Anyone want to join me on a cheap food month challenge?

[BasinHaircut]

We are spending about £300 a month on groceries (including cleaning/toiletries etc). Want to keep it under £200 for the next 4 weeks if possible. Only 3 of us and I’ve just done a big bulk cook for DS (4) so mainly just me and DH. To cover all meals except we are invited to 2 BBQs in May so won’t need food for those.

espoleta £900 a month!!!! faints

Crikey that’s some serious spending.

Well done on almost halving it last month

Thanks. And honestly I'm not sure what we spent it on? I can't quite make it out.
Also the £550 including pack lunches for two people twice a week. I'm unhappy to say the £900 didn't include any lunches.

We've got a bit of a way to go. I'd like to go meatfree at least twice a week (currently on once a week)

Anyway I got a shop on Thursday and have mealplan the following. We haven't stuck to it due to asda not delivering any chicken breasts for the fajitas.

Asda also was out of the chicken for the braai and gave us double portions of both the ribs and the chicken and those have gone into the freezer.

The shop came to £120 but that includes a bit of booze as it was on special and some detergent and loo paper ect that isn't every shop. Also I'm batch cooking bolengese as we speak for the freezer (around 4 portions for 4 people)

Do we post our meal plans too for people to get ideas?

Can do if you want.

Use the thread however suits you best. I’m posting my meal plans to maybe give ideas to others, not that my meals are that inspiring! But I like seeing what others eat too.

Good cheap and meat free meals we have are jacket potatoes with cheese and beans, omelettes, home made falafel burgers (just tin of chick peas, half a courgette and a small carrot both grated, some ground cumin and garlic and then in the mixer with the beater attachment for a couple of minutes until it’s half crushed. Makes 2 large burgers).

Jerk chicken, cheesy potatoes and corn-on-the-cob tonight. Mutton curry yesterday. Tomorrow is chilli night..then probably veggie pasta.

I've spent £139 so far, but did a huge shop and bought a load of staples which should last two weeks at least.. hopefully. Loads of rice and pasta, oils and tinned bits, and freezer things so will just need a top up shop at the end of the week for milk and bread and fresh fruit/veg.

Bought a bottle of wine and a crate of corona (£8 in Asda!) in that as had family over for dinner last night, but made spaghetti bolognaise so only cost a couple of £'s more than it usually would... and lemon drizzle which was surprisingly cheap when I worked out how much it cost.

Last months spending was horrific but I did realise we haven't had a babysitter for 4 weeks, which means we haven't had a night or evening out so maybe we've been compensating with nice food (trying to make myself feel better!), so overall spending isn't too bad which is probably how I haven't noticed the overspend.

Thank you for the meal ideas. Stupidly went to the supermarket with no real plan just started mass buying the usuals.. probably why it's only day 4 and I've spent over two weeks of my planned budget! Will even out by week three hopefully.

I don’t think I’ve ever been to the supermarket without a list. I genuinely wouldn’t know where to begin if I didn’t have one. Even if I only need 3 things I wrote it down!

I’m not saying that extras never creep in (they definately do) but I always know what I should be buying before I step through the door.

I remember watching my mum every Friday night walking round the house with a used envelope, checking cupboards and making a list on the back of it of things we needed, plus a daily dinner planned out. I’d never realised before I wrote this post but I do exactly the same! Although I keep a ‘live’ list of things we run out of on my whiteboard during the week, and I don’t shop in a Saturday morning as she did.

Really need to save somehow only three of us so should in theory be cheap but going over into overdrafts a lot. We've been doing up house to hopefully sell but the downside of that is as I'm self employed work has taken a hit and also we've been spending on stuff for the house. I cook from scratch, bulk is done from Aldi but we eat fish mostly with vegetarian no meat at all. We also do natural cleaning so are not spending hugely on that kind of stuff. Has been slightly spendy as DH was at home 2 weeks and we always spend more then. Looking at where we can spend less over all. One thing is once house stuff is done we won't have to buy again...

My birthday in a week and just not looking forward to any money will have to go into paying for house stuff even money that comes as gifts...

Do you throw any food out?

how much are you spending sportin

Had to grab milk, butter —and 2 tubs of Ben and Jerry’s— so thats another £8 spent which takes it up to £68 already! Not looking good for £50 average a week seeing as I will need DW tablets and a few toiletries next week. Although DH is away from Tuesday for a week and I want to stop guzzling shite so a good opportunity to spend and eat less and just please myself! Might be able to do it for £32 I suppose.

I feel like I have found my people.... Trying to spend less, SW, flexible meal plans

We're trying to stop takeaways entirely which is going well so far. Otherwise I don't really see many ways to save... We spend over £120 a week but shop at Aldi, DD and I take lunches every day and OH minimises his spend, cat food and any essential brands from Amazon is another £50 a month. There's 3 of us and DD is practically veggie.

Meal plan for this week:
Burgers, corn and slaw / pizza for DD
Steak, carrot and swede mash, braised cabbage (veg is in freezer from previous weeks) / chicken nuggets and salad for DD
Jacket potatoes with beans or tuna
BBQ kebabs, golden rice, slaw
Cajun chicken, golden rice, salad
Pesto pasta

There’s an offer on topcashback, 10p back on spaghetti. We both have an account so I’ll buy two packs separately & claim the cashback.

It’ll work out at 20p for two packs of spaghetti.

I love this thread! I'm going to have a really good read this weekend.

I've been trying to save money so have been doing a big cook off every 3 weeks and freezing 18 meals, for 2 adults and 2 6yo's. I use 2 chickens and 1.5kg of mince and it's been working really well. We've seen £200 a moth come off our shopping bills.

£200 a month

That’s a fantastic result Damn.

Yeah I'm pretty pleased with it. I put it here cheaptastyandeasy.wordpress.com/cook-off-main-page/ because I talked on another thread about it.
We have a card for our local supermarket and each month they send out a summary. This month we did really well because I started making bread so we saved even more.

I do bread with 75% bread flour, 25% plain flour. You can’t tell & it’s a lot cheaper.

Weirdly I do about that, but it was an accidental thing that turned out well. I ran out of bread flour and had to top up with plain. The bread turned out really light and fluffy, so I've kept doing it :)

I'm failing miserably. Summer food is so expensive in this house... bbqs with lots more meat than on a normal day... freezer has magnums/soleros to avoid the pester power when out and about.
Melon, strawberries, countless bags of lettuce... argh.

We're probably "saving" £100 a month on not eating out as we'd rather be out in the garden... but that £100 doesn't stretch far!

I find summer more expensive too. Thinking of trying the market for salad on Tuesday. I’m constantly buying lettuce, cucumber and tomatoes.

Up to £201 now. Was getting on really well but whole family went shopping at weekend which added £££ s as everyone added favourite items. Also DD1 has decided to not eat school meals so have been buying packed lunch stuff. Revising this months target to £350.

Well June is proving to be much less successful than May!

Week 2 shop came in at £67, added to last week’s £68 that’s £135 already.

Would be a miracle to get the last 2 weeks in at £65 total I think but I’m going to doing some serious meal planning.

Can you try a batch cook BasinHaircut I priced up ours at about £33 and it makes 18 meals. Might be worth a try.

I'm now trying to make a sweet cheap thing for the DC. I vaguely remember seeing somewhere you could make a type of cinnamon roll by rolling out bread. I made some bread yesterday and have butter, sugar and ground cinnamon in the house. So I melted some butter, mixed some sugar and cinnamon in a bowl, and sliced and rolled the bread.

I put some melted butter on each slice and sprinkled some cinnamon/sugar mix on and rolled it up.

Trouble is I don't think the bread is suitable, not big or squidgy enough. It didn't roll that well and was too small for my cake tin so I fashioned a mini cup from foil and put it in the cake tin.

I poured the rest of the melted butter and cinnamon/sugar mix on the top with a splash of milk.

Goodness knows what it'll turn out like, certainly not pretty, but DH thinks it will taste nice.

It's in the oven now.

This is what I mean. Hopefully will taste better than it looks!