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

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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.

Usually, she'd just eat frozen pizza or pot noodles but I've told them I am not buying those anymore as we all need to eat the same evening meals to save money,

It's also very unhealthy

I know you're focused on cost, but your DD needs a bit of education about food and what's healthy and what isn't.

Eating crap all week - and that's what pot noodles and frozen pizza are- is not a good idea.

I agree with the person that said old fashioned recipe books are much better. Modern recipes often have loads of ingredients and it can get pricey. Old fashioned recipes use far fewer ingredients.
Mince based meals are cheaper, spaghetti bolognaise, and chilli con carne.

I have an irrational dislike of Rose Elliot recipes

As a long-time veggie, I hear you! I have her big doorstep book. There's some decent stuff in there, but some pretty awful too. How many times have I read her comment "Kids will love this", and looked down the list of ingredients, and thought, I don't think so! 😃

You we’re aiming for £50 per week for for people ? Thats £12.50 per person per week. That’s seems impossibly low to me especially if dog food/cat litter/cleaning products come out of that. maybe if you bulk bought lentils and ate only frozen veg and did lots of other tricks it could be doable but not if you want to eat meat 5 dinners a week.

However I think you’ll get more out of that £75 shop than you initially thought, it sounds like you’ll have leftovers from the meals themselves as well as being able to reuse the spices etc.

I'll as usual get flamed for this...
We are simple country folk. 😂. We shoot and know lots of folks who do, and tbh a huge amount of our food is pheasant, partridge, duck, pigeon, venison, rabbit etc. it is very rare I pay for meat - through the season I can take home as much as I want and the freezers are busting. Obviously at the moment shooting season is over until winter, but pigeon/rabbit/venison is still in season.

There is a brilliant FB page called giving up the game. It links people after meat with people who have it and a lot of the time it is incredible cheap. If you are willing to learn to pluck/skin and sort it yourself you have an absolute bounty of free range, local, healthy meat near you that has never seen the inside of a factory.

I use Gousto x4 meals a week for £50 roughly. I’m not sure if that’s ‘cheap’ but the portions are decent, the food is varied and it means we’re eating from scratch most nights (I find Gousto better than HF for this - plus the meat is nicer and the meals have more veg in). We then have roughly one cheap dinner (baked potatoes/tomato-based pasta/egg on toast) and a roast or something similar on a Sunday. Saturday is pizza and usually frozen with some sides! We rarely eat takeaways although we’re having Chinese tonight (Gousto main and a few sides I’ve added). I’m not sure I could feed all four of us for much less than £200 a week without raising the inconvenience of meal planning more carefully. I think food is hugely expensive when you have children - we buy way more fruit & snacks than we would if it were just the two of us!

If your teen is being made to cook I think really simple and tasty meals will work great.

Disagree with suggestions to find an Asian store and buy gigantic everything spices - if you don’t plan to eat nothing but Asian, and your teen is not a master chef!

The little spices are good for having on hand and gradually working out what you use. Unless you’re literally churning out enormous amounts of the same recipe I don’t see why you would need, say, a whole can of turmeric vs a little spice jar. You’ll just end up spending tons of money on stuff you won’t use up! I imagine you will be wanting a variety of cuisines with various herbs and spices so a mix of things is better. For a teen I’d actually suggest oregano and garlic powder and smoked paprika - it can go on everything, makes everything taste delicious, cheap and no down time, can go on a sautéed dish or in a baked dish.

My OH painstakingly shops around. Sometimes he'll go to 3 or more shops to get everything we need for the best prices. We've stopped doing a one stop/large supermarket shop and instead now go to Lidl, home bargains, Poundland etc first and finish up in a big supermarket for anything which hasn't been available elsewhere. Takes blooming forever but the kids like the small trolleys at Lidl so that's something.

We also only eat meat for one batch meal a week, fish for another sometimes but mostly veggie. This has kept us to less than £100p/w mostly, but when there are weeks where we need to replace more of the staples it's never less than 3 digits.

Pre-pandemic we used to go to the butchers/bakers/greengrocers which was very luxurious. Can't imagine having the funds to do that these days. And reading today about the additional food charges coming now the Brexit grace period is drawing to a close. Doesn't feel like it's going to get better anytime soon.

https://www.itv.com/thismorning/articles/feed-your-family-for-five-pounds-a-day-phil-vickery

https://savings4savvymums.co.uk/feeding-family-four-2-50-day/

https://www.jamieoliver.com/features/budget-friendly-dinner-ideas/

The only way I can do it affordably is because we're vegan. Not only are vegies/pulses much cheaper than meat, but a lot of the extras I'd have once bought, snacks, cake etc aren't vegan and I dislike the substitutes. On the plus side I've never been healthier or slimmer.

and another - https://www.bbc.co.uk/food/articles/cheap_family_dinners

Herb and spices in a supermarket are incredibly expensive! £1-2 for a tiny jar of 20-50g. You get 250g for the same price in a wholesaler and I didn't suggest buying buckets of each. Literally a bag like a bag of crisps and then put it in a coffee jar. But £20 could get you a great selection that would last months and be used for ALL cuisine types . You can make Italian, French, Indian and all sorts of stuff with what I listed. You clearly have very little knowledge about cooking if you suggest people pay eye watering amounts for tiny jars of herbs 😂

Apologies as this has probably been said already, but reducing your meat will make a huge difference. Meat is pricy! We eat meat perhaps once a week and spend about £50 a week for two adults and a little one- up to £80 if we need more expensive bits all at once like cat food, olive oil, toilet roll or washing powder etc. Lentils and potatoes are your friends! When you do buy chicken, buying a humongous value pack and then freezing extra meals often works out cheaper. If you have a pressure cooker, buying beans and pulses dried is cheaper than tins and it is dead quick and easy to prep them for a meal. Its expensive to start cooking from scratch because you need to build up your staples, but it will get much cheaper once you build up your cupboard stores 😊 some of my fave cheap meals are a big bean chilli (I make a huge portion and freeze leftovers), daal with whatever veg I have in, pasta bake, jacket potatoes, veggie curry

The studies into the health benefits of garlic were conducted with garlic powder to ensure consistency.
so it’s still nutritionally advantageous

We are a need lots of protein household due to endurance athlete training going on. So our food bill could be horrendous too!
I see you can't get to Aldi or Lidl yet :-( keep taking your driving lessons! Being able to buy here and home bargains will make a real difference.
You asked about muscle foods. I'd get your meat and fish here, it's cheaper than supermarkets (although if Aldi have the 2kg trays of chicken breasts then they're very similar pricing) and we've found the quality is better. You'll need to weigh chicken breasts. Typically they're well over 200g each and probably you only need 125g or 150g per person. We bulk out with veg or an extra tin of chopped tomatoes.
Now you've got the dog's freezer, cook double of everything and freeze half too, that way you're not spending half your life cooking. You can also get the bigger packs from muscle foods and take advantage of their offers which should make things cheaper again for you.

I used to live with someone who'd buy a whole chicken, skin it, roast it with garlic & lemon and then we'd pick the leftovers off it and make chicken noodle soup the next night. We'd get several meals out of that and it's cheaper than buying the skinned, boned cuts.

We also bought cheap white fish from the supermarket, tilapia or similar. Once someone asked us "oh does your cat like that too?" and we said "we don't have a cat, we eat it ourselves". And you can use it in any kind of pasta dish, a tomato one or a creamy one.

You can absolutely eat meat every day a week if you spend £50 just for dinners.
It's £7 per dinner.
Pack of 500g mince is £2.5.
Small chicken is £3.5.
Aldi 750g gammon joint is £4.
Chicken breast are £4 per kg.
Tuna is 50p per can.

Think from the above you can get very reasonable amount of meat for each dinner. Also, you can do variety of meals from that list.

We do "soup and sarnie" nights quite often as well. It's cheap and often uses stuff you'd have in anyway.

We also do "things on toast" nights as well, which are very cheap.

And don't let your child pick. Obviously they're going to pick the "fancy stuff", which is always the most expensive. If I let my daughter pick, we'd exist on a diet of turkey unicorns and potato waffles! Fine sometimes, but not every night.

We also bought cheap white fish from the supermarket, tilapia or similar. Once someone asked us "oh does your cat like that too?" and we said "we don't have a cat, we eat it ourselves". And you can use it in any kind of pasta dish, a tomato one or a creamy one.

I buy that. It mainly gets used in fish curries and paellas. Sometimes fishcakes.

I don't decide on meals and then buy the ingredients, I buy whatever's on special offer/reduced price and then create the meals from there. It works out a lot cheaper. Also as regards spices, I buy the big bags from a local shop, which specialises in Eastern ingredients, the small jars are extortionate!

Beans, lentils, pulses, chickpeas are average in protein, make you feel full and are good subs for meat.

What I do now is buy less meat and add in the above to round it out. You still get some meaty flavour but not using as much and we don’t notice it missing too much.

Cheaper to buy a large chicken, roast it and save excess for one or two more meals. Plus tasty stock/gravy for other meals can be frozen.

Tins of sardines are 80p from M&S still! DH loves them. Probably cheapest healthiest protein out there.

Quinoa has all the amino acids and tofu ane eggs can also work.

I eat porridge every morning which works out pretty cheap compared to expensive cereals. I do like cinnamon on it (good for blood sugar).

Then veg from cheapest place you can get it.

My cheap cook from scratch go tos are spag bol (use tinned tomatoes not dolmio), slow cooker beef stew with filo pastry (much nicer than an overpriced steak pie), slow cooker turkey chilli (a 500g pack of turkey mince in this serves six because it is bulked out with lentils). Buy large packs of pasta, rice etc. make your own tomato pasta sauce but double up and freeze. Use leftover ham and have a 'cold meat ' tea with chips, boiled egg and beans. Have a couple of freezer tea nights to reduce costs. Buy a roast chicken and use leftovers in a risotto the next night. Probably don't let the kids choose.

DD2 won't usually be doing the cooking. It is normally myself and DD1. Our first budget shop fell on an unfortunate week with DD1 being away and me picking up last-minute shifts at my friend's shop.

DD1 has her own issues with cooking and following recipes due to autism. She can look in the fridge and whip up an amazing meal with leftover veg and cheeses but if she is following a recipe it has to be exact. She can omit something from the recipe if it's something she doesn't like or halve something if it's a spice she thinks will make something less hot but she cannot substitute. Her brain doesn't allow it. She had a panic attack in the kitchen last week because the recipe called for red wine vinegar and she could only find cider vinegar or regular vinegar.

I think what might work better is if I do most/all of the cooking and build up a few cheap staples they both like and then create PDFs of the recipes for them to use on nights I'm not cooking. I've copied down a few of the ones linked to on a note app and will add them into our meal plans over the next few weeks until we have enough cheap meals we all enjoy to have 3-4 budget meals a week and we can use Cherry Pick for the other meals.