"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.

Use recipes that use the same ingredients, or buy ingredients in bulk and freeze leftover ingredients - it'll get cheaper as you build your base of frozen stuff.

Use supermarket recipes (those on supermarket sites), not fancy recipes. I have quite a lot of ingredients at home, and yet with these recipes, all the extra bits and pieces I have to buy just to improve the taste marginally cost so much that I might as well eat out.

I read the op as saying she wanted to spend £50 per week for lunch/breakfasts and dinners.

I think 50p a can of tuna /one can being enough for 4 at dinner is also a bit feeding an African village on a tin of chickpeas territory.

Perhaos Hello Fresh and ‘choose from a menu shopping lists’ are the way more people are learning to cook. It’s certainly expensive to buy the ingredients for each meal you’ve chosen, rather than to have a repertoire of meals that you regularly cook.

Dont most people buy X amount of meat per week and X amount of veg etc and then cook meals based on what they have?

I’d buy 1 of chicken breast, mince or fish per week which would make 6-9 portions of a meal. I’d buy a packet of bacon and perhaps 1 pack of processed meat like kievs or pies. We would eat some pasta meals (carbonara, tomato pasta sauce) and a baked potato meal with toppings. At least 2 meals would be veggie. We eat mostly the same meals on perhaos a roughly 2-3 weekly rotation.

We don’t expect new and exciting meals every day. We don’t expect to be adding cream or avocado or expensive cheese or other expensive ingredients to everyday meals, or having side-dishes or breads with them.

For standard weekly meals, I’d expect to be spending £1-1.50 per portion. This is decent quality meat and veg and freshly cooked batch meals like cottage pie, bolognaise, casseroles, stir fries etc. We aren’t eating salmon fillets costing £2 each or using £5 of ingredients to make a sauce for 1 meal or adding side orders of nice breads or dips for our weekday meals. We might have some of this at the weekend or as a treat, but for 3 of us, I don’t find it hard to feed us on average for £4-5.

Make big pots of lentil dal and season with the spices.
However, some lentils take hours of cooking time on the stove, so you have to weigh it up with electricity bills.

Other than the chicken they're basic pasta/rice dishes I really don't think it should be costing that much. I would personally just use asda's shopping list as a guide but pick out my own items, you'll get cheaper veggies etc than is on there, own brand items etc and that should save you a bit.

Aldi/lidl would be cheaper but I think you said there's none near you.

@Frequency

You dont need a yoghurt maker its an unneccesary expense, google making yoghurt in a flask. I add dried milk powder to make it extra thick and creamy!

I read the op as saying she wanted to spend £50 per week for lunch/breakfasts and dinners.

I was aiming for £50-70 a week for a full grocery shop, but it doesn't include breakfasts. We get free cereal from a relative who works for Weetabix. That's breakfast and the occasional crumpet I pick out when they're on offer.

Dog food is not included in that either. He has dietary issues and can't eat supermarket food. Cat food is included for now but at some point soon I will look into their food budget too and work out whether it would be cheaper to bulk buy sacks of food from the pet shop as I do for the dog instead of the supermarket biscuits and tins they get now.

Cleaning supplies are included for certain things (laundry, washing up liquid). Floor cleaner and general cleaning sprays I get from a local cleaning shop that stocks cheap, foreign industrial stuff.

Toiletries except sanpro are bought from salon wholesalers and are not included in the grocery budget.

I think you will struggle for that
For just me I spend £40-60 including cleaning stuff, bin bags, toilet rolls etc etc but not including laundry powder as i buy in bulk

How many people is that for? 3 or 4?

I'm using Cherrypick, shop smartly, but not without treats, and my entire weekly shop including breakfasts, lunch, dinner, household and toiletries, wine, treats etc comes in at around £100/w for 4 adults (and that includes new and exciting meals with cheese and cream and all the sides, breads, dips etc), so I do think it's doable, but you'll need to work hard at it. Your biggest barrier might be that your two daughters have different tastes and different approaches to cooking. As you build up a store cupboard of basic ingredients it will get cheaper (and don't forget you can freeze half used cartons of things like cream/pesto/coconut milk etc for using another time if only a little bit is needed in a recipe).

Tbh our budget is around £50 a week per person (adult).
The only thing that makes that amount go down is having a couple of vegetarian meals in the middle.

We batch cook, freeze all left overs etc… cook to a meal plan so there is very little waste of food.

Do you have any zero-waste shops around, @Frequency ? The type of place that you take jars or tupperware to, and fill these yourself?

My local zero-waste place actually costs less than supermarkets, particularly for herbs and spices, and for dried fruits (we go through a ton of sultanas!). Surprising that a small store can charge less than a huge supermarket chain - but they do. Worth checking out, especially since you need to build up a spice cupboard.

We go shopping every day, so I can choose meals around what we already have and just get the extras. We don't really have food waste.

I wouldn't let a child choose what you eat, but have the whole family eat the same meal.

We spend £500/month, and that's for two pescatarians, and I cook pretty much everything from scratch, no UPFs. We get a seasonal fruit and veg box delivered every week and four portions of fresh fish, and I work from there. We're not really trying to work to any budget, though, good food is a priority spend for us so I've always bought the best I can afford, would rather eat well than go on holiday.

It's for 3/4 people.

Three of us live here officially but my children have a habit of adopting other people's teenagers and bringing them home. Either there is a high level of child neglect in my area or my kids just attract neglected children. I can't remember a time when we haven't had someone's friend or boyfriend staying with us for one reason or another.

I buy enough to make meals for four as there are rarely less than four of us here. On the days we have leftovers they are frozen and used on the days we have more than four people.

So if you spend £5 a week on cleaning/cat/other (which feels low) that leaves you with £65 tops which is about £2.30 per person per day or £1.15 per person per meal.

id think you’d have to get serious about planning and batch cooking and bulking with lentils /swapping to frozen veg on that budget.

Agree.

Also, where the heck do you get chicken breast for £4 a kilo unless you're buying in bulk? I try to buy higher welfare, and it's a lot more than that. As is decent mince.

We might have more of a food budget. I've not even started my new job yet. Once I am living on my new wage, I'll have more of an idea of where we stand and if we need to cut back more or if we can afford to spend more on food.

Atm I'm in panic mode because my income has reduced by almost £10k p/a and I can't see how/where we can save £10k p/a without rehoming a teenager so I'm trying to cut back as much as possible.

My £50-70 a week budget is a budget I picked out of thin air because it seemed reasonable to me based on what we used to spend when I was on NMW.

If your main change is Hello Fresh to CherryPick, and you're already spending £30-40 on everything else, then a £50-70 food budget =£10-40 per week for 4 meals for 4 people via Cherrypick. £10 isn't really possible, but equally £40 would be ridiculously easy to do. My meals on CP tend to average out at approx £1-2 per person per portion - so 16 portions I'd expect to spend (with canny shopping and topping up an established store cupboard) about £25 on 4 meals for 4 people via CP, which would be saving you £25-£45 per week over Hello Fresh, without making any other changes to what you previously bought.

We did use to bulk buy some items, normally one big item a month eg I'd buy a giant pack of chicken from a restaurant wholesaler for £90 (approx) but it would last us 3/4 months. The next month I might go to the wholesalers with my shop-owning friend and buy a bulk pack of toilet rolls etc.

I do still have that option available. I was just hoping to not have to scrimp for every penny and carefully plan every meal like we used to since I'm not actually on NMW anymore. My wage has been reduced but not to the level it used to be, iyswim?

The best advice I was ever given was to divide the week up by "theme" , eg:

Sun -roast (in our house that is almost always chicken, but a baked ham is good when its on special offer)
Mon - leftovers from roast, usually with oven chips! sometimes made into a curry.
Tues - mince (veggie mince goes further and is cheaper)eg chilli/shepherds pie/meatballs
Wed- Pasta (tuna bake/pasta pesto/carbonara/etc)
Thurs - Veggie (ratatouille/tortilla/veg stir fry/nasi goreng/cheese and onion pie/potato or mushroom goulash )
Fri - "Joe's Caff" (eg sausage egg & chips/ pie and beans/burgers/fish and chips)
Sat - Supermarket Sweep (something straight off the shelf, eg pizza/ready meal/cheese&ham salad)

You can repeat this formula ad infinitum

Slightly off topic but anyone else who has chosen chicken thighs over breast now for years (tastier, more good stuff I think and cheaper) getting pissed off with the amount of excess skin, fat and general crap you need to cut off? I've found it makes no difference where I buy from o generally end up with weight wise at least one things worth of crap so have started buying breasts again as it feels like false economy.

Plus you really have to poke around for the hidden fat pockets (much of it is already hardened too, grim). Last week Aldi thighs had other bones stuck in.

Wondering if now is the time to invest in some good knives and learn to fillet a whole bird

@Frequency

If it helps (since I'm doing a CP shop right now), this is an example of how costs for me work.

New recipe on Cherrypick - Middle Eastern Style Nachos

When going into the recipe it suggests an eyewatering £3.58 per person.

I made the following changes:
Take off the fresh parsley, as I still have plenty left on my growing pot on the kitchen windowsill
Swap the 5% mince for 20% mince
Take off the lemon as I have bottled lemon juice in the fridge
Take off the pomegranate molasses as I already have it in the larder
Swap the feta cheese for salad cheese
Take of the tahini as I already have it in
I already have all of the extras suggested, so no need to add any (I use frozen taj garlic rather than fresh btw).

Takes me to £1.51 per serving (via Sainsburys online). I'm happy with that, plus I have 3/4 of the feta (salad) cheese left for another recipe or for a greek salad lunch. And it's a new, interesting recipe to try.

Of course, the first time I bought pomegranate molasses etc would have been an expense, but that was some time ago now, and the actual cost per serving of most of these things is pretty tiny - it's the initial outlay that costs.

So my instinct is that it's very doable, but you need to build up your store cupboard and make sensible swaps.

Another one - Chicken Rezala

Starts off suggesting it's £2.79 per serving.

I take off cream (I have some frozen)
It suggests 2 x 410g packets of diced chicken at a total cost of £7.70 or £9.39/kg. I have breasts in the freezer from a large pack (which is currently £5.31/kg), so I remove that.
I remove the onion as I have diced onion in the freezer
I have all the extra herbs and spices already in the cupboard

Brings this down to £0.59 per person. Even if I add the chicken costs back in, it's going to be less than £1 per person.

the African village thing is a bit toe curling.

The initial outlay for a while might be higher but as you build up your store cupboard staples it will improve a lot. I can look up a lengthy list of herbs and spices for a curry and have all of it bar the fresh coriander now, whereas when I started to cook properly, my list was longer. Buying from the Asian shop was a huge saving but it's far away from home. So I've worked out a system where once a month when I'm near one for work, I'm already armed with the list in my phone to get what I need on the way home. I've a lists app where I've each of my shops, plus all my recipes are in a recipe app so I only buy the quantities I need.

A large whole chicken will do a roast chicken dinner, a curry and a spicy noodle broth (and scraps for the cats) for three of us, so it works out better value for me to spend the extra couple of euro for the large or extra large chicken. So meal planning in this way where you can do a roast chicken on Sunday, curry on Wed, and a soup for lunches is useful. I do a mince-a-thon every couple of weeks. One week I bulk cook a bolognese/ Lasagne/ Shepherds Pie/ Chilli, serve up one dinner's worth and freeze the rest. After a while you aren't buying 7 dinners a week, maybe 4 or 5 or even less depending on how much batches you can stash.

Other things that are handy are freezing parmesan and pecorino cheese and pancetta and you've got a carbonara freezer meal or getting cheap seafood mix from Lidl, and sticking it in the freezer for an emergency seafood chowder. Things like making your own curry paste and freezing in portions can mean you are just using a frozen cube of paste, meat veg and a tin of coconut milk.

I'm the only one at the moment who brings a lunch as DS gets school dinners so I go veggie or vegan for my own lunch if I've not got leftovers - lentil pie, homemade soups, (transported frozen and defrosted at work) and sandwiches. Tuna pasta salad with red onion, corn, peppers cherry tomatoes and whatever else needs using up.

Lidl is great for cheeses and meats though and their big toilet paper with 24 rolls lasts for ages and is a good quality one. I find that Lidl veg goes off quicker than expected though. I meal plan on a Thursday for the following Sat-Sun, and on Friday I go to a veg market a slight detour on my way home, so I buy most stuff loose and only in the quantities I need for the week as per my list.

Other economies is buying shampoo, shower gel and conditioner in bulk and getting refillable dispensers. I switched from branded laundry liquid to a lidl liquid, but if you preferred, look for that in bulk as well it might work out cheaper.

And I've started to go retro to economise further, my nan would be proud! A more modest serving of a roast dinner but doing an apple or rhubarb crumble with custard afterwards, or even tinned fruit and custard. Similarly I buy sourdough or soda bread over sliced pan or rolls as they last a few days longer, and when they are nearing their demise, I blitz for breadcrumbs for stuffing or just freeze the sliced sourdough for garlic bread.

Big Freezer. I buy the expensive stuff when on offer, meat, fish etc. My freezer is full of mainly half price beef, lamb, pork and fish. Don't fill the freezer with stuff at regular price or cheap stuff like peas.