feed a family for less than £50 a week?

[frazzled74]

I am trying to clear debts and put a little cash aside for christmas, but i need to cut my food bill massively. does anyone manage to feed a family of 5 for £50 a week? if so tips please?

I spend roughly £100 per month for myself, DH (including packed lunches) & DS aged 21 months (huge appetite) - plus 1 cat.

My method is completely opposite to most of those on here - I rarely plan at all!

I go to my local tesco (lucky to have a big store 1 mile from my house) every once in a while at 8pm. I then buy meat, fish, pies etc at 25% of the original price & fruit & veg at 10% of the origianl price, as it is on that day's date & they have marked it down (eg the other day I got a whole load of prepacked fruit salads for 7p each, broccoli heads for no more than 10p each & packs of rosemary for 4p each). Once I get home, I divide everything up into meal-sized portions & freeze it. Fruit, I puree/stew & freeze. I rarely spend more than £20 a time doing this & it usually provides main components of 15-20 meals, if not more.

I supplement the above with weekly milk, yoghurt & bread runs (or walks, to be more accurate!) which are about £5 for all I need for the week. Things that cannot be bought reduced are usually value brand (& taste 90% as good, if not 100%).

I buy big boxes of washing powder when on offer & these last me 6 months or so - I use half the recommended amount & clothes come out fine. I only use bleach, limescale remover & tesco value all-purpose cleaning fluid (less than 50p a bottle) to clean with & find these adequate - I hate the idea of too many chemicals & some actually give me a headache or sore throat if I inhale the fumes. D/w tabs & fabric softener are value brand, nappies & wipes tesco own brand & bought when on special offer.

I see you have more DC than I do,OP, but I think your goal is perfectly attainable. Good luck with it

Jen, I used to do the going to the shop at 7 or 8 o'clock thing (well, OH did on his way home from work.) Our local ASda has stopped reducing things to that level in the last year or so, though.

We don't drive and it takes about an hour to get to the supermarket in the evening because the buses are not regular after 6 o'clock. In fact, sometimes they don't run at all because the drivers refuse to come through our village because of all the yobs chucking bricks and things at them. But, if getting to the shop at that sort of time isn't a problem, I would tell anyone to try it out. It can be pretty random and you have to be quite creative in the kitchen, but it saves a fortune.

When OH was in the habit of going to Asda and they did the bog reductions, we were getting bread for 5p a big loaf, carrots for 7p a kilo, apples and oranges for 5p a bag, spinach for 10p, cabbages for things like 2p, mince for 25p for 500g, chickens for a pound. AS I say, ours doesn't do it like that any more and the most that is ever off things now is 50%, usually more like 35%, but even so, it's a good saving. SAdly OH rarely goes that way home since he changed is job, so it's not often that we can get things. I used to love it when he came home with a super bargain and got quite good at making meals based on things like carrots and wholemeal bread

Yes, stressedHEmum, I am very lucky that we are so near to a big Tesco (takes about 15 mins to walk) & my DH usually gets in with the car at about 7.30 so I hand over DS to him in exchange for the car! You're right, it can save fortunes & lead to pretty experimental cooking - we've had everything from liver to game to ready meals to burgers - we'll eat anything! The best bargain night was when I went there a few months ago and even the meat was down to 10% as they had so much left! I must have got enough for 2 months' meals! What a shame the buses don't go through your village, vandals spoil it for everyone, sometimes

ASDA online.

I have for the last month been cutting back on the shopping - used to do my main shop in Sainsburys and Asda online.

I now go the either lidl or aldi (when aldi has decent offers on). I have managed to cut my shopping bill down from £60+ to £30-£35 a week for 4 of us.

I don't buy any processed items really, and no biscuits cakes etc. as they seem to contain alot of sugar and a lot of bad fats.

I have cut down to buying the cheap 19p diet lemonade instead of all the expensive pop we used to buy, and their bread is always on offer and their fruit and veg is half price.

Okay you can't get everything - and sometimes I need certain items so have to spend the odd £5 in sainsburys at the weekend, but have noticed the credit bill has gone down considerably as the other good thing about these shops is that my local lidl doesn't like taking credit card for payment so I have to use my bank account card which is good as I only spend what we have now.

I am doing a bit cut back to clear the card before christmas. Hopefully !!

Baked beans are full of good things and cheap!

Lots of pasta/rice dishes with lentils/quorn to bulk up (children love rice and pasta!)

I would go to open air markets at the end of the day if you can - I am sure that they will be selling off fresh veg/fruit at knock down prices.

Look for special offers BOGOF etc

Also, as long as you will use it find out when the supermarket etc discounts on fresh food and then look for things that are significantly reduced that day (esp meat etc)

Hope this helps!

Oops only just realised this is an old thread - hopefully though might help someone!

thats ok, I found it useful !

Never seem to find any amazing reductions myself though :-(

What do you do if you have a family of snackers?

I read Economy Gastronomy and thought it was excellent - but if you follow their "tumble down" meals, we'd all be starving! In theory you are supposed to buy a big chicken which gets used to roast with lots of veggies, then gets made into risotto, then into soup etc. In practice what happens: My hubby demands more meat and then picks at it in the fridge, so there isn't really enought to make even one meal out of, let alone two. He's also particularly skilled at eating essential ingredients from main meals (ever had fahitas without the tortillas??). Mostly this is laziness/greed - he likes to grab whatever is easiest to eat straight from the fridge or cupboard without any preparation.

So short of padlocking the fridge, how do you keep them away from your kitchen essentials???

"So short of padlocking the fridge, how do you keep them away from your kitchen essentials???"

I have one of those types of husband.

Thankfully he also suffers from "not right under my nose, therefore is invisible" blindness, so opaque Tupperware (full of cheese, or any other "nibble-able" essential ingredients) carefully stashed behind the bags of onions etc on the bottom shelf.

Tortillas hide behind the intimidating rows of tins on the bottom shelf of the stock cupboard.

Basically I hide stuff in non see through containers and behind boring things that don't appeal as a snack.

And carefully scatter "insta munchies" that I know he likes at a push, eg washed carrots, celery, oranges, apples, one small bit of cheese in pole position on the top shelf, to discourage him from getting motivated enough to start a deeper search for something to chomp on.

Ah - I thought I was the only one doing this, but alas I can see that other people stash food all round the house... Thanks fastweb it's good to know it's not just me!

I'm seriously considering putting in extra secret fridges when we redo the kitchen. I do tend to move insta-munchies round into different cupboards so he doesn't always know where they are.

Surely buying better quality pasta pref wholemeal is more bulking so buying the slimy stuff in huge bags is false economy???

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I used to use a blog, Penny’s Recipes, haven’t looked lately but it has some really good low cost recipes.

When we need to cut costs I do things like adding more veg into almost everything. So a pasta dish, fe, gets the protein reduced slightly and extra veg to bulk it out. Something I haven’t done for ages, a pasta sauce with finely chopped onion, celery, carrot and a can of tomatoes, plus black pepper/oregano or mixed herbs.

Switching to cheaper cuts and slicing/cubing makes it go further. So chicken thighs instead of breasts, preferably a whole chicken though, and use 3 pieces for 4 people.

Lentil soup for lunches, sauté onion, garlic, veg of choice, red lentils. Add veg stock and simmer. Blend or leave as is. Make a big pot and add herbs or spices when reheating to give a slightly different lunch each day.