Help me make a food budget, pleeease?!

[CheerfulYank]

I just really don't know how.

There's DH (eats a lot, is 6'4"), me (trying to stick with mostly veg and protein as I feel best this way. I have celiac disease and so gluten is out; also I react strongly to sugar, even very sugary fruits, so try not to eat too much of that even though I love it ), DS who is seven, and DD who is 16 months.

Additionally, I childmind three days a week, so on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have an additional five year old, four year old, and 15 month old, and on Wednesdays I also have the four year old and 15 month old. When I childmind I provide lunch and snack. I also like to do a baking/cooking project on Tuesdays with the older mindees.

DH usually takes leftovers from dinner for his lunch the next day. DS takes a packed lunch about 50% of the time and buys school lunch the rest of the time. School lunch costs $2.05. When it gets too cold for me to walk him to school he will go early (so DH can drop him off before work) and eat breakfast at a cost of $1.10. (We're American and Google isn't working for me to do dollars to pounds for some reason )

So. I really need to meal plan and have a budget because it seems like we are always running off to the store for something or running out of something, or all of a sudden there's nothing to eat.

Any ideas? I know this is a lot of information!

No one is very picky; besides my gluten/sugar issues everyone will pretty much eat everything. I've just learned to make French bread and a few times a week we can have that for dinner with a big pot of soup and some fruit, which seems cheap and filling.

I like to stay away from anything too processed. There is an organic farm down the road which I would love to get more of our meat, etc from if I can make room in the budget. My FIL usually gives us eggs but a lot of his chickens have just been killed by a neighbor dog :(, but at some point eggs will be free.

Our local grocery store is a bit expensive but we do get to Aldi (about 45 minutes away) every few weeks.

So...where should I start? :)

Do you batch cook ?
If you don't you could make meals such as cottage pie (meat or vegetarian version ) make a big dishful have that for tea then freeze the rest into portions . Just add veg or salad and you have a meal .

Batch cooking dishes like chilli , lasagne etc you can make huge portions cheaply and freeze

Soups . Flapjacks got snack but made healthy, protein pancakes . You can freeze too .

Stews/ casseroles bulked out with pulses .

Always cheap and quick are bake potatoes with fillings of your choice. Omelettes, frittata . Pasta dishes.
Egg noodles mixed with salmon/ tuna / chick etc .

You need to make a spreadsheet with expenses on .
How much do you want to spend ? And what are you buying now and what figurr do you want to cutback ? too

I don't douch batch cooking because my freezer is very small. I'm thinking of getting a big side by side refrigerator/freezer so that would help, as well as being able to take advantage of buying meat from the farm; they sell beef in large quantities.

DH also hunts and I'm hoping he will get a deer this year...venison stew would be good.

*do much. Not douche. Which is what that looks like.

I'm not sure how to decide how much money, though. Ideally as little as possible (we're struggling a bit) but without having to resort to processed junk.

At a guess here it costs us roughly £5 per day per person to eat. That's all organic/ free range products. So around £140/150 a week ( 2 adults, 2 children -age 3 and 4). We could save £50 a week by budgeting more and buying less expensive goods

£150 is roughly $245. So if on a budget I guess you could do for $200-240 a week depending on how much food is eaten by childminded children/ baking.

Although that's based on uk cost of things

I think a freezer would be a good idea. Maybe you could get one second-hand if you can't afford new? Then, when you get to Aldi you can stock up on cheese, butter/anything else expensive in your local store and freeze it. There's also nothing wrong with frozen veg if you can't get fresh, or it's too expensive.
Maybe next year you could grow some of the more costly to buy veg, or some herbs. Easy to do and will save a few $

Mmmm venison.....

Being realistic, what can you afford and how much do you want to cut back by.
List breakfasts lunch and dinners. Make a menu, shopping list. Think of what you feed your extra guests. The key is planning.
Make sure you control portions and use up leftovers or you end up with a bin full of waste.
Some things don't need to be organic. What will/can you sacrifice for savings.
I'll buy cheap washing powder but not cheap coffee/tea. TESCO stock cubes but Heinz sauce. Its trial and error.
Think of your extravagant spending if there is any on your list.

Although you cannot batch cook the eve before you childmind I would cook a casserole or Bolognese that can be reheated the next day for lunch for everyone.

Homemade fish fingers (goujons if you want to sound posher!) Are cheap to make if you buy off cuts off a selection of fish or pollock from fish counter or frozen fish portions good to get children involved making them.

For a family of 4 plus childminded xtras you could have an £80 budget and eat well - remember childminded food is an expense n can be claimed as such on tax return. (Although Fed SAME as family you could claim £2 per child per day for snack n lunch as a reasonable expense) also any resources so baking stuff if solely for childminding claim all if used for own children too claim 50% of cost.