feed a family for £50 a week

[frazzled74]

Didnt fancy the sainsburys meal plan so have just spent all eve on my supermarket.com and eventually shopped from asda, £49.87
breakfasts-toast/ cereal except saturday when we have eggs and mushrooms on toast

lunches, sandwiches /beans on toast/tomato soup
main meals- mon- tuna pasta, tues-pork and butterbean stew, wed- chicken enchiladas, thurs-veg lasagne, fri-salmon and brocoli pasta,sat-minced lamb curry, sun roast pork dinner.
The £49.87 covers all food minus herbs and tin tomatos, jams,spreads and milk.I have also sneaked in a bottle of wine so not bad at all!

Well done!
I had a look at the sainsburys one and it was mince beef two days and sausages two days, you should send them your suggestion, it's a lot more varied.
What sort of salmon, in my local Asda they only had fresh £4 for 3 pieces.

They have bags in the freezer, much cheaper than fresh

it was in the 3 for £10 offer, only 2 pieces but will bulk out with the veg and pasta, am also cheating a little as I have just made flapjacks, biscuits and scones with ingredients that i already have in, for lunchboxes.

Hi

Not sure if you are aware but Sainsburys have anothe meal plan this week.

www.sainsburys-feed-your-family.co.uk/

Another one comes out on 15/06

i noticed on the sainsbury meal plan, although they sold Value meat, it wasnt part of their meal plan

How big is the family

My local Tesco (not sure if they all have the same offers) has good meat offer at the moment - 3 for £10 or 4 for £12 - included whole chickens, pork chops, chicken breast, mince and something else I can't remember! They also had packet of 12 very nice cumberland sausages for £2.

I am not too bad at the food shopping bit as I enjoy cooking and am quite happy to think outside of the box, it's the household bits like cleaners etc that I find really adds to the bill. Any ideas anyone on keeping this part of the bill down.

never buy cleaning products in supermarkets. get yourself to Boyes, Wilkos or poundland.

I'm trying to do this too. Some good ideas on this thread

re the cleaning products - I buy the large multipurpose cleaner liquid in the screw top bottles (e.g. dettol 3 in 1) then dilute it per instructions and use in spray pump bottles. Works out very very cheap compared to the pre-made sprays, ifkwim.

SAF: the meals themselves looked dismal, which makes it even more depressing.

I usually spend a fortune in sainsbos. I decided to try shopping at the local market this week and it was just SO much cheaper. I wasn't being thrifty at all, and I bought all the meat from my local, free-range-only, rare-breeds type butcher (rather than the much cheaper stalls in the market). I did grab some stupid stuff (like smoothie) in the supermarket on the way home, but all-in I spent just over half what I usually do (c. £70 instead of £130-40), including some extortionate NCP parking charges.

So, yeah, take your £50 elsewhere (and, no, I don't mean another supermarket) and you will be able to eat a lot better for it.

Actually, this week's menu looks far better than the first week. It doesn't seem to be 90% frozen peas for a start. Still, take the shopping list to your local market and you'll spend less.

I know what you mean swallowedafly. Some of the recipe ideas sound yummy. I am just so hacked off with the price of stuff atm. I can't do much about diesel or gas / electric but at least with my food bill I can have some control. I don't much like the sainsburys menus but agree with going to the market. I'm doing that next week. I'm going to experiment with a few different ways and see which is cheapest. I think our local garden centre sells fruit and veg and I'm going to try there too.

I buy all my cleaning products in Home Bargains if you have one of them anywhere near. Washing liquid (for clothes) is 99p and washes perfectly well. Dishwasher tablets are £1.99 for 30, cleaning wipes 2 for £1.00 etc. Last week I spent £15 and I think I bought 30 dishwasher tablets, washing liquid and Comfort fabric softener, bin bags. sandwaich bags, 30m tin foil, 4 packs of cleaning wipes, toilet discs, 2 deodorants, conditioner for the kids, shower gel and Oven Pride.

Wow abby that's a good haul for £15

I use smartprice multisurface cleaner now but I put it in a spray bottle, I'm annoyed though that I forked out for brand name stuff for years.

Same with bleach for stained cups, disinfectant, washing powder, furniture polish and toilet cleaner.

According to moneysaving expert it's these products that we are least likely to change brand on but also where the biggest savings are.

my asda shop for the week for under £50 went well and i am definitely saving by menu planning, half term week was spent having picnics and generally eating badly but i have just shopped and done menu for next week using local butcher and farmers market, sunday-roast chicken dinner and rhubarb crumble with custard, mon- chicken chowmein, tues-chilli and rice,wed-sausage and mash, thurs- tuna pasta, fri-chicken lasagne, sat -steak and chips, veg or salad with each meal, sandwiches for lunch and cereal/toast/fruit for breakfast, £25 butcher, £12 market and £10 at tesco. I enjoyed shoppingmore locally and i think i got better quality meat and veg.My new plan is to do a £80 shop each month from asda on basics and tins etc, buy wash powder etc from aldi then spend 40-50 per week on fresh meat and veg, it will cut our food bill down from around £500 to £300 per month.

That's great frazzled. I'm also going to go and do one 'big' shop as soon as I get paid and then try and keep my shop each week to under £50.

every month i do a big shop, i buy most of my tins from aldi (prefer them to the supermarket own brands), flour, crisps and sugar, pasta and some cleaning products. tesco, morrissons and sainsburys are all just down the road and i go to whichever has offers on soap powder, softner and toilet rolls, coffee and alcohol.

veg and meat usually come from the local butchers and i buy in bulk and freeze.

every week i buy the fridge things, eg milk, eggs, yoghurts and bread.

on a sunday i have started baking cakes and pies/pasties etc for treats and packed lunches. sometimes i will make and freeze things like lasagne for a meal during the week.

i always plan each week what we are going to have for our evening meal.

i have managed to get my monthly shopping bill down to about £250 for the three of us.

Has anyone tried the Resourceful Cook website? Someone told me about it today and it looks really good. I like most of the things on there. I was thinking of trying one of their meals planners on there next week.
Just as an aside - last night I was watching some programme on Sky where two people try and help a family cut down on their shopping bills. The family (mum, dad, boy of about 9 and 2 year old twins) were haing to cut their food bill down to £220. I thought it was a month but it was a week!!!! They were spending over £300 a week on food!!! How can you do that?

The OP#'s meal plan looks much tastier than the Sainbury's on. I did actually cook one of them - the sausage hotpot thing. Don't bother. Even cooking i for far longer than it said and with plenty of added seasoning and herbs the dish was still bland and unappetising, so much so that we threw it away and got a take away!

I second "Homebargins" I bought the OH head & shoulders equivalent 65p! Also Wilkinsons I bought another bottle dirt cheap. I buy the children big bottles of the cheaper shampoos too.

As for cleaning products again one multi use and a bit of elbow grease does the trick I also pop some into a spray bottle and works a treat.

What I cant understand with these set weekly food shop does it include packed lunches? also you need to bake, biscuits, a bit of wine, standard provisons in the cupboard etc it all adds up. How can you feed a family on £1.78 per day for 3 meals?

My shopping is never under £200 per week for a family of 5 and no pets i wish i could spend less but it just seems impossible. We also eat out once a week and once a montha have a take away