Food Spending is ridiculous and I can't seem to reduce this.

[spababe]

Ok so I cut back last month and had to have a big shop on 1st Oct but so far this month I have spent £400 on groceries and have £30 to last me until the end of the month. I also have spent £80 on school lunches.
I vary my shops between Lidl and Tesco online (where I can track what I spend as I order)
I have 2 teenage sons and DH so 4 of us but the milk bill alone is £30 a month as they get through 4 pints a day.
We do not eat meat or much processed food. We live rurally so no takeaways.
I do meal plan.
I do have quite a bit in the freezer to get us through the next week but then we will have to survive on the last £30 through half term - tricky.
It's ridiculous really but I have no idea how to reduce this.

You can cook a load of jacket potatoes and then freeze them. Don't defrost them, put them straight in the microwave. They're not as good as fresh out the oven ones but much better than usual microwave potatoes. Saves energy just using the oven once and you can add a tin of value beans to make a very cheap, healthy snack for the boys in under 5 minutes.

Op, check out amazon for buying your foodstuffs in bulk delivered to. Your door. I buy my flour from there to use in the breadmaker. I'm sure they would sell rice, lentils etc...

Do more shops but for fewer things. I am saving a lot by not going into the supermarket and buying 7 meals for example. So a chicken will do 2/3 meals with various combinations of roast, coronation, salad, pie and/or soup. I do think joints of meat off the reduced counter are a bargain.

I'm aiming for buying only 3 meals a week. The other meals come from leftovers (Spanish omelette - throw anything in), pie, salad (cold pasta and a bit of cold meat or tuna with mayo).

I made stew last night. There's a bit leftover today but not enough for the 3 of us so I got some discounted sausages, which I'll fry and add to the meat and gravy with some extra carrots and peas. I'll do crushed pots with herbs on the side.

Forget the milk - that's a red herring. Use more milk and make toad in the hole!

Has anyone mentioned watering down the milk? Only a little. It goes unnoticed in my house when I do this on the odd time where we may otherwise run out of milk and no shop nearby.

I was thinking about you tonight when I made the tea.

I made a dinner my gran used to make for us - I have no idea if it has a name

Steam tons of potatoes

Fry onions (I used 2)

Chop salad tomatoes (I had 4 in the fridge going soft-ish)

Mash spuds with butter. Add onions and tomatoes and cheese. Mix well. Put into baking dish and make as many hollows as you have people to feed. Break an egg into each one. Bung in oven around 200 for about 10-15 mins.

Mega filling and tasty (but looks weird!!) and really really cheap.

It sounds lovely.Was meaning to say before if you manage to get hold of lots of fresh vegetables really cheap(market end of a Saturday trading or reduced in the supermarket)you can blanch lots of them and then freeze.There's tips about it online.That or you can get the keep fresh bags that keep fresh veg and fruit nice for up to about two weeks.

There's lots*

I have teenage boys and they eat like there's no tomorrow. They do lots of sport and are always hungry. I don't think there are any magical solutions but I do lots of home cooking - oh the boredom of chopping onions etc . But that leaves leftovers and sometimes enough to freeze and have for another meal. Soup made on a Friday (more chopping - yawn) for lunches at the weekend. People can heat up the soup when they are ready to eat. Shopping at ALDI or the like has saved me loads. The fruit and veg are great and cheap. And cutting back on unhealthy snacks that are expensive. I spend lots on food though.
I liked the idea earlier in the thread of only giving them packed lunch every other day . How about trying to get them into that 5/2 diet? that could save you some pennies!!!

thanks for the recipe smash will give that a go! I also like to slice spuds, par boil, layer with veg and cheese and pour over a combination of stock and a bit of cream then bake. Lovely!

Another cheap filling idea is to make cheese and tomato sandwiches, cut into triangles and layer in a buttered baking dish. Pour over and egg and milk mix and bake (like a savoury bread and butter pudding) then served with baked beans.

When you put a new loo roll on the holder give it a quick squeeze so the cardboard tube is no longer round. When they pull the roll then they won't take so much as it doesn't roll smoothly. Silly tip but in my house of 3 boys and DH it saved us a few pennies.

Decant DSs shampoo into a pump dispenser so he doesn't waste so much by splodging it on his hand. like this though you could probably pick up one in the pound shop.

I know these won't save wodges of cash but every little helps.

Ok so I have changed my ways this month. I have done ONE shop online at Tesco for all the stuff I can't get at Lidl (£65) and I'm not intending to shop at Tesco again until next month.
I am doing one shop to Lidl weekly and one top up shop mostly for milk.
This week, Lidl was £45.34. I did come back and compare to Tesco prices and I have saved £5.97. bit surprised it was that low a saving but I think overall I have saved as I have not been tempted by most costly items I usually get and this Lidl shop is mostly basics esp fruit and veg.

Can I ask if you are doing a weekly shop you are doing a top up shop? Surely milk will not go off in a week you can also freeze it if needs be.

Was chatting to a friend the other day and she was saying that her 3 boys were milk fiends and she started buying the UHT milk as back up and when the normal milk was finished they had to have that or nothing and as they didn't like the taste of it they soon learnt that the milk had to last. Another thing she did was save an empty milk bottle, bought 5 bottles of milk, decanted a bit from each into the empty bottle and added water to top the bottles up. Then she put 2 bottles in the fridge and the rest in the freezer and every time she was down to 1 bottle she got another out of the freezer.

And the should read WHY are you doing a top up shop?

FWIW I switched to having milk delivered every day and while in itself a bit pricier, it means I am not constantly doing top up shops which are ostensibly for milk but end up being a load of other stuff as well. So am only in the supermarket for big shopping expeditions.

Make porridge with powdered milk & water. I buy less ready meals & sauces and cook from scratch.

Maximise your oven usage, so if you are cooking a lasagne you could also make up a batch of scones etc.

Why not...work out how much milk you use and buy that on your actual shop?

Every meal needs a bread part - garlic bread or rough balls with pasta dishes, naan or chapati with curry, tortillas with chilli etc. All really easy and cheap to make and will help fill them up. Side dishes are brilliant for making meals feel huge.

Start having pudding every evening. Massive fruit crumbles with custard, sponge cake with ice cream, canned rice pudding, apple strudel, jam rolypoly etc. All can be made really cheaply (buy the frozen strudel - it's really cheap). I noticed a huge reduction in the amount of food we used when we started doing this.

Freeze homemade pizzas - about 20p each. Keep back a few spoonfuls of sauce when you have pasta and top with that.

Freeze loaf cakes in slices for lunches - the stodgier the better eg gingerbread, banana loaf, carrot cake, apple cake. Use all soft fruit and veg up like this. Also freeze muffins (sweet and savoury) and flapjacks.

Serve out huge portions at mealtimes but make sure you do it so you can then serve portions directly in to freezer containers. These then become microwave meals for after school.

Big blocks of cheese from aldi/lidl are much cheaper than any 2 for £5 offer I've seen. They're £3.50 ish for over 800g.

Make your own bread rolls - you can then make them huge, they are way more filling than sliced bread and they can also go (ready split) in the freezer.

Dcs can then take a roll, fill and it will be defrosted by lunch. Add cake, fruit, crisps, pizza slice etc and that's their lunch. It will defrost fine by about 11am.

Fillings can be cheese, humus, coleslaw etc.

They must also eat everything at the table. Makes you feel full sooner!

I would actually recommend not having rough balls. Try dough balls instead...

I cut back about three months ago. We are a family of 3 plus 2 cats! and I was spending £380. Circumstances have changed and money is quite tight now, so I had to reduce food spending. I've now got it down to £230 a month (including cat food, cleaning products, toilet rolls etc) and feel I can keep to this now.

I've done it by setting myself a maximum budget of £50 a week (plus money for cat food). I tend to buy a few things in the week like fresh fruit, milk, bread and that comes out of my main shop at the end of the week. I add up how much the food is as I go along and if I know I'm getting near my budget and there are still must haves to buy, I quickly re-think what I can swap for cheaper options - ie value biscuits are cheaper than cake, can I buy less of certain sandwiches fillings which are expensive, do we really need chicken when a chilli bean pasta bake would be so much cheaper etc. I'm sure you do but look for things on offer, if you're buying fruit/veg buy them in the cheapest way, ie we like kiwi fruit so I buy pack of 6 rather than each one for 30p. If there are shops other than Lidl or Tesco you occasionally pass, have a look online and see if any of your usual purchases could be cheaper there.

milk is only £1 for 4 pints

Where on earth do you get milk for £1 for four pints? Most places sell it for £1 for two pints and even at that cost the dairy farmers are not being paid a fair amount. If you are paying £1 for four pints how much do you think the farmer is being paid?

Tesco, Lidl, Aldi, Asda all have milk for £1 for 4pts. Aldi is £1.40 ish for 6 pints.

Milk is a loss leader for most stores - they tempt you in with cheap milk knowing you will then buy other stuff. Bread and bananas too.
though look up which stores don't pay farmers a fair price - Lidl didn't last time I looked.
Worth knowing when stores reduce bread and other prices, though best for meat when you want to stock the freezer. But if you have teenagers, stocking up on a pile of bread products when they are 20p is not only cheap, but if it includes crumpets or cakes, they feel they are still getting a treat. If you only want to shop online, then mentioning this to the teens and putting them in charge of the snack budget could solve your problem.

More cheap carbs to fill them up rather than expensive snacks - lots of value pasta and a big sack of potatoes. Milk and More will deliver 25kg sacks of spuds for 10 quid.

I know lots of milk just doesn't fit in the fridge, but maybe keeping some long life for when you run out could reduce number of top up shops, if that's when money is more likely to be wasted?

I had no idea that milk could be bought so cheaply. No wonder dairy farmers have protested and are unhappy. I pay about 60p for a pint of milk (I never buy more than half a pint at a time so didn't realise it was so cheap in bigger bottles). I think milk should cost around 80p a pint in order that farmers can earn a decent standard of living and decent animal welfare standards can be maintained. Maybe I am in the minority by thinking that though.

Farmers get about 25p a litre for milk iirc.