Weekly food shop… AIBU or is it still costing more?

[Foodshopthoughts]

Can’t get it under £100 for two of us. We shop at one of the cheapest supermarkets. That does include every meal though, and all toiletries etc. I don’t eat meat and DH rarely. Family of 3 but baby won’t be adding to the cost us for a while due to breastfeeding. I thought prices were supposed to be coming down yet it seems to be going up and up?!

I think it depends where you are comparing with @Katielovesteatime

Recently in France, I was astounded at the prices ditto Aus, USA

We are 2 adults here and we spend £90 a week all in .
We did have our adult ds here and we still spent £90 but less meat, fish and more pasta.
Breakfast
overnight oats with plain yogurt and whatever fruit is in season
I'm cooking apples and pears with sultanas and cinnamon as we have fruit trees and the crop this year in fabulous thanks rain
Freezer is full so we can just pull a pot out
Frozen berries -make a compote and freeze portions

Lunch is homemade sourdough, cheese, celery, carrot,pepper ,fruit, omelette,soup etc
Leftovers at work
Dinner
We have meat, fish and chicken once a week and then batch cooked casserole, curry, daal, bombay potato and jacket potato night
Often use frozen veg as its cheaper

Rarely snack,the odd bag of nice crisps, we don't drink alcohol

No ready meals , we have hens and I get swaps for eggs such as veg, honey,jam or onions,plums etc

I meal plan and that's what we have, DH is fine with this and I ask if there's anything he prefers.

I have the time to bake and prep for the freezer which I appreciate some people don't plus I love chopping/ cooking .

We buy a sack of red washed potatoes for £10 from the greengrocer who hefts it to my car and I will prep mash and baked pots which I then freeze
Meat, fish and chicken from the farm shop, I could cut back here but don't want to as its so nice
Greengrocer means I can buy in season and what I need so no waste

Aldi stopped their click and collect service last month.

Prices are generally only ever going to go in one direction, with small fluctuations. That's how a capitalist economy operates.

Oh god,it's expensive! Just got a sainsburys delivery, £50,free delivery,so £50 on food,a bottle of bleach and some loo paper.Hardly anything there! No biscuits or fruit or treats.I know Monday I'll be spending at least another £50 at lidl,when I go with DIL.😬

I buy a lot from Asian supermarkets. I don't expect anyone will want to eat what we eat but lunch today was chapatis, alu saag made with tinned spinach and potatoes, and a raita. ( yoghurt with cucumber and tomatoes). Not sure what that cost but v low.

Dinner a big stir fry with noodles, peppers, bean sprouts, carrots, mushrooms, tofu and egg on top.

those are mostly the sort of meals we like to eat, regardless of cost.

I think we spend about £100 a week too, but we eat very well and prioritise ethical products. We don’t shop in supermarkets that much any more and every time I do I’m pretty shocked at their prices. Perhaps they’ve lost their edge over other options?

We get Gousto food delivered (2x 5 meals for two people) and that’s £50 a week, which takes care of most main meals and we get plenty of veg with it. I love it, we eat so well and it saves us money as we don’t buy takeaways now that often. Lunch is usually pretty cheap soup either homemade or eat out (let’s say £15 per week max but many times we just have left over dinner food).

Most other things are also on subscription which really helps with mental load. We get cleaning products from Bower collective, toilet paper, tissues and paper towels from Who Gives a Crap, toothpaste from Waken, and organic milk on local delivery. We bulk buy soap two litres at a time. All of that ends up adding roughly £15-20 a week. It could be cheaper if eg we didn’t get bamboo tp or got non organic milk. I love having less workload, less plastic, and less food waste but I appreciate we’re privileged to have space to store bulk items (under the stairs, it’s not a huge space).

so pretty much the only things we get now at the supermarket are bread, cereal and fruit. If I could outsource these to a local company I’d do it in a heartbeat.

I’m not counting out cat, eats nearly as well as we do as she has expensive prescription food which she only eats half of anyway so it’s lucky she’s cute 😅

Other than the tofu I'd happily eat that. I eat meat but I also eat lots of veggie dishes (was a veggie for years). I got lovely chick pea, pepper, spinach and apricot bakes from the Coop vegan range - they were reduced to £2 for 2 and they cook up well in Air Fryer. 😁

Good point, basic grocery shop is still very pricey, especially in places like M&S etc.

No veg in there really though.

I used to consistently spend £150 not too long ago. It would occasionally be more if the washing tablets, dishwasher tablets, loo roll etc needed to be bought in the same week.

but now I can never get it below £170.

I shop in Sainsbury's and spend about £100 per week when it's 4 adults at home, and about £50-60 per week when it's just DH and I, and we eat really, really well. This is 3 meals per day each, plus all household and toiletries except toilet rolls (WGAC Subscription), it excludes wine (except for the odd bottle) and it excludes most of the pet food which we bulk buy (but does include pet treats).

There's a skill involved in meal planning, budgeting and scratch cooking, but sadly many people are just too rushed off their feet and don't have the time to invest in proper planning.

Breakfasts we have cereal (own brand fruit and fibre) or porridge (from oats) or egg, or toast.

Lunches are leftovers or homemade soups or cheese/egg/tomato/mushroom/bbeans etc on toast or omelettes, salad, avo on toast etc in summer.

Meals are a variety of meat meal and veggie meals, all planned and nutritionally well balanced. Cooked leftovers (in the dish, not plate scraps which are binned) are saved for another meal, leftover ingredients are used to make soups or frozen as appropriate. We waste nothing!

Fruit and veg is in season and basics - oranges/apples/bananas are a good price all year round - berries/plums/peaches etc get added only when in season. Ditto with veg, I'll meal plan around seasonal veg, but frozen peas/broccoli/carrots are a decent price year round.

I'm also fortunate enough that I have plenty of funds available to buy in bulk if something is on a fantastic deal, which works out cheaper overall.

We buy own brand and basic unprocessed ingredients where possible.

Toiletries and household items tend to be unbranded and bought in the bigger value sizes (although I check the per KG price as bigger isn't always cheaper).

Drinks are dilute squash, water, tea or filter coffee.

We recently got an air fryer and DH made some fabulous halved aubergines stuffed with cheese and tomatoes. Meal in themselves with some pita. Not sure where he got the recipe.

DC make a lot of traybakes and wraps with veggies, halloumi and canned beans

I don't think that's extravagant at all, I would struggle to get it under £100 a week even for myself alone.

Our weekly shop has come down a little bit in the last six months but only because one of our sons has moved into his own house.
I buy most from Tesco via home delivery and supplement it at Aldi with things we like from there, even so that top up amounts to around £40 usually and it’s just one bag of shopping (no alcohol). It’s not that long ago that I used to do a full weekly shop at Aldi for not much more than that.

I've bought cheap 60 p beans this week, and will add salt and sugar to make them better. I should probably buy like this more often. I think if you can cook well, and have the time, as well, it brings down the cost

That’s pretty light on fruit and veg, and quite carb heavy. Which granted is usually cheaper, but not the most nutritionally balanced.

I love a tray of roasted/baked veggies.

Good for filling up hungry teens though.

Inflation has come down. That means the rate at which prices increase. It doesn't mean prices are coming down.

Just that you are now unlikely to see 4 pints of milk cost £1.45 one week, and £1.55 the next, and £1.65 the week after that. It's settled at £1.45. But you won't see it drop back to £1.10 or 3 for £3 like we had in 2019.

Yeah, but teens need nutritionally balanced meals too!

@phonicshaskilledmeoff . Personally I dislike most posts starting with " wow " . They generally come across as rather smug. However maybe you are entitled to a bit of smugness if you can feed and cover other grocery costs for 6 people for around £100 per week / around £16 per week per person .
Maybe you would like to share your meals plans with us mere mortals who can't get it to any where near that cost .

I live in a farming community and prices will only keep going up.

The rain this year had meant crops such as wheat have not had a successful year of growing so bread will be more expensive.

There is blue tongue in the uk so cattle are not able to be sent to market. The farmer I was talking g to this morning was talking about having to keep them at a cost.

Straw has quadrupled in price so it’s expensive to feed the cattle that he’s forced to keep. That will affect the cost of the meat when they are eventually sent to market.

It’s the same all over the world.

That's a very unhealthy load of food.

Refined carbs, processed meat, fatty meat like burgers.

Where's the fruit and veg or oily fish?
Pulses and beans?

You could make a veg curry with chick peas, sweet potatoes, spinach and a red pepper. Cheap and healthy.

You could save money by ditching the jars of pasta sauce and making your own with tinned tomatoes, an onion and some dried herbs.

There are 3 of us + a dog and we eat 3 meals per day and all snacks at home. Costs me about £180/week but I don't try really hard to keep price down (eat meat, shop at Tesco, buy branded for things I prefer to be branded, buy some free-from stuff). However we don't drink or smoke.

That sounds like a lovely curry, I think I might use that