"Normal" people who cook from scratch everyday - tell me this gets cheaper

[Frequency]

By normal, I mean excluding those who can feed a small African village with one can of chickpeas, an egg, and a tomato. Normal people, who eat normal portions of normal foods.

We've canceled Hello Fresh to save money, so we've started meal planning with a recipe-building app instead, otherwise, we just cycle through the same 5/6 meals all the time.

One child is away this week. The remaining child has picked;

Cheesy broccoli pasta bake, Piri piri chicken wrap “fakeaway”, easy creamy chicken curry, penne arrabbiata with roasted peppers and pancetta, easy chicken jalfrezi curry.

£75 fecking quid.

It's not even a full shop. I'm not eating breakfast or lunch coz the price now just for evening meals is way too much. I've added a couple of yoghurts and crappy pizzas for the kids lunches and breakfasts and we already have cereal in.

I bought cat litter and cat food earlier or that would have been added too.

Admittedly, we had to buy a lot of spices because Hello Fresh used to send them in handy little packets and DD has used most of the ones we did have jazzing up her instant noodles. But, the spices only added around £10ish. That's still £65 without breakfasts or lunches.

Obviously, next week we won't need as many spices and should have some butter and oil left but still...

If this is the best we can do I am going to have to consider rehoming a child.

If you've got a freezer, buy the biggest packs of meat and split them into useful- size units and then freeze. That saves a bit.

We've also changed the dogs to dry from raw so we have their freezer empty atm as well as our small fridge freezer.

Are places like Muscle Food any good for bulk buying or am I best sticking to supermarkets?

I did buy extra chicken this week because it was on a 2 for offer so can freeze one pack for next week.

So a family of four? I think you're lucky to get a full shop for under 100 these days.

Why is the child picking? Have at least a few days where you say what it is and it's cheap.

Am assuming it's the chicken that's pushing it up as well?

Crazy isn't it? It will still be cheaper than Hello Fresh in the long run.. and better for you. You might even have some leftovers at least one of you can have for lunch the next day.

I find it difficult to get the food shop below £100 a week. I know I could do it if, say, I took £50 cash and that's all I had, but it would mean a lot of rice and beans.

If you substitute one of those meals for something like omelette and oven chips, and swap a meat curry for a veggie one, you could save a bit without feeling as if you were scrimping..

We do homemade soup and toasties on a Monday, you could do jacket spuds one day, the kids shouldn't be driving this all the time

I swapped chicken breast for boneless thigh and cut the portions down. We do have some chickpeas in I can add to the chicken dishes to replace the missing chicken with.

That works out at £5 per person a meal or £15 a meal for 3. I think that is a lot!
did you have to buy the rice and pasta too? Plus the slices etc it soon adds up.
But as you say next week you will have the spices do that cuts it down a bit.
Will there be any leftover? If so freeze it in portions and when you have 3 or 4 portions defrost and everyone can have a leftover dinner.
As pp suggested, cook extra and freeze for another night.
Did you buy chicken breasts? They’re more expensive than thigh meat, and if you buy thighs that you skin and bone yourself they work out much cheaper.

I buy 10 chicken fillets when they are on offer and split into 5 X bags of 2.

Did you buy chicken breasts? They’re more expensive than thigh meat, and if you buy thighs that you skin and bone yourself they work out much cheaper.

That's a good idea and the bone and skin could top up the dog's food for a couple of meals.

The "child" is 16 and does the cooking that's why she picked it. When the other "child" is back home we will share the cooking and pick between us. I will encourage less chicken, and more lentils.

Is that Cherrypick you’re using (the recipes sound familiar)? I love it and never spend anywhere near that much on the basic recipes (I do when I add way more to the order). However I have loads of spices (my husband would say too many!) etc. I think it had filters for cheaper options, and you could also adjust the portion size - you may find that you have plenty of leftovers depending on the age of your kids.

I think after a few weeks building up spices, oil etc you’ll find it will be cheaper, and can also choose cheaper options.

The two pasta dishes should be cheap.
What's involved in the sauces (piri piri, creamy, curry) - buying them in jars or making your own?

I suppose I'd see all those meals as quite 'special' with a lot of protein sources and extras in each dish.

A typical week for us does include a fair bit of meals like jacket potatoes with tuna, macaroni cheese, pasta with tomato sauce, veggie sausages and mash, scrambled eggs on toast. We are pescatarian which helps a lot.

I find it better to use old fashioned cookery books. They just don't add fourteen extra ingredients for the sake of it. I have my grandmother's 1960 Good Housekeeping, and the Times Cookery Book by Katie Stewart. They all contain plenty of decent veggie options that are simple to make. (I have an irrational dislike of Rose Elliot recipes). Alternatively the BBC Good Food recipes tend to be well tested and can be simple.

What app are you using?

We alternate "expensive" meals like chicken with soups, omelettes, veggie bakes etc.

But batch cooking is your friend. Buying ingredients for 7 different dinners a week is pricy.

I think there are several ways you can help resolve this somewhat however feeding 4 is never going to be cheap!

are you shopping at Aldi/Lidl, their prices are much lower.

jacket potato with cheese/beans/tuna sweetcorn mayo and salad is a legitimate and cheap meal

wait until something like a whole side of salmon is on offer and buy it and portion it up yourself (much cheaper)/ same re chicken breast, wait until a good offer comes up and bulk buy. Same with every other thing, bread etc! Buy it on yellow sticker and freeze.

if you aren’t eating 2 meals a day due to food costs you can’t let your child decide. Homemade soup (veg) with some of the bread previously bought on yellow label is filling and healthy and cheap but not a something they would necessarily chose.

Fair enough re the cooking, but I guess they do need to realise that everything is just more expensive.

It’s because you’re having amazing meals every night. We have fish, veg and rice one night, then grilled meat, veg and new potatoes the next night, then a different grilled meat plus veg and pasta the next night etc. We save the tasty, ingredient heavy meals for the weekend (stir fry/curry/lasagne).

Yes, it is or as we call it "Hello Fresh but Asda"

We've just discovered it.

Came to suggest the exact same thing. You will save a small fortune and our dog loves the bones so saves us buying them too.

£15 per meal sounds like quite a lot! I think you have to make sure you are using everything up properly to be more efficient.

So if you use half a bag of pasta on a pasta bake, use the other half later in the week.

If you buy a block of cheese for one recipe, make sure you use it up for lunch and breakfasts like cheese on toast or cheese omelette or something. Buy a large bag of wonky peppers and plan to use them in various meals all week.

Spices won't be a weekly outgoing once you have a small stash.

I'd be curious to see the cost breakdown you have so far.

Cooking from scratch isn't necessarily cheaper when you start as you have to build up your basic items.

For example I rarely spend more then £550 per month for 3 adults plus 2 upper teens so 5 adults. My normal weekly shop is around £80. But have a good pantry, fridge & freezer so I'm really buying fresh produce, bread, milk weekly plus anything I need to fill in holes in our weekly menu. Then every 3 month I buy meat for freezer. But over the year it works out around £550 per month

This is for probably 97% of all our meals as eldest DD buys lunch at Uni maybe 2 times a week.

I usually plan meals around what on offer and freeze leftovers even if it’s one portion. 3 single portions will make a meal for all 3 of us.

I also buy a lot of frozen vegetables and freeze sauces, leftovers of roast chicken and sliced onion. All of these come very handy later.
I tend to buy just main spices I use.

My cooking probably less adventurous than Hello fresh but still has a lot of variety.

Recipes often require lots of things you don't have, some of them quite expensive! I mostly don't cook from recipes, I just make quite simple, familiar meals. Pasta with homemade tomato sauce, stir fries, ramen, quiche, sausages and jacket potatoes etc. Recipes are mostly for weekends and holidays when we have the time for more interesting cooking.

Switch at least one of the chicken currys with paneer curry, a much cheaper form of protein. You can also use tofu instead of chicken. Maybe a few meals that are more basic will reduce your costs e.g jacket potatoes or sausages & mash with peas/gravy. Or we find a bag of pasta with pesto, add some peas from the freezer and if needed a spoonful of cream cheese to make the pesto creamy a greatly satisfying meal but also cheap.