What's the least you've spent on food shopping for the week?

[DramasticChanges]

I've managed to get ours down to £80 for two adults two kids. I need more inspiration! Help me get it lower.
We already yellow sticker but there always seem to be the same things reduced (Richmond sausages, carrot batons, doughnuts.) It's not always terribly healthy.
I get the £1.50 veg box from Lidl.
We eat meat free most nights.
Kids get free meals, I eat toast which is free at work and bring fruit, dp doesn't eat ( I think he does but doesn't tell me as I'll nag him to make sandwiches.)
Feeding others is pricey. Fed friend on Friday and in laws came over for dinner today so four extra adults.

I've got three DCs. We're lucky to be comfortably off but I have found myself becoming more and more guilty over recent months at the sheer amount of food that we end up buying (even though the DCs seem to have hollow legs!). We're trying to be a bit more economical about making sure we use up everything (we do a veg curry once a week or so, into which we chuck everything I find at the bottom of the fridge!) but even so we are spending £200 plus most weeks!

formerbabe why assume only 'middle class' people with 'plenty of money' go foraging?
The fact that you think it's depressing indicates that you only find happiness in having money to spend. Not everyone is like you.

@feelingverylazytoday

I didn't bring up social class...I was responding to a previous post where someone else mentioned it.

No, I don't only find joy in spending money but if I was so skint I had to drag my children round the countryside looking for nettles and dandelions to eat, then yes, I'd find that incredibly depressing and quite horrific in the UK in 2020.

Oh my. really? A class discussion when talking about foarging? Coming from a country where EVERYONE forages something, this just sounds absolutely bonkers to me.

Finding 'plenty of food' is probably a bit of a stretch, but there's nothing wrong with foraging as a healthy free outdoor activity that can lead to finding some free berries that would otherwise be expensive. Also as a 'this is where food comes from' learning activity.
Exactly! I would never pay for blackberries in a shop. They can be very expensive and imho don't have the right flavour. Herbs, fruits, mushrooms... Plenty to chose from.

Anyway, I should be discouraging foraging so there is more for us😂

Foraging is brilliant

Mushrooms (if you know what’s safe) -
Chestnuts a plenty
Blackberries

Shame there’s not much to forage through winter but then I wouldn’t want to be taking what’s scarce away from wildlife that needs it

Alternatively - grow your own?
It’s as cheap as can be if you have a space in the garden for a tub or few.

Having to forage and needing to forage to feed your children in the UK in 2020 are two different things. Or is it great that so many have to forage in food banks

This is the current coop meal deal. Not as generous 8n quantity as some months but that's probably because it's fish, at the moment.
www.coop.co.uk/products/deals/freezer-fillers

I fail to see how 2 fish cakes and 10 fish dippers can be a main meal for 4 people for three days. I can understand the chips, peas and ice cream lasting several meals but not the protein.

My lowest weeks spend was £18 for an adult and teenager and it was actually really healthy as it focused on pulses and cheap veg and cut out all junk food.

There is a facebook group called feed yourself for £1 a day which has loads of great ideas but even their family meal plan for 4 is £28 a week. They have recipes like penny wraps and seitan and very cheap pizza dough.

The only other option I can see is growing your own. My pear tree gives and enormous yield every year but didn't fruit until the second year I had it.

Picking your own blackberries illustrates perfectly why they're so expensive in a shop. Takes ages to pick in any quantity and you get scratched.

There was a local wine producer who offered a free bottle of their wine to anyone who brought them 3 kilos of blackberries at the height of a good blackberry season a couple of years ago.

I set off picking some as there are loads of blackberries where I am (on the edge of a council estate as it happens, so it's not like blackberries are limited to the leafy suburbs) but hadn't even got to half a kilo before I decided that I wasn't really that bothered about free wine as I was quite fed up with the endeavour.

Allergic bonkers ideas about food and class are abound in the UK, as illustrated by the many cheap foods that are seen to be 'aspirational' and 'middle class' like hummus, pulses and vegetables that aren't fried potatoes.

This sounds really miserable. I had to spend £20 a week on food when I was really skint and it was ridiculous. That was just me and a toddler. No idea why someone would actually want to put their kids through that and try to reduce it even further!

You can forage cockles too

@BarbaraofSeville I don't get the general obsession with class tbh. Not just food. But this is.. yeah. Hummus is perfect example

Be amazing if you could forage hummus

😆

Wish I was near somewhere I could forage for cockles. I never buy them as they are so expensive.

You can forage cockles too

I misread that as cookies....now that would be more interesting

We don't desperately need to economise but I like a bargain. Went to Waitrose on friday night after dropping DD at her club and got some amazing bargains

3 x packs of venison meatballs in tomato sauce reduced from £5.99 to 79p.
2 x packs of mango and coconut chicken strips reduced from £4 to 79p.
Whole "roast in the bag" chicken for £1.49.
2 x punnets of raspberries for 29p each
2 x packs of breaded chicken (proper chicken breast, not the reformed stuff) for 89p each.

My freezer is full to brimming with yellow stickers. 2 packs of the venison meatballs and a pack of 50p pasta will feed all 5 of us for about 40p per person for dinner - amazing. The whole chicken, served with potatoes and veg again will be about 60p per person.

Eating well cheaply doesn't have to mean eating crap.

But then again we're not on a constant quest to make things cheaper and cheaper.

I'm not going to pretend to understand why somebody would do this out of choice but each to their own.

It would make me miserable and there are plenty of other areas I'd cut down my spending on first. The competitive under spending doesn't bring me any joy.

I’ve once spent £8 on the weekly shop for 2 adults and a weaning baby.

Something like:

1. Breakfast: 1 peice toast

Dinner: French onion soup

2.B: 1 peice toast
D: veg stew (carrots, potatoes, lentils & stock)

3.B: 1 peice toast
D: baked potato & tin beans

1. B: 1 peice toast

D: leftover stew

1. B: Lidl cereal

D: chickpea curry & rice

1. B: Lidl cereal

D: leftover curry

1. B. Lidl cereal

D: Broccoli, potato & lentil soup

It wasn’t a fun week/few months and I wouldn’t reccomend unless you’re desperate or want to loose weight. We couldn’t afford lunch and snacks so we had cups of cheap black coffee.

Tbh I think if you can afford to indulge a little in food then you should for a number of reasons. Having the same meals every week or going hungry is so miserable. £80 a month sounds perfectly reasonable, if you can afford it- if you cut back too much you can end up obsessing over food.

I misread that as cookies....now that would be more interesting

I did too! Got all excited for a split second

The lowest I've ever regularly spent was £20 per week excluding weekday lunches, so the same as you.

But that was just for two adults, almost 10 years ago. And it was the absolute least I could spend while being healthy.

In some ways it was healthier then our previous diet as we ate more veg and legumes, and less meat, but in some ways it was less healthy as the meat we did eat was lower quality and processed and there was very little fruit.

I do admire it in one way and agree that overconsumption is out of control but gosh OP lower than £80 per week?! Miserable way to live and penny pinching to the extreme to go any lower.

In fact I'd increase your spending on lean red meat and oily fish for iron/omega 3. You need to make sure your DC are getting the protein and minerals they need - while the pulses are good, gammon and processed ham doesn't cut it nutrionally for growing DC. Either that or find some supplements for -1p

while the pulses are good, gammon and processed ham doesn't cut it nutrionally for growing DC

Gammon is not cheap anyway. I saw small gammon joints in my local supermarket today for over £10

Funnily enough, I opened this thread just after returning from a supermarket run. Something went amiss with the till, and at the first attempt, the total came to £0:02, yes 2p! Just for a moment there. before reality set in…..

Lol at cookies over excitement 😂

I dont think its a good idea to encourage Children to go foraging for mushrooms really just as a safety issue .I remember My DF bringing us a fresh Pineapple on a Friday ,as a treat and being excited about it! I think its nice that children dont take things for granted ,it makes it a treat and who knows if they may fall on hard times when they grow up?The menu plan seems to be fairly basic but no one will starve! We are always being lectured on children becoming too fat!

I honestly don't feel like I'm missing out!
Today we've had

Breakfast: brown bread with homemade peanut butter
Snack: homemade blueberry muffins as a swap for some childcare I did last week
Lunch: at school/ I had canned soup at work
After school: crackers and a whole cucumber (the kids love it's fresh and crunchiness
Tea: leftover pork and stir fry veg, homemade egg fried rice with peas
Pudding: tinned fruit and ice cream

Tell me why we have it so hard?

It's not so much that you have it hard. But that you are already spending way, way less than the average and rather than being happy with that and your smart spending, you're trying to drive it lower and lower. But for what benefit?

It's like spending-anorexia. You're already below average but can't see the wood for the trees and are wanting to push it lower and lower. Even though you have no need to.