"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.

@Frequency

Right, I've finished my meal plan and my CherryPick shop for four adults,7 evening meals:

Chicken in Black Bean with Peppers
Chicken Rezala
Creamy Sausage and Cannellini Bean One Pot
Middle Eastern Style Nachos
Cheesy Brocolli Pasta Bake
Pork and Apple Meatballs with Onion Gravy
Baked Feta Pasta

has come in at a total of £43.57 via Sainsbury's online shopping.

Obviously I now have to add all my day to day shopping - bread/milk/fruit/yoghurt/lunch stuff/toiletries/household/wine etc - we'll probably end up at around £100 total.

But if you compare £43.57 for 7 meals compared to your Hello Fresh £50-70 for 4 meals, there's a big saving to be made once you've built up your store cupboard.

I am sorry, I've only read your posts so you might have had this point made. But In my experience, the cost of specific dinners is a relatively small part of the overall shop. It's the extras, which vary every week, from dog food to cleaning materials to mayonnaise to spices etc. Plus lunches and breakfasts and snacks. Over time, you can get that down as you learn to be a bit more careful and shop for them less often.

For a family of 4, my weekly shop is around £175-£200. But that's for everything except the pet food. Breakfast, lunch, dinner. Wine and soft drinks (I'm a bit too generous on those) Cleaning materials. Random things we just seem to need (tin foil, toilet paper, spices). Snacks/fruit. This week I had to buy a couple of new Tupperwares (what the F happens to the buggers?).

I estimate that the ingredients I buy for each meal work out to between £5-10 per dinner for all of us. ie it's a relatively small amount of the total. Eg I'm doing a version of arribiata with aubergine and chorizo and I think the total cost for 3 of us (DD won't eat that) will be about £6.50. It would be lots cheaper if I ditched the chorizo.

Chicken thighs are much nicer anyway I think.

I’ve always cooked from scratch and it’s much cheater, and We have good nutritious meals. Once your cupboards are full of the basics :- spices, garlic, rice, pasta etc the costs will come right down.

I often use a bit less meat than recipes suggest and usually up the veggies a bit. Shopping is expensive now.

You're doing it the wrong way round. You need to see what's in season or on special offer, buy those things and then look for a recipe to fit. When mushrooms are cheap, make mushroom stroganoff or a fabulous mushroom pasta. Cherrypicker is a venture with Sainsburys. They're going to encourage you to spend more on pancetta and ingredients you don't really need — of course they are! Waitrose were the first in this field. They'd suggest a quick and easy recipe that involved spending £15 on Waitrose ingredients. It's a racket.

The secret is to take a couple of the things you list in your OP, OP, but intersperse them with cheaper options: jacket potatoes with tuna and sweetcorn (loads of sweetcorn to pad out the tuna) or cheese or beans with home-made coleslaw. Burritos when peppers are cheap: make enough of the filling for two or three meals, freeze for later use to speed things up. I make a great pan of veggie stew: chopped root veg, herby tomato sauce with some smoked paprika, with butter beans or chickpeas thrown in, topped with cheesy dumplings. Cherrypicker is a venture with Sainsburys. They're going to encourage you to spend more, of course they are!

Cherry pick isn't affliated with Sainsburys. You can shop at Sainsburys, Asda or Tesco using the app.

That said, I do think they have associations with different brands, but you can just swap those out (Malden sea salt has suddenly popped up as suggested as a possible (opt in) extra on every recipe for example - I can only assume they're receiving something for that).

Eggs. I don't see many of them. They are nutritious and relatively cheap comparing with meat. Lentil, beans, rice there is plenty of stuff that can easily make you drop more than a tenner form that shopping.
One big cauliflower will feed four decent portions cooked with cheese and white sauce.
Sausages and mash. (Two per person and a Yorkshire pudding with veggies on the side).
We are just two in my house but I batch cook the long time recipes and I cook easy (less that 40 min ones daily)

Incase anyone else hasn't said it, you really should give a dog chicken bones. They can splinter.

Shouldn't*

I discovered frozen chunks of fish in Waitrose ( a mix of salmon and white fish). A lot cheaper than fresh, and you can turn it into tasty fish cakes with mashed potato, some chopped onion and parsley if you have it. Dip into flour, beaten egg and breadcrumbs before frying, or just fry as is.

I think you need to intersperse cheap meals with expensive ones and eat the same thing 2 nights running. Also freeze/refrigerate leftovers for lunch. Buy rice/pasta in bulk. Frozen veggies as well as fresh.

We could do better here, but our dinners look a bit like this on the average week (3 people). We usually have some leftovers for lunch/to freeze.

• Chilli in bulk and rice - mince 1kg (£5), two peppers (£1.20), chopped tomatoes (2 tins, £1) and kidney beans (2 tins, £1). Spices and rice from cupboard. Broccoli (45p). Around £8-9 in total and we'd usually freeze a few portions.
• Leftover chilli in jacket potatoes (70p) with salad (£2-2.50, usually some ingredients left over) and grated cheese (£1-2). Around £4-5.
• Toad in the hole (£2-3 for the sausages, and milk, eggs and flour), with frozen veggies. Usually a few sausages left over for lunch.
• Omelettes - ham, eggs, leftover veg.
• Fish pie (£4 for fish pie mix, big bag of potatoes £1.90, milk, butter, carrots, grated cheese and store cupboard stuff).
• Large roast chicken (around £7, usually some left over), roast potatoes, any veg kicking around the fridge.
• Chicken and mushroom risotto using chicken leftovers.

I agree with eggs - they are our go to for inexpensive protein here.

@Stopsnowing , go to the World foods aisle in a large supermarket. Lentils are about £4 for 2Kg.

@Frequency , your recipes don't seem to share many ingredients. I overstocked on the Easter 15p veg so I'm trying to be inventive with carrots, cabbage and potato this week.

Another good one for using stuff up is egg fried rice to add bits of veg/meat to

I shop at Aldi for my main shop so I’d definitely look at that especially when stocking up on spices, etc for now.

stuff we’ve had this week.

jacket potatoes

I made a vegetarian bolognaise by food processing a punnet of mushrooms, some walnuts and a red onion, added tin or tomatoes and spices. Tastes like meat to me and while walnuts aren’t the cheapest (I buy a massive bag from Aldi which lasts a few times) it’s still cheaper than meat.

i often use quorn frozen pieces rather than chicken, it’s cheaper. So I did a stir fry with quorn, pack choi, eggs, noodles. Made a sauce from soy sauce, rice vinegar, sesame oil and sugar. You could use chicken instead, or different veg.

eggs on toast.

frozen fish from Aldi, I make my own oven chips in the air fryer. Just chop potatoes into chips, spray with fry light and add paprika, salt, pepper and air fry. Cheaper than oven chips. Or you could do pork chops if not keen on fish.

quinoa is cheap and added to stuff like chopped up peppers and cucumber makes a nice salad which is quite filling. I make a dressing with a bit of olive oil and lemon juice.

I cook from scratch and always have. We eat lentils at least once a week, eg lentil and lamb hotpot made with lamb left over from roast, lentil and veg casserole, veggie chilli etc.
I developed my love of pulses as a penniless undergraduate. They are cheap, tasty and good for you.

Also learn when the supermarkets sell off their food and stock up, you can save loads that way 😀

OP, 3 out of 5 of those meals use chicken? That's not a cheap source of protein. And why are you having curry twice in one week?

Much cheaper to buy a whole chicken and use it for 2 meals, rather than thighs or breasts. You could use Tofu for one of the other meals - very cheap. Or beans, lentils or chickpeas. Not every meal has to have animal protein in.

I make all my meals and manage to keep budget light most weeks.
However if you are starting out it can expensive.
The initial outlay for things like spices, nutritional yeast, 1kg bags of walnuts, cashews etc can add up but generally speaking, once bought you are not buying them every week so your bill won't be so bad.
I buy chick peas, lentils, kidney, turtle, and navy beans dry to get more for money. I make my own flat breads, and pittas in no team for pennies. I srain natural yogurt overnight to make a style of cream cheese which is used for savoury and sweet dishes.
Use budget saving pages in tick tok, insta or YouTube for budget friendly ideas ot family meals.

Too much meat! Meat is expensive (especially fancy stuff like pancetta). We tend to stick to a pattern of two meat meals, two fish meals (one of which is usually tinned tuna!) and the rest veggie. Much more affordable that way!

I looked at cherry pick, it's very very expensive because Sainsbury's is £££ 98p for the chopped tomatoes they suggest? I've taken the list to Lidl and it reduced from £78 to £45!

It should be cheaper next week as you’ll have leftover ingredients to use up.

We shop in Lidl for two adults and spend £40-£70 per week, that includes breakfast and lunch plus general household bits like tissues, dish clothes, etc. We eat pretty well - snacks/treats, some higher quality products, etc.

The cheaper weeks are when we have stuff to use up, the more expensive are when we’ve got fewer ingredients in.

I buy meat in the reduced section and freeze it then meal plan with that next week. I also plan based on what the special buys are e.g. we’re eating more potatoes this week because they were 15p last week.

You can shop at Sainsburys, Asda or Tesco via CherryPick. You can also swap out any item for a different brand (e.g value tinned toms rather than premium brand) if you like.

But I'm getting 7 good, interesting, healthy and varied evening meals for 4 adults for £43 - is that really very, very expensive? I don't think so! About £1.50 per adult portion. I spend approx £100 a week all in on groceries (including all meals, toiletries, household and treats) for a family of 4 adults - I thought was on the lower end of a normal weekly grocery spend? Yes, of course we could live on jacket potatoes, beans on toast and lentil dhal for less, but that's not how we choose to eat.

We have around two veggie meals a week, something like a lentil & potato curry, or lentil Dahl. Or just a stir fry or rice dish without meat. That definitely lowers the cosy.

Bulk out things like lasagna, pastas etc with lots of veg. Frozen peas, Sweetcorn in lasagna and carrots which are dirt cheap to buy fresh.

Things like chopped tomatoes, stock cubes, rice buy the value range. Most others buy supermarket brand. It's mainly Pepsi, tea, coffee where we buy a proper brand.

I bulk buy when things are on special. Sometimes my shop is a bizarre collection of multiples of what ever is on offer. But then I put it all in the pantry and it sort of evens out.