About to be time rich and money poor

[Aibusadandhormonal]

Made redundant. Definitely a good thing (job was making me ill with stress) but while I'm looking for a new job I'm going to have a lot of free time on my hands.
I'm going to go through our finances in detail - but at a glance the biggest thing we spend money on (after mortgage, bills and childcare (BIG savings there!)) is food.
What ways can I save money by using the time I have. I have my redundancy money so can do bulk buying to save in longer term..
So far I have only a few ideas...

• visiting supermarket at the end of the day for reductions
• looking at the weekly offers at eg Lidl and working meal plans around those.
• buying dried lentils/dried foods in bulk and soaking.
• we don't eat much meat, but will be getting the cheaper cuts. Are butchers actually cheaper?

Do things like making your own bread actually save money? I got given a bread maker that's been gathering dust for 5 years...

All suggestions gratefully received.

My tips are:

Avoid food waste - only buy what you will use and freeze (and label!) leftovers.
If you cook and eat chicken, save the carcass to make stock with. Then add root vegetables, cabbage/leeks to it to make a very hearty vegetable stew (serve with bread and cheese) or blend it to make soup. If you're concerned about protein, a handful of red lentils will help.

Homemade soup is a filling starter - use leftovers as a base. One of my favourites is 'Sunday dinner soup' which is all the leftover vegetables and gravy in the pot, and blended add chopped bits of meat afterwards, if there are any. Use stock cubes, marmite, sauces as necessary to add flavour.

Cheese sauce. I make loads to freeze some. It is useful and easy. Mac an cheese (obviously). Add a tin of tuna, or a couple of salmon fillets and serve with any pasta of your choice - I like it with tagliatelle. Bits of chicken work too. Use it with tomatoey pasta bake for a cheap lasagne ish dish. Top baked potatoes (add bits of ham, bacon or any bits needing to be used up). Works with most vegetables as well as cauliflower/broccoli to make a vegetable dish more filling.

These are things I do anyway, not just to save money, but then I really hate throwing food out! Good luck.

I am frugal by nature and I bake my own bread in my bread machine because to get a lovely seedy loaf like the ones I bake it's definitely cheaper to bake my own. Also make pizza dough in it once a week to make my own pizza on a Friday night. DEFINITELY cheaper than buying one of the same quality.
The only issue you might face with starting to use the bread machine is that you may reset your family's expectations too high... my kids now eschew shop-bought pizza and sliced bread 😂😂

Thanks everyone. This is really helpful stuff!

Really helpful to think of more than food. Thanks for all the extra tips everyone who did. I think that was just my focus when I looked at our bills 😱

I have a bit of a niche job- and short of moving I'm really just hunting for a needle in a haystack where we live now. So I will keep applying but I'm not expecting to find a lot of jobs around. Maybe it's time for a career change but don't have a clue where to start so thought a positive attitude to this change would be a start

Join Costco and buy in bulk. Use Aldi and Lidl for other shops (get the cards) bread makers aren’t likely to save much money as the ingredients are so expensive but you can be assured potentially more healthy?

It’s sometimes easier to make money than save money. Have you got a loft full of junk you can sell on FB?

How much do you spend on food and how many of you is it to feed?

When I had time on my hands I went through all my food cupboards and the freezer, made a list of everything and built my meal plans around what I already had in , cut the shopping bill down for a few weeks.

I also went through other storage spaces and found things like washing up liquid, toilet cleaner etc that I'd bought when on offer but forgot about. Ditto toiletries

How are you doing OP? Have you managed to find another job?