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!

[ElleMcFearsome]

Fred google is telling me that chicken contains 25g protein/100g whereas chickpeas are 19g protein/100g. Not that a huge difference. Beans and pulses do contain a good amount of protein and are a whole bunch cheaper than meat. That's not to say if you like and can afford to eat meat every night you shouldn't. I think it's just a choice that you have to make sometimes.

[nkf]

I just ordered a Tesco shop (yes, yes, I know they are the devil's minions) and the fruit wasn't expensive. A pineapple for £1. Ditto a watermelon. Blueberries for £2. More expensive but amazingly delicious and good for you. Same for strawberries. The apples and oranges weren't expensve either. I would say £10 on fruit that will last four of us for the best part of a week.

[Treaclepot]

Our weekly shop is usually £55, but we add on £20 a week on milk/bread/fruit. We have 3 kids similar ages to yours.

Recently we have been horribly skint and have had to cut it down to about £35 a week (plus £20 still). What we have done to do this is massively reduce the amount of expensive protein we eat so still buy cheese/meat but have slivers of meat, instad of chunks .

we then increased the amount of cheap protein/veg/carbs. So lots of carrots/pots/lentils/peas/half price veg etc.

We used to eat too much meat anyway.

My kids eat a ridiculous amount, they are sport obsessed and play for hours (literally played rugby and football for over 4 hours today!) so get the 'we are starving thing!' Porridge fills them up too.

I hate scrimping on food it is properly depressing after a few months but tbh we're probably healthier for it.

[EirikurNoromaour]

I feed my family for £40-50 a week but it's just me and 5 year old DS, and I don't eat 3 meals a day every day. Also we don't eat meat or fish. However I do a mix of meals from scratch and stuff like pesto, baked beans, frozen pizza which aren't made from scratch but go in as part of a meal along with fresh veg etc.

[WaterBottleWaterBottle]

We do similar as everything's with the chicken. If you get a pound of mince, bulk it out with lentils, baked beans and oats I get spag Bol, lasagne and a cottage pie out of it. I then freeze the lasagne and pie for quick easy dinners later on. We do our weekly shopping for about £80 a week and that's for two boys, dd, dh and I who all eat adult sized portions.

[SunnyRandall]

I buy a £6 large chicken and it does four meals for four of us (two adults and two dc 5&7) - one roast and three stir fries/pies/fajitas etc BUT the leftovers meals only contain a handful of meat and are bulked out with veg. No way could it do four full meaty meals. So how far you can make a chicken go really depends on how much meat you want at each meal.

As demonstrated to me by my well off sister who was making us fajitas one time and used around 1.5 chicken breasts per person "as people always eat more when it's fajitas". In my house that's around what I use for all four of us!

[DragonMamma]

We are 2 adults, a bird eating 6yo and a ravenous toddler who's still in nappies. We spend about 70 a week our weekly shop with bread and milk top ups in the week.

We eat mainly from scratch and have meat or fish most days. I wouldn't say it's cheaper to cook from scratch though. I did a homemade chicken and leek pie recently, it was 5 for chicken breasts, a quid for leeks, around a quid for creme fraiche and then some ready to roll puff pastry, plus all the larder ingredients and fuel to cook it. I could have bought 2 pies for that price in Tesco. They wouldn't have tasted as nice but I can see why some people can't be bothered to cook their own.

[PhilomenaCunk]

We are a family of four plus three pets. We spend approx 90 quid a week including everything (incl too much wine, laundry stuff and youngest still in nappies) - shopping at a mix of Aldi and Waitrose. It doesn't include weekday lunches, however... The big difference for me us meat - we are pretty veggie except for an occasional bit of fish. If we have meat-eaters staying our bill rises ridiculously.

[WhoAteAllTheCremeEggs]

I spend £25 a week in aldi includes everything for 1 adult and 1 toddler.
No individually packaged foods, proper blocks of cheese, full bags of raisins, packets of non fancy biscuits, big bag of popcorn, big crisps I clip all the bags after opening and mostly treats are for ds a handful of something after dinner.
I cook at home but kind of lace meals with meat alongside chopped and grated veg rather than larger chunks, my chickens are not magic but a whole chick will make a curry, a casserole and chicken pasta. veg on the side of meals is from frozen veg and we love omelette night. Almost always porridge for ds brekki, I skip brekki anyway.

[Slapperati]

We have started buying certain things at Lidl (normally shop at Sainsburys) and have seen a big difference in our food bills. Lettuce, tomatoes, fruit, red peppers are all a lot cheaper and they are nice too. Some things I wouldn't touch from them.

I remember one poster on a similar thread describing grapes as expensive sweeties masquerading as a healthy snack and it made me question the value of some fruit over the cost.

I've also taken to make a cheap bake at least once a week - e.g. lentils/rice/mushrooms/cheese/tomaotes/spinach/grated carrots and one soup per week with lovely crusty bread.

[EirikurNoromaour]

And I honestly don't do a top up shop unless I forget something totally vital which is rare. I buy two loaves of bread and a pack of rolls which go in the freezer to be defrosted as I go, and milk goes in the freezer too. I buy apples and fruit that lasts at least a week and my veg lasts the week in the fridge.

[HillyHolbrook]

It depends imo.

I cook from scratch and ONLY cook from scratch when we are skint as it's cheaper, but that means not buying snacks and making easy meals that we can eat a few times over like a big stew with cheap meat and veg or using a whole bag of pasta and some tinned tomatoes to do a pasta bake that will go to work as lunch all week.

If I cook 'nice' meals from scratch with nicer cuts of meat and get in our little luxuries like snacks and pop, it's more expensive than buying ready meals as they're always on offer and the good cuts of meat are more expensive. We don't have an Aldi near us and our nearest Lidl is crap. They're building an Aldi though, but we use Morrisons for everything.

We go somewhere in the middle usually, and to feed two of us we spend about £60-70 on a good week. If we had one or two extra little mouths to feed it would be considerably more.

[Sallystyle]

I cook from scratch mostly and it would be cheaper for me to buy frozen.

To cook a lasagna from scratch for 7 people, two of them starving teens, costs a lot of money. There is never any left overs in this house. I could go to iceland and buy two lasagnes for about £4

A large chicken would feed us for one meal and even then my teens would probably want more.

I think it is much easier when your children are younger, but when they get to the teens they tend to eat massive portions and my shopping bill almost doubled.

I do think I could save some money if I had space for another freezer so I could buy meat in bulk from the butchers. Unfortunately my tiny freezer doesn't hold much and I have no space for another one. My children are no longer entitled to FSM now I have a job and I think half of my wages go on that alone.

[mum2bubble]

Packed lunch bits and bobs can be really expensive. We've stopped getting smoothies, babybels, pepperamis, crisps etc and now get basics cartons of juice, cut a chunk off our normal cheese and wrap up, use cold grilled butcher's sausages and pop our own popcorn instead. The weekly shopping bill is definitely cheaper after these changes.

[MinesAPintOfTea]

You don't need lots of meat. On a budget drive mince is replaced (half for half) with lentils ds and I have porridge made with whole milk and sultanas and frozen berries added every morning.

Fresh fruit and veg is bought based on price. At the moment lots of cauliflower, carrots, oranges and bananas.

We use own-brand washing powder in a large box: lasts over a year doing at least a wash a day.

I bake whenever the oven is on anyway, overripe fruit (especially bananas) is never thrown away, I drop the egg content of cake and blend it in. obviously this saves on biscuits without costing power.

Make my own hummus and freeze it in portions which will last about 3 days, vastly cheaper and less salty. Likewise pasta sauces.



Make my own soup twice a week. It includes bacon and double cream so plenty of fat and protein. I never but low-fat anything, just use less or add water add appropriate.
Never buy cooked meat, cheaper to cook ke my own especially in winter when I can turn the heating off and we do art etc in the kitchen.

[bobot]

Yup - the lid and aldi and vegetarian route. We don't eat
Meat anyway but still find quorn pretty expensive. So limit it to two meals a week. We got our weekly shop down to £75 for 2 adults 3 lchildren, then recently discovered we can do it for £45 using aldi and farm foods. With a very strict meal plan and only topping up with milk and bread mid week, cutting out wine. It's hard but possible.

I think that your family would prob turn their noses up at the £1 ready meals, plus they're tiny and your hungry teens would demand more!

[littledrummergirl]

We spend about 115 a fortnight although we usually buy milk and ham towards the end.
Lots of apples, oranges and bananas but very little meat. We have an allotment so get veg from there in season.
Dcs are 9, 12 and 13 and do very physical activities so often proclaim that they are starving.
We buy sausages as they have multiple uses and frozen meat/fish. We also use a lot of pulses.
We make our bread by hand so use loads of flour.
I refuse to buy biscuits other than for lunch boxes.

[charliefoxtrot]

Try doing one weekly shop at Aldi. You'll be horrified by how much less it is! I've always thought the quality is good there too.

[FredFredGeorge]

ElleMcFearsome If you use other sources of protein (although chickpeas are only 19g DRY weight, and few people will be eating dry chickpeas, the actual amount is much less in what you'd eat, not that it isn't good and perfectly viable a meal) then that's fine, but then the primary protein in these "left over" dishes will not really be chicken ones, there may be some chicken taste from the stock, but that's all. So I'm just commenting on the misleadingness of saying a chicken can last a family of 4 with kids over 5 for more than a single meal, they simply aren't big enough to provide protein for more than one meal. They can certainly do flavouring for more.

Certainly it's pretty easy to eat cheaper than ready meals, and even easier to eat better than ready meals if you've the time and money to spend on preparation (remember for example soaking and then boiling kidney beans for example will cost another ~30p in gas on the hob, so ready meals can also reduce cooking costs.)

[MeanwhileHighAboveTheField]

I cook from scratch (don't make own pasta etc) and feed 6 of us, including two teenagers (one of them a boy) for £85 a week. This includes delivery charge, and all toiletries, cleaning stuff and night time nappies.

[MinesAPintOfTea]

Oh and I assume (from when we had to live on them for a month) that even fairly good ready meals use cheap meat (and as little of it as possible) and bulking agents. I can do better than that for the same cost.

[LynetteScavo]

The Op already said she tried Aldi, and didn't like it....

From experience, £140pw in sainsburys sounds about right for a family of five. I do now shop at Aldi (do still nip into Sainsburys for a few things like coffee, tea, organic milk and chicken) and we eat very little meat (I make bolognese and chilli with soya mince) which means I can feed five of us on £75pw if I have to but I usually nip to the Sainsbury's deli counter for a curry at the weekend

[ElleMcFearsome]

Ah, sorry Fred I misinterpreted! I've been having the 'ohh, where do you get your protein from??' convo with a lot of people recently, may be a bit oversensitive

[BlackeyedSusan]

i spend £40 a week on the food shop, plus £40 a month extra on washing liquid/loo roll. for 2 children one adult and an extra adult at the weekend.

I look at the price per kilo for veggies and buy what is cheap. the cheaper veggies form the bulk of the meal with the more expensive in lesser proportions. the children only need 29g of protein a day at the moment and get this easily from their milk on their cereal and protein in their tea. a medium chicken feeds us for a the best part of a week. it is combined with vegetable proteins in beans and wholegrains. I think a lot of people have got used to eating a lot more protein then they need.