Grocery budget

[Rainie130]

I feel that I am overspeding on my food shop. Myself hubby and teenage son, average spend £120 per week.(Including toiletries and cleaning products).
I did a meal plan this week, headed off to the supermarket, stuck to my list and still manged to spend £100.
I do like some branded things (cereals, beans) but am happy to use supermarket brands too.
I don't know where I'm going wrong.

I spend around £400 a month for 5 of us, 4 adults, a 12 year old and two Labradors. This only includes lunch for dh and I as Ds3 has school lunches and the older two usually see to themselves. I try to do 3 cheaper meals a week. Usually baked potatoes with cheese/beans/cottage cheese, pasta and sauce, lentil bake, home made pizza or omelette served with “reduced to clear” bags of salad. I make a lot of home made soup for lunches which works out fairly cheap..

I do one/two online Iceland shops a month, one supermarket shop (which ever is cheaper for what I want) and get dog food, toilet paper, laundry liquid, kitchen roll and soya milk delivered from Amazon. I then drop into whichever small shop I am near in the evenings (whilst ferrying ds3 to his activities) and pick up anything reduced to clear.

I’m not sure how growing your family is but that’s an awful lot of meat meals there. Every day.
Could you switch to a beans/pulses dish once a week? There are wonderful bean soup recipes, dhal and vegetable curries.

I’m not a veggie but meat entry day is too much.

My favourite. www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/spinach-sweet-potato-lentil-dhal
Cheap and ridiculous tasty. I can omit the spinach and spring onion and it’s still delish. I also cooked it on Xmas eve as Xmas day is a meat fest and I had people asking for seconds and thirds.

This bean soup too is on heavy rotation.
www.deliciousmagazine.co.uk/recipes/tuscan-bean-soup/

www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/775646/vegetable-curry-for-a-crowd
On this, I add some chestnut mushrooms whole/(or tofu if I feel flash) for a meatier dish but it’s fine on its own.

I think that's pretty good going op. Re the comments about cleaning stuffs being a lot, I'm not sure

Mega persil every 2 months
Mega fabric conditioner same
Black sacks
Bin liners
Caddy liners
16 bog roll
2 kitchen roll
3 washing up liquid
Pckt scourers
2 x bleach
Kitchen cleaner
Spray cleaner
Furniture wipes
Windowlene wipes
Foil
Long matches
Dishy tabs
Salt
Rinseaid

Quick add up and I reckon cleaning stuffs work out easily at £40-£45 pcm.

Pound shops are really good for cleaning products and also soaps, shampoos and bubble baths. So you would save if you went in one once a month and stocked up. They also sell biscuits and snacks and basic store cupboard goods. I think you did well to save £20 but your family might be resistant to you cutting back.

How about lentils every monday for a start.
jacket potatoes every wednesday?

We buy meat from a butcher in bulk three times a year and fill the freezer we spend around 120 per trip, this gets us a good range of meat and the meat being sold has been predominantly raised and slaughtered by the butcher. However i appreciate this is not common. Have you got a local butcher that does good bulk deals?

I would also look to increase veggie meals we love

Fried hallumi with med veg and cous cous
Egg and chips
Beany chilli
Lentil dahl
Jacket spuds

Cleaning products i buy when on offer as i only like method really so watch my supermarket for the right deal

I’ve started buying Harrington’s dried dog food off Amazon. DDog is happy and it’s half the price of the brand we were buying.

The other thing you could try is to have a couple of vegetarian meals a week.

DH used to insist on Heinz beans but I tricked him into trying a cheaper brand. He found he actually preferred them.

We get a lot of stuff from Aldi, especially all their cleaning products, including dishwasher and washing machine products. They are very good and cheap.

ha! I see why Sainsbury's is always giving us 'cleaning product' coupons. We buy far far (far) less than that long list.

OP's family do eat a lot of meat. OP: do you throw any food out?

@Babygrey7 do you have a recipe available for the smokey paprika lentil stew please? Sounds delish. Smokey paprika is my favourite spice at the moment, goes in everything

@OP. We spend approx £50 per week for 3, granted our DS is a littlie, not s teenager! Ours is Tesco, as DH does it around his shifts. Included in that is the odd thing here and there from the clothes bit, so a pack of vests etc, not not formula or nappies as we BF/cloth.
We don't eat meat, which significantly reduces the bill. We realised how much when DH gave it up too but it generally took the approach that if buying him meat, i went for the highest quality i could, so the low fat mince, 100% pork sausages etc.
We don't buy brands, except tea (Tetley ftw), unless it's an offer that works out better.
We batch cook a lot, saves time too. If I'm cooking, i generally double the quantity and freeze it.
I would say reduce your meat. Lentil Ragu/chickpea curry/bean chilli/veg stews etc end up costing pennies per person.

Mumof1DS, it can vegan or with chorizo

Fry a chopped up chorizo on low heat (no need to add oil, as it's fatty), add a chopped onion or two and soften on low heat. Add a teaspoon (or more) of smoked paprika (less if it is very spicy, more if its mild). Add 2-chopped red peppers, then add 375 gr of small green lentils (puy lentils or lentilles vert are best, but ordinary grey lentils works too), add 3 pints of veg stock and 3 tablespoons of tomato puree

Simmer 30 mins. Look if you need to add more water halfway.

Add salt to taste

Serve with crusty bread

Very earthy dish

My and my partner cut our food bill massively by going to Wilkinson’s and buying our cleaning products. We buy bulk as we travel to get to one but spend £60 odd quid will easily last us 2 months and their own washing liquid is lovely! Bulk buying toilet roll is the way forward as it works out much cheaper, we tend to do this at our local shop as it’s the cheapest one with good quality we could find. Meat is expensive. He is a vegetarian but quorn isn’t cheap either so for me (not vegetarian) we go shopping on the evenings, will buy reduced meat and freeze, also we buy frozen sausages. For meals that don’t need meat we just use veg, much healthier, I don’t eat as much as you do judging from your meal plan. Curry’s for example, cauliflower or potatoes taste just as good as the main substance. Since lowering our budget I will tell you this, most of the cheap stuff is exactly the same, £1 for 2 garlic breads taste the same as the posh stuff out the chilled section at double the price. Soup. The cheap stuff is the same if you pop a bit of pepper on the top 😂 Morrison’s ‘wonky’ fruit and veg is a lifesaver and if you find yourself buying the 3 packs of onions for £1 buy 3 individuals as it’s about 50p. I like you stick to heinz beans. There’s no comparison. But I only buy on offer and just stock up. Some weeks for 2 we can spend £30 if the freezer is stocked and then the next week can be £60 if we’ve used it all

£30 a week on meat is a lot. I go to Aldi and typically spend

£4 on a chicken/pork.
£6 on two 700g mince portions ( shepherds pie and a bolognese)
£3 on 2x8 sausages ( sausage and mash)
£3 on chicken thighs (curry)
£4 chicken legs (casserole)

Thats £20 and meat for 6 days for 2 adults, 3 teens and an 11 year old. The other day we might have toasties and soup, baked potato and coleslaw.cheese etc.

I completely disagree that £30 per week is a
lot to spend on meat on 3 adults for seven days. It’s about £1.50 per day. Op could buy 24 eggs and make omelettes or egg based dishes but not everyone likes eggs.

Me too. User. When we have meat I like it to be reasonable quality. We have meat or fish five nights.

I don't think £30/week is likely to be a huge savings, tbh, but it might be a lot to OP.

OP describes red meat at every evening + all noon meals & as part of breakfast on Sunday. I'm willing to bet the portions aren't small. It's more red meat than we're advised to consume for best health.

I take 6% of that back.. .one of the weekday evening meals has fish instead of red meat.

£30 per week saving is cutting the bill by 20% or more which is very significant. What I meant was that £30 per week for 3 people is very low per person per day for meat/protein.

😳 I think it’s cheaper having a cleaner who uses her own products

I’ve really noticed food prices going up lately. I tend to do a big Tesco shop (90-95 quid) at the start of the month and then spend £60 a week between Lidl, Asda and Morrison’s after that. When I go in my favourites in my Tesco online list it’s saying lots of things aren’t in stock anymore so for instance I used to buy their own brand mars bars, they’re lovely. But now there’s four in a pack instead of six. Multiply that by 20 items and of course the shopping isn’t going to stretch as far. They are ripping people off by sizing down but not reducing the price.

I’ve bought a small green house to grow our own chillis, tomatoes and courgettes this year. If it’s not too taxing I’ll grow more. I think we will need all the help we can with Brexit.

My Mam very kindly also probably spends 15-20 a week on lunchbox food for the kids (two kids) as they will only take branded stuff which drives me crackers. My dad will often call round with milk, bread, eggs and juice too as he knows I run out of those things a lot so without their help I’d probably be spending closer to £100 a week.

We tend to eat out at least once a week too but me and my H take our lunch to work each day so we save not buying lunch and coffees out. Luckily we both work in boring places so there’s no exciting cafes nearby.

I try not to waste anything. For instance there was some rocket going off in the fridge and I’ve had some pine nuts sitting in the cupboard so I’ve just made some pesto which will do me three days at work for lunch. Next week I’ve frozen some sweet potato, spinach and chickpea curry which was just leftovers so I’ll take that with some rice.

I’ve noticed hardly anyone at work takes sandwiches anymore, they nearly all take leftovers or salads. Much healthier and less wasteful.

Oh and for cleaning products I buy a concentrated bottle of Flash then dilute it down. Lasts me 7-8 months and costs about £2.

I agree with User that £30 a week is not excessive for meat, the trouble is most people buy cheap intensively farmed meat that’s on offer at 3 for £10 etc, then complain when there’s a scandal like last year when the 2 sisters meat company were found to be repackaging out of date meat. We buy all our meat from one of 2 local butchers, all meat is traceable back to the farms, yes it costs more but we just eat slightly less and as others have suggested have the odd veggie tea.

my budget is £50 a week for 2 adults and a baby. I shop at aldi and get all my cleaning products there and also baby formula, nappies, wipes, toiletries etc. Usually spend about £10 on the weekends we have my partners 3 older children to stay