Well, I want to spend less. I do bulk buy and buy things I will use when I get vouchers for them, and buy yellow sticker items that I can use or freeze.
But I also have a teen who is fussy and won't eat red meat, pasta and wants a tonne of spice in her chicken/turkey/fish meals. Everything for her is "sugar free" but she will eat a tub of HaloTop icecream (the allowed kind!) in 2 evenings. She mostly cooks for herself, but we do have a problem of only having 1 morning of berries left so going to the shop - but all the new berries get eaten and the older ones allowed go off and dumped...and similar with other foods at times.
We also buy organic milk (there are 2 insisting on that), organic chicken, open sea rather than farmed fish, lots of fresh fruit and veg etc - which all tend to be more expensive.
Our lives are very hectic, even before covid, but we are working very long hours and also manoeuvring around DD in the kitchen, so convenience has become king to DH and I, so I buy more jars of sauce to throw in a pot rather than making it from a tin of tomatoes/onion/garlic and herbs. Long slow cooked meals, or the chance to batch cook and freeze, have just not been possible.
We have felt like we needed our few treats - proper coffee, some good chocolate etc. We have tended to make use of the BBQ a lot more anytime the weather is decent, so spent more on meat and fish for that, which has tended to be more expensive cuts. (And my "eating out" budget is drastically reduced now I no longer have a daily coffee and pastry habit between the train station and office...there's none between the kitchen and spare bedroom). And I also include all delivery costs in my grocery budget too, so between online groceries costing €8 per delivery (I used to be able to get free of only €4 slots frequently, but demand means all are now €8, and went up to €12 around Christmas!), and various postage costs for local artisan coffee roasters, a good chocolate maker where I grew up, and occasional other online orders - that has all added significantly to my costs this past 18 months.
So I had increased my budget from €750 to €900 to €1,000 per month between March 2019 and January 2020. But the pandemic and its' realities for lots of things coinciding with DD's changing tastes, has meant that I increased it again in February 2020 to €1200 per month (so that's where my €300 per week comes from).
Now some months I am well under, I had veg from the garden, we used the local cheaper butcher, I got lots of yellow stickers and vouchers and I used up things from home.
But some months are restocking months, we've run out of things and needed the convenience store (more expensive) or had a tough time so treated ourselves to the local deli for a few meals and ingredients, DD has been wasting a lot for various reasons, we've had a few family or seasonal events that needed food (picnic in the woods instead of our usual dinner in town etc), so those months have been more expensive.
And food has definitely gone up in price over the past 2 years - between Brexit impacting us here too, Covid, issues around global shipping and logistics impacting on food supplies at times etc, but even things like droughts causing problems with rice harvests before Covid and other climate impacts....they've all added up too.
But across the space of the year, as I look back over 12 months frequently enough, it has generally been about right. I hope to be able to reduce it again soon, as DD is now back in school physically, we expect to be in the office at least a few days a week shortly, and we get some more certainty and normality back into general life including supply chains improving etc. I am slowly getting DD to be more aware of what she buys and the need to eat the older food first.
And I am also incredibly lucky that we can afford what we spend - I still have money going into savings every month. We are not going into debt. Some of our grocery spend is more luxurious than it needs to be, but it is a choice that we are making as we don't spend a lot on other things like going to pubs frequently as it doesn't interest us.
But I do need to get my more frugal mindset back working again. I have been one of those who makes a chicken last 4/5 meals (so I don't mind buying a large organic bird - I use every scrap so it is worth it to me), and able to make some incredibly cheap meals that are really tasty too - I just need to have the time to do it again. And get really strong on using up all leftovers and not wasting food again.