certain ingredients as the war progresses)

www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/0753706830/ref=dp_olp_all_mbc?ie=UTF8&condition=all

Short of posting 12 weeks of shopping receipts I can't really prove it. I bet there's lots of people getting by no a lot less.

secondcoming
the £50'ers...
What about stock cubes (34p from Home Bargains)
/olive oil (very rarely buy, or only on special offer)
bisto (No branded products in our house! Stock cube and cornflour)
/sugar (pound store (large bag)/ Home Bargains/ Don't buy unless baking or brewing)
/peppercorns (Giant bag frrom Indian grocery vv cheap)
/tampons/ (Mooncup)
salad cream/mayo/ (Lidl's is the best!)
hp/
plasters (Home Bargains less than 20p a packet)
/calpol ( Non-branded version 99p a bottle)
/paracetomol (Home Bargains/LIdl 18p pack)
jam (Make own)

Ruby you have more patience than me! Or is it that people have assumed the 50 is just for meals? Surely to cook meals you need stuff. I don't use a lot of mayo for example. I probably buy it every 6 weeks or so. My weekly shop isn't the same every week. I buy what I need when I need it. I'm not one for stock piling really. Don't have a lot of space. I also don't get a lot of reduced items but in awe of those that fill their freezers for a few pound!

One tip from me - Look at portion sizes, most people eat far too much meat, which is expensive. For me and two children a meal with chicken might be one to one and a half breasts, so a pack of chicken breast often does us 2-3 meals. Same with other meats. We replace them often with beans, lentils, eggs and even vegetarian substitutes which are cheaper.

I also shop around in several places to get the cheapest prices. Freeze meats bought on special offers, and any fruit that is unused and going over for pies and veggies the same for making soups, bread that is on the turn for toast or bread crumbs, leftovers as quick ready meals/snacks, reduced items etc.

I buy store cupboard things when I see them cheap, so stock cubes I can get for 49p - 19p if I go for the really cheap stuff. I keep a packed herb and spice cupboard anyway, and replace each tub as it empties. Oils I get for about a pound in Aldi, I will stock up if I ever get any extra in my budget as I love olive oil. You can budget it all in. Some weeks I get by on less than £20 for food because I have to, so I know if I need to save for big things I can just have a slim week and get the bigger stuff.

I also do product trials quite often, and have been doing one, for example, on washing gel, which has saved me a fortune for two months on washing powder and softener. And have in the past done it for deodorant, teabags and cleaning products.

That's why I would say within my budget there's probably about £8 that's spent on a rotation of things be it oil, pepper, soap powder, plasters, toothpaste, loo roll etc.

OP, they do deliver to most places in the EU. Anywhere off the mainland costs more.

www.approvedfood.co.uk/static/Delivery_Charges

And before anyone says get a cow, i keep hens and they cost more than eggs if you really factor the true costs in.
Really? We kept hens for years and will again once we move back to UK and get settled. Do you feed them scraps? We never threw food away with hens, they are rats with wings, loved any of our food not just breads and grains, they aren't vegetarian, ours ate insects, lizards and frogs. I even saw one take a field mouse off the cat and eat it one time. We had 6 hens and used a 40lb bag of chicken scratch (corn grain mix stuff) every 4-5 months. Ours roamed the yard and ate everything in sight and were big and fat.
This has to be the most interesting thread for me, when we move back I'll need to keep our costs for food and other things as low as possible, so all you MNers are going to be a wealth of information.

Oh I meant to add our food costs here in CA are horrendous. I spend about $800 a month (over £500 a month) plus more for milk and occasional things I run out of each week. Family of 4.

We've toyed with the idea of hens a few times. dh even got as far as half building a hut and run. We were going to rescue battery girls but something always came up!

You could definately cut that down, where do you shop? Do you always buy the branded versions? How old are your kids?

I think it is definitely harder work, doing budget food shops, because you have to keep track of what you are buying more strictly and travel to your cheapest purveyor of foodstuffs. Or to several different shops if you are a true budgetting aficionado, which I am not. But it can be done. The cheaper places like Aldi do everything cheaper, including oil, medicines, cheese, herbs, stock cubes etc. My aldi shop today included olive oil- big plastic bottle, hayfever tabs (71p, iirc, which is a massive saving over most places), big block of mature cheddar, shampoo (56p), for example. They had very cheap sunscreen, washing powder, dishwasher tabs etc that I didn't need today but would include as required. A proper family shop for 2 adults, 2 teens and a toddler - lots of meat, veg, fruit, snacks and basics like bread and milk for under £60 was doable without feeling deprived and I reckon that would be a realistic average weekly spend for us if we were a bit more organised and if partner hadn't already quaffed most of our nice aldi wine!.

Approved Foods are currently saving us a fortune!

You do need storage space as you end up with vast quantities of random packets, but we now do a monthly AF & try not to buy any other curry/chilli/stir fry/table sauces.

Also, buy an enormous bag of red lentils & use to replace/eke out mince/Quorn in everything. & cheapo frozen mixed veg from Asda/Morrisons.

I make an enormous 'student style' veg curry once a week - sweat onions, peppers & any other veg that was on offer, add a good handful or two of lentils, a couple of jars of whatever curry sauce we've got in the AF cupboard, tinned tomatoes (always get saver brands for chopped toms), simmer for half an hour, chuck in a bag of frozen veg & a few handfuls of spinach from the garden. Any leftover cooked veg goes in too. Basically, I just keep chucking stuff in until the big saucepan is full.

We eat a third of it (2 adults, 3 dc) then I freeze what's left - it will do at least two more family meals, or lots of individual portions for me to take for lunch.

It's not wildly exciting, or haute cuisine, but the dc are getting a load of healthy veg, it is a very cheap way to feed everybody, & if I know I'm working late & won't have time to cook from scratch, I can just pull a tub out of the freezer in the morning.

I do an enormous veggie bolognese in a similar way - day one, spag bol, day two, shepherd's pie. Another third in the freezer.

That's the thing with Aldi I can go in with no list and buy pretty much whatever I fancy and it.s still around the 50 mark but I have heaps of goodies and maybe even wine! To get to 50 in Tesco I need a plan, a list and a steely reserve! Not to mention a lie down in a dark room!

See I have looked on approved foods, and there is nothing there that I buy except perhaps loo roll. What do people buy from there that is genuinely a saving?

I am a bit because lots of the things on there - biscuits, cakes, other snack foods, are things that get bought once or twice a month here at most, partly due to cost I must say.

MY weekly budget is £120 for a family of 8 including a baby in nappies and a 14 and 21 year old (so adult appetites). I buy the odd bits (stock cubes, herbs, tampons etc as mentioned above) spread over the month. And I never ever spend the full amount unless we are having guests.

Aldi is your friend, as is meal planning, down branding and self control!

Takingit

Thats what I love about Aldi, I never spend more than £80 in there and always have wine for me, beer for the kids, treats like ice lollies for the kids etc and I know how much it will cost.

Alibaba - this month, lots of stir fry sauces, naans, popadums, ketchup, mayo etc. Fruit salad which is handy for puddings for kids - cheaper & less waste than fresh fruit, in fact. Tomato paste (big catering tins - will use half a tin in a bolognese & freeze the rest). Olives. Couscous. Tampons.

Last month was all about the tinned kidney beans & plums, & jars of sundried tomatoes, I seem to recall!

It's not going to replace a 'proper' shop & you can't be too fussy about sell-by dates, eg. we now have enough stir fry sauces to last a year at least. Also, we have a room in the cellar which we use for storage - if you haven't got much space to store food, it'd be of limited use.

Where it's good is things like packets of 'couscous with bits in' - that's lunch for me at work for about 8p. Can't argue with that!

I also can't understand a meal from scratch being cheaper. How many teaspoon do you actually get from a jar of spice/herbs anyway? (no we don't have any ethnic supermarkets within a 30 mile radius).

I can make a chicken (£4?) last - chicken chorizo with legs, thighs, wings.(2 meals) Breasts in a curry or fajitas , rest boil up to make risotto or soup.

Veg needs loads off other expensive stuff too because it needs loads of cheese or herbs or spices but goes off quickly. I find a vegie meal doesn't come in any cheaper ie ratatouille= courgettes £1 aubergine 50p tin of toms 30p - bloody herbs whatever I have but more likely another living basil plant that dies within a few weeks 80p = £2.50 min and it's still not really a meal without a potato or something same as meat.

I can buy loads of ready meals for a couple of quid (not that I do) but I totally see why people do it.