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!

[Mothergothel99]

I think you can live off £50 but will eat poor quality food. I would explain it in terms of soup, you could buy a tesco value soup for 12p or a finest soup for £1.69 or you could make a finest quality soup yourself for 50p.

I shop at aldi our bill is in the £100 -£120 a week zone, including wine and beer.
I only buy the aldi finest version of some products, the dry aged aberdeen angus burgers for example, venison meatballs, smoked bacon, certain cheeses, only the filter coffee and gold tea bags.
I do buy all the basic ingredients from them and we eat a lot. I do cook lots of roasts, ham, chicken etc, I can make them stretch to two meals by adding a starter ( soup) or more veg. I also batch cook, which is very cost and time efficent.

I don't buy lots of treat food or processed food as that would make it way more expensive and less healthy.

[YNK]

Does anyone use bones to make stocks for curries, stews and soups these days?
I think this is the way forward!
A chicken carcass can make 4 litres worth in the slow cooker.

[Mothergothel99]

Sorry it's a good point about protein, you could eat much cheaper if you were veggie. Blackeyed Susan is correct. We eat too much meat.

[FabBakerGirl]

It has been said a million times. If you are buying basic/value brands then you will be able to feed a family on a lot less.

Stop cooking food that they won't eat and all choose one meal a week that everyone will eat.

I spend around £100 a week and that is for 5 people, 10 packed lunches a week, lots of fruit and I don't buy anything ready made other than the very occasional pizza or ready meal for Dh and I. No one goes hungry and we have a huge variety of things to eat. Always a roast on a Sunday with a pie or crumble for pudding and I bake as well in the week.

[jenniferalisonphillipasue]

We are a family of 6 and spend approx £100 per week on groceries. That includes everything (nappies etc). I only cook from scratch, mainly because it tastes far better and isn't full of salt, sugar and low quality rubbish. I generally shop at Lidl and will maybe do a top up every other week at Morrisons or Sainburys if Lidl don't have what I want. It makes a huge difference to my shopping bill if I plan wisely and I also think that you have to learn how to shop at somewhere like Lidl's. They don't have some of the basics but as long as you know that then you can plan for it. I did a weekly shop at Morrisons the other day and spent £120. I didn't buy anything fancy but it just adds up so quickly. I would really struggle to spend that in Lidl.

[fatlazymummy]

You don't need to eat loads of meat to get sufficient protein. Protein is found in nearly all foods - vegetables, bread,milk, beans. Every bit of protein counts towards your daily requirement.I was brought up on very small amounts of meat and we all did just fine.
My children eat meat (I'm vegetarian), I do one (largish ) chicken breast between the 2 of them. They're both healthy and a normal weight.

[IamInvisible]

I spend around £120 a week on groceries (me, DH, 2 teens 19&17)but that is it. No top ups, DS2 and DH take packed lunches and DS1 and I are at home.

I have our shopping delivered from Asda. A couple of weeks ago I used Morrisons home delivery and it was dearer than Asda by about £15-20 overall.

IMO we eat too much meat, but DH and DS1 like their meat. DS1 is supposed to be moving out soon and once he does, I shall introduce meat free nights (not doing it now can't be doing with them both ganging up on me). We have soup nights at least once a week, I make casseroles and stews so can use cheaper cuts of meat and old veg. I, also, bake.

I can't go shopping on my own because of my disability, but want to go to Lidl and Aldi with the same list I would use at Asda to compare as a like for like, but DH puts lots of treat things in the trolley, as do the kids!

[Pobblewhohasnotoes]

How about Costco? Not all of it is cheaper, but when we used to shop there, we could spend £200 but the meat lasted us six months! We only ever went twice a year.

Obviously fruit and veg we still needed to shop for. I look at the price per kilo for everything and special offers. Plus the local newsagents sell fruit and veg so much cheaper than in tesco.

I like Lidl and Aldi, it's cheaper and their fruit and veg is good. Do you bulk out everything you cook, or is it just meat? If I make a lasagne it has loads of veg in as well as meat, same with spag Bol or anything. Fish pie I tend to buy the fish reduced, you can get loads of it.

I can spend £60-£100 a week depending on nappies etc for three of us. I could cut down more.

[fatlazymummy]

A good money saving tip (and something my Mum did) is to make your own pastry from scratch. It makes a small amount of meat into a meal with a few potatoes and a veg. And no, eating pastry doesn't automatically lead to obesity.

[Pobblewhohasnotoes]

Who asked about making stock? I make it sometimes out of chicken bones but if I had a bigger freezer I'd do more.

[Blueskiesandcherrypies]

Thanks for all the replies, really useful.

Out of interest, how does asda compare price wise with lidl/aldi? I only have the car at the weekends so prefer to get shopping delivered.

From reading posts so far am definitely going to swap some of our meat for quorn types things, presumably cheaper? Also, will use less meat in recipes overall. I just went and made a puff pastry thing for our dinner - we eat when kids in bed on a Sunday as DH has footy til 9 - (the one from the advert with chicken, pesto, spinach and cherry toms). Didn't use all the chicken I had planned to use, put some aside for lunch for baby dd tmrw and didn't cook the oven chips we were going to, unnecessarily have with it, your tips are working already!

[HighlanderMam]

These 22,000 people will be able to help.

fill my family on a budget facebook group

[Blueskiesandcherrypies]

Ps I didn't make my own pastry .

[SoulJacker]

We buy hardly any fruit which keeps our bills down. I know a lot of people who seem to think that fruit should always be available for kids and spend a huge portion of their weekly budget on buying out of season fruit.

[Dahlen]

I find that meals are easy to make for next to nothing but things like milk, bread, yoghurt and fruit really push up the price of a weekly shop.

I cook from scratch, because while processed food might be hard to beat in terms of price, it's packed full of salt and sugar and offers little in the way of nutrition.

The trick to getting cooking from scratch to match the prices of ready meals is to do it in bulk. The more raw ingredients you buy in bulk, the cheaper they become. If you spend an entire day once a month cooking up lots of meals and freezing them, you can produce a home-cooked dish with good-quality ingredients for the same price per portion as a less nutritious ready-meal. Unfortunately, it requires having the money up front (so not much good if you get your money weekly) and the sort of lifestyle that will allow you to batch cook (e.g. having a whole day to do it and having the freezer space to store it).

[Abbierhodes]

Someone once told me that when you cook from scratch, you shouldn't compare with the price of the cheapest ready made stuff, but the luxury ready made stuff.

If I make a lasagne for 5 of us, it probably costs about £5. Now I could get a cheap one from Aldi for £1.99, but a nice one would be about the same price. Plus, mine is exactly how we like it- and free from crap!

Same with treats. I made a lovely cake today- probably cost about £2 to make. I could have bought a cheap one for less than £1, but to get the same quality I'd have spent about £3.

[HighlanderMam]

Approved food

Sorry if already been linked to. Haven't RTFT.

[Thetallesttower]

I get really depressed reading these threads- everyone else's children seem to eat things like lentil bake and chickpea surprise, whereas I know full well (as I have cooked these dishes so many times) that my children won't eat them. Well, they probably would if starving, but if there is an alternative of ham/cucumber/salad/cheese, they would have that and never ever eat anything with lentils/beans in at all.

I love that type of food, I'm happy with a tin of toms and some chickpeas but they hate 'mixed' saucy type food, preferring plain meat, carbs and veggies served separately.

Any ideas for making pulses more child-friendly? Or do you just dish it up and sit there til they eat it?

[MinesAPintOfTea]

You can make pastry much cheappier than it costs to buy (just flour, fat and water) and I bet your filings were much more generous and better quality than the supermarket equivalent.

[Thetallesttower]

Also, one of mine eats almost no vegetables, I was victorious she'd started eating peas recently. The idea of bulk buying carrots and swede or cheap veggies and mixing it with lentils is just not something they would eat.

[IamInvisible]

Asda is more expensive than Aldi/Lidl but cheaper than Tesco and Sainsburys. Not only that if you buy their delivery pass they are much, much cheaper for delivery.

Iceland (I know it's a cardinal sin to mention them) have also started to deliver if you order on line, instead of having to go to the store, so you could order frozen fish, chicken breasts etc, and have them delivered. You don't have to buy the processed stuff, you could order the veg, frozen fruit etc, that might save a few pennies.

[londonrach]

We survived on £20-£30 for two meat eating adults per week but everything from Lldl apart from toiletries which came from 99p shop. Cooking from scratch easy and cheap....£140 pw. Are you buying organic from whole food posh shop. That price included no treats, just rice 40p per pack, pasta, potatoes, veg, fruit and meat....no choc, wine...

[IamInvisible]

Oh yes Highlandermum Approved Food has saved me a fortune. I buy cereals, drinks, snacky bits, a couple of weeks ago tomato ketchup was as cheap as chips. I have a dozen bottles in my cupboard.

[aermingers]

I make pasta with home made tomato sauce and cheese.
Spanish omlette with potato in it served with green beans
Baked potatoes with cottage cheese (or sweet potatos with butter and chilli) and brocolli
Spinach and feta frittata
Vegetable stiry fry
Saute'd potatoes with bacon and onion
Sausage casserole
Piperade


I can get shopping for 3 for about £50 a week with that sort of thing.