AIBU to be confused when people say it's cheaper to cook from scratch?

[Blueskiesandcherrypies]

(Sorry another 'weekly food shop post'....)

I just don't think it is! I struggle to get our weekly food shop below £140pw. That's for me, DH, ds9, dd7 and dd1 (and soon to be newborn ds). We all love our food, though I tear my hair out every week planning meals everyone will enjoy rather than refuse and sulk about tolerate, and cook from scratch (just things like spag Bol, curry, carbonara, puff pastry 'pizza', roasts...) but I often think blimey if I could just chuck a few ready meals in the trolley and loads of bits from the frozen section (burgers, nuggets, kievs!!) we'd be quids in! But then we wouldn't be eating so healthily and I wouldn't know exactly what we're all putting in our mouths.

Weekly food shop includes packed lunches, loads of fruit for snacks, cat food, household bits, nappies.... but not alcohol, that comes out of DH's 'own' pocket rather than our joint account even if it's wine for me. We never have leftovers so can't stretch a meal over 2 days (DCs have growing appetites).

I am green with envy when I see people saying they can feed a family of four for £50 a week! Just....how?!

And ok, before you ask, I have been shopping at ocado lately but I haven't seen a huge price diff than when I used sainsburys.

Please help me see where I'm going wrong!

[VisualiseAHorse]

A lot of people don't include the other groceries in their 'weekly shop that only cost £50'...We spend about £100 a week, for two adults, one toddler and a dog - that includes EVERYTHING that is consumable - milk, food, dog food and poo bags, shampoo, laundry detergent etc.

[BarbaraPalmer]

i definitely am a bit Chinny Reckon about all these £50 food bills

i think a lot of people don't count their top-up shops

my big shop is often "only" £80-90pw, but we probably do 2x £10-15 top-ups for fresh fruit, vegetables, bread and cheese, making the real total nearer £110-120 per week.

[nkf]

But is it cheaper? I'm not convinced that those ready meals are cheaper. I don't see how they can be and still be food. I mean, I know McDonalds is £1.99 for a meal but it's not what I would call food.

[TheSkiingGardener]

It is cheaper to eat well cooking from scratch, but yes, you can eat cheap processed crap for much less.

[MisForMumNotMaid]

I cook lots from scratch - eggs from chickens I hatched etc. I also buy chicken nuggets, frozen chips and baked beans.

Most things in moderation.

Is the puff pastry ready made? Its personal interpretation how far to go with cook from scratch.

With spag bol, my bolognese is about 50% meat then onion, tomatoes, carrots, parsnip/ other route veg shredded. Its cheap bulking stuff it still tastes good.

Have you priced your meals? It can be quite interesting to do this. I once worked out that fajitas with all the trimmings (when not on offer) cost more than fillet steak and jacket potatoes.

It made me think more about the balance of meals over a week. So
I don't mind the odd stuffed jacket potato meal to balance out a good weekend roast.

[TheSkiingGardener]

£1.99 for a McDonald's! Maybe a decade ago!

[sleepyhead]

When we're skint and need to stretch leftovers for another meal then no-one gets seconds. If you're still hungry then you get a bit of bread and butter.

So, that's how we do it. Everyone gets the food we can afford rather than the food they want. Sucks tbh, and thankfully hasn't happened for a while.

[JulietBravoJuliet]

At the minute, I'm feeding one adult and one child for £17.53 a week maximum, so, theoretically, I could feed two adults and three children for less than £50 easily, but you'd be eating some very odd and uninspiring meals! It's a necessity until I get another job unfortunately as that's all I have left after bills etc :(

Normally, my budget is £50 a week to include household stuff. Only shop at Aldi and Lidl, with the odd bread and milk top up from the local shop. We eat something like fish fingers probably once a week, but generally it's pasta bakes, fish pie, roast chicken drumsticks with mash (Aldi had a massive pack of drumsticks and thighs for £2.49 recently which did me and ds for 4 meals), homemade potato wedges with mushroom omelette etc accompanied by whichever veg is on the 69p deals. I can buy a frozen pizza for a quid, but I can also buy a pack of whole meal pitta bread for 79p, passata for 23p and a block of cheese for £1 and make 6 mini "pizzas" and know what's gone into them.

[nkf]

Really? I thought I saw a TV advert quoting that.

[Ruprekt]

I only buy Waitrose reduced food and never shop with a list as I do not know what will be reduced!

Made a huge double batch of chilli tonight using 2 packs mince for 99p, 2 tins of Aldi tomatoes (60p total) and 19p kidney beans.

Served with cauliflower rice (49p) and nachos (50p)

It will do us for 2 meals so pretty good value.

I do a mix of shopping from

Waitrose
Aldi
Tesco value
Poundland

If the Waitrose meals are on offer then I do buy them if it is not cheaper to make it myself.

[mrstigs]

I feed me, dh, ds (8), dd1 (6) And dd2 (2) For About £50 Per Week. Sometimes a little more (if I've wandered down the aisle of impulse ) sometimes less. Kids have packed lunch for school but dh often buys his own lunch at work which obviously increases our spend overall - sigh.
We shop at Aldi, snacks are mostly fruit or rice cakes so don't buy crisps and cakes etc, and cook everything from scratch (except pasta, which I buy dried versions of most of the time as my machine only makes spaghetti or lasagna and the kids like fusili).
We mostly eat vegetarian meals with meat on average twice a week, on maybe only once on a Sunday. So I guess that's where we save the most, if you like meat with every meal it would cost lots more. I also meal plan to ensure we use up everything - for example if I plan one meal with celery in I'd probably plan another that includes it to use up the whole one, this means we buy less and waste less. And rather than buy things like multi pack yoghurt I buy the big tubs of plain Greek yoghurt and decant with chopped fruit in. Each little thing only saves a few pence but you add them together and the bill does go down.

[cashmiriana]

We currently spend about £55 on our main shop and another £10 throughout the week
This is for 2 adults, a teen and a 10 year old.

We are vegetarian and shop at Lidl.

The other night I costed out our main meal, which was a lentil bolognese, right down to the bouillon powder and 2 teaspoons of olive oil. It contained lentils, canned tomatoes, 3 large carrots, 2 large onions, a punnet of mushrooms herbs etc and also 100 g of mature cheddar to sprinkle on top. It cost less than £5 for generous portions for the four of us. We take packed lunches of salad, sandwiches, veg sticks, fruit and yogurt to school/work, and have simple weekend lunches like toasted sandwiches and salad, or homemade soup.

This is part of a huge economy drive and if we had more money I'd be buying a lot of out of season fruit and veg. As it is, at the moment we're mainly having apples, and 1 bunch of bananas a week. In the summer we'll have soft fruit picked at the local farms.

[YarnyStasher]

We have DH, me, 2.11yo DS and 7mo DD. We're spending £100 a week at Morrisons plus a top up shop of £5-10 at Co-op.

We have one in nappies full time and one in nappies at night. We also buy about 12-15 lagers a week.

So I reckon that's about the same as you. I don't think ready meals would come in cheaper though - they're not big enough. Toddler has cut back recently but previously could eat an adult portion. DH eats a lot as he has a physical job.

We've just given up processed meat for sandwiches so are buying double meat for one meal at the weekend and eating it for lunches, but we haven't been doing it very long so we haven't yet seen the effect on our costs.

[bigkidsdidit]

I think if you have older children it is really hard. Ours is 90 a week in sainsburys now for two adults, a baby and toddler including all packed lunches and nappies etc. I don't think that's bad. Lidl is cheaper but then I have to go to sainsburys as well to get herbs, baking stuff etc so now I can't be bothered.

Also people on the £50 a week threads often have school dinners which isn't included in the costs?

[BuzzardBird]

You need to buy the premium products in Aldi to get the quality you want. They are still enormously cheaper than other supermarkets. I think you were just unlucky with your chicken, that has never happened to me.

[YarnyStasher]

I just don't have a chance to go to two supermarkets. Once DS is at school nursery I think I will spend a morning a week shopping with DD - Lidl then Morrisons.

[Blueskiesandcherrypies]

Tbh, I think I'm a bit of a "feeder" and a huge eater, and maybe I'm trying too hard (can't think of a better way to put it) to please everyone with our evening meals. I'm a stickler for us (minus baby sometimes if in bed) all sitting down at 6.30 at the table to eat dinner together and I suppose after they've all been at school/work all day I feel it's my job to wow them with a hearty dinner. Maybe you're right and there needs to be more of a balance, was thinking of introducing one 'jacket pot' night and one 'freezer' night.

[FrankCarsonsDressingRoom]

You know my waitrose reduces meat to crazy prices eg 29p for pack of four pork Chops at 8pm every night. Naturally I buy the lot. Whatever's there.... Stick in freezer. My meat bill is ridiculously low.

The only thing I would say is that pork does not freeze well, and you need to eat it within 6 wks.

[treaclesoda]

My supermarket shop generally comes in around £60 a week, (that includes nappies, washing powder, but not stuff like shampoo etc) but I probably spend about £20 on top of that buying meat from the butcher, and about £10 to £15 once a week on a takeaway.

I'm not lying about it but I also wouldn't start insisting that everyone can do it. It depends on what you like to eat and how much time you can spare to make it. I'm a sahm so I've got more time than I would have if I was working. There is no Aldi where I live, and I don't like Lidl, so that is standard Tesco/Sainsbury prices.

But in my case it comes down to ruthless planning. I work out exactly what we'll be eating, and exactly how much of everything I need to make it. If I have to buy eg a carton of mushrooms for a recipe but I only need half of them, then I think of something to make the next day that will use the other half. I work out how much of everything I need for packed lunches etc.

I don't generally buy jars of eg Dolmio because I find them to be poor value for money (and I don't like the taste), but on the other hand I do buy jars of eg pesto because I don't think you could make your own for that price.

The other big thing is that on a week to week basis I don't have to buy spices, herbs, salt, stock cubes etc because I have loads of them already in the larder. Obviously I had to buy them at some stage, but if you were just starting from an empty cupboard, and you had to buy absolutely everything in one go, I think it would be much cheaper on that occasion to buy a jar.

[Marne]

I'm finding it hard to get my food shop under £150 a week for 4 of us since cooking from scratch, I do buy frozen pizza's for the dd's and 1 bag of frozen chips for dh. I have discovered Lidl, they are cheaper for a lot of things (tinned tomato's, fresh fruit, veg, meat, cheese and yoghurts), but then I have to go to Tesco to buy all the things I cant get in Lidl and it ends up costing me a fortune.

I think you need to have a huge fridge and a large freezer (I don't have these) and then you can buy things such as whole chickens when they are on offer and portion them up to go in the freezer, also large bags of potatoes (you can do a lot with spuds). I think I'm finding it hard as I have to go sopping 3 times a week to get fresh fruit and veg and I can not store enough at home to do one big shop, I then end up buying extras that I don't really need .

[FredFredGeorge]

A large chicken would have around 100g of protein and maybe 2000 calories if they like skin, with 4 people needing over 1500 calories per day even if sedentary, and let's hope they're not and a toddler then there's no way it's going to stretch to more than one meal unless they also supplement those meals with even more protein. Unless the meals are lacking in protein for the high demands of a 7 and 9 year old.

As always the only people who do it are those who go for a high carb, low protein diet - since that's the cheap diet, unfortunately though it's not the diet that growing children need, although it helps them to grow fat as they eat more and more to get what protein they can. Yes a soup with nothing but carbs served with more carbs in it is cheap - but it's not really food.

[LetZygonsbeZygons]

I like to cook from scratch but fresh veg and stuff seems more expensive as the weeks go by!

me and DC. £ 60-100 a week! ridiculous.

and that's at the cheaper stores.

[mrstigs]

Also I think once you have the basics in to cook from scratch then it is cheaper. For example herbs, spices, dried things like rice or pasta, tinned goods like tomatoes or chickpeas. When you are only buying the fresh bits for a meal then cooking from scratch is quite cheap. Someone who was moving from pre made to making your own would find it much more expensive in the first few months.
I do often wander past the frozen meals and pre made stuff and wonder if it would be cheaper, but I don't think it would for us. The portion sizes seem quite small for a start (though maybe than just means our portion sizes are too big!)

[Badvoc]

I know what you mean...we eat a lot of fruit, veg etc and it's expensive.
Ditto meat, although we don't eat much meat these days due to cost.
Tends to be stuff like cleaning and laundry stuff that adds to my bill.
Also on includes packed lunches for dh and ds2.
Ds1s dinner money is £40 per month alone....

[Artandco]

What kind of foods are you buying though? Ie you say from scratch but mention pepperonis. Assuming they are those individual ones they are expensive for what you get

We spend around £80 a week. Roughly that's:

£20 in the butchers on organic meat/ cheese

The rest is from ocado. Say £30 on fruit and veg. £10 on dairy. £10 flour/ sugar/ rice/ pasta etc. £10 on anything else needed that week ie toilet roll or olive oil etc, stuff not brought weekly.

We don't buy things like cereal. It's unhealthy IMO and expensive. We have porridge, eggs, toast, fruit, veg for breakfast.

We don't buy many commercial cleaning things. I think most are unecessary. An Eco multi purpose cleaner, a toilet cleaner and fabric conditioner are about it. We use an Eco egg for washing (£20 and lasts 3 years average)

Like someone else mentioned we rarely buy individual pots of stuff. Ie will just get large greek yogurt, add some homemade fruit purée or honey if wanted.

We don't snack in our house apart from odd but of fruit/ nuts/ or some choc ie after Xmas if its around. So never even look at the crisps/ pretzel/ snack isles.