"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.

We shop at Lidl mainly because we spend over £250 monthly ( family of up to 6) If you download the App you get 10% of in a month in the final shop. The herbs & spices are cheap there too. We buy a lot of chicken thighs with the bone in or chicken wings for soup or spicy wings. Mince for pies/pasta we add a lot of veggies/ lentils to bulk it out or tins of beans for chilli. I always buy the fruit/ vegetables in season as they generally taste better. Also i hate cheap pasta & rice, so we buy the large bags of basmati & the better pasta. My family like lentil curry or dahl with eggs. I add a lot of butter beans/ chick peas to tray bakes. And Ottolenghis pasta all norma & confit tandoori chickpeas are on regular rotation here.
Sainsbury's also have a reward scheme if you fill up with petrol there. There's regularly discounts on food monthly.
If your teenagers are planning on going to university teach them how to cook economically before they go, as its such a useful life skill.
I follow cooks on Instagram & they often post recipes and are worth following.
Melissa Helmsley is probably the queen of being able to cobble a recipe from the odd assortments of food in my fridge. Also Ottolenghi ( on you tube too) & the Guardian feast is brilliant.

Is it just me who seems to save money by using boxes like Hello Fresh? I hardly ever go to the supermarket, aside from the box I just eat cereals, eggs, bread, soup and fruit. I get 4 meals per week.

I agree. Hello Fresh seems remarkably cheap to me. I looked at their website and they charge £68 for a box containing five meals for four people, which is £3.40 for a single meal. I really think it would be difficult to cook your own meals for less than that, and you won't end up with any food waste either.

I think meal planning this way is always going to be expensive because you're having to buy loads of specific ingredients for the different meals that might not all get used up. The way to eat cheap is to buy whatever is seasonal/on offer and find a way to use it up. And to find some hacks that you can use on repeat. You can make yogurt by just heating up milk and adding a spoonful of yoghurt - I make 4 litres at a time and add fruit jam made by mixing packets of frozen fruit with chia seeds (I make the jam while the milk is heating). Soda bread is very easy, quick and versatile to make, I do two loaves on a Sunday morning. Local market is cheaper for greater quantities of fruit and veg than the supermarket. A veg box delivered might be an idea. But this does require you to be able to think on your feet and have a decent cooking repetoire to draw on. But you could have certain staple recipes that can be adapted to different seasonal produce - eg make a big pot of soup or veg stew each week but change the type from week to week. A pasta dish each week but always a different style - broccoli and blue cheese, chorizo and tomato, goat's cheese and sundried tomatoes, etc. Chorizo is a great ingredient for adding flavour, lasts for ages and I can get 2 dinners for 4 out of one sausage (it's mainly a seasoning). Get a dozen good eggs every week as they're so versatile. Things are just very expensive now in the supermarket there's no getting round it

Yes no waste and also no over-eating. My DH is 6’2 and would otherwise eat huge portions but he’s satisfied on the portions and has lost weight so he’s super pleased.

We cycle through all of the different box providers and always have some kind of discount. I usually pay the extra for one or 2 ‘premium’ meals and spend from £30-£50pw for 4 meals for 2. Then we maybe spend £60-£100 on one supermarket shop per month with top ups of milk, bread and eggs only.

We aren’t really budgeting our food though, so appreciate it isn’t for everyone, but I do hate leaving the supermarket with barely anything and £100 lighter!

£160 for us per week. 2 adults, 1 teenage daughter. No pets. This includes cleaning stuff, wine and toiletries.

Are you using Aldi/Lidl? The price difference saves us about 1/3 compared to other supermarkets.

@suki1964 , we eat with our eyes as well as our mouths, and some dishes just don't cut it.
I eat my dinner at lunchtime and a jacket potato or a sandwich doesn't register as a meal for me.

OP, those meals sound delicious, sophisticated, cosmopolitan etc, but we have frequent filled baked potatoes and salads, pesto and pasta, spag carbonara or bolognese, omelettes with various fillings and home-made soup with cheeses and crusty bread etc most of the time.

We're not trying to be self-denying - we enjoy these simple, nutritious and inexpensive meals. Are we doing something wrong?

@KirstenBlest

they are meals though

what constitutes a meal to you?

I think, if you're economising, you need to stop thinking 'what would I most like to eat for dinner every day' and instead plan a week's meals within a set budget. A lot of things I eat go to a second day, like a big stew that the second day gets a tin of beans put in to make it go further, so that day's cost is 65p. Or it gets turned into a pasta sauce.

How is that £75?

We spend about £100 a week, I get a free lunch at school and we pay for DS's school lunch. DH works from home and has a variation on a cheese sandwich every day.

Generally we have:
Chicken breast
chilli/bolognese/meatballs
pasta
joint/steak
paneer/halloumi
Sausage
A new recipe

DH will only eat chicken breast, he can't tolerate bones or brown meat.

I make double in the slow cooker so there's a 'free' meal for a couple of weeks time and freeze leftover curry (we have a curry every week) until there's enough for summer curry - summer this and summer that.

£75!🤯

really blown away by that figure.

Where do you shop

We shop in Aldi mainly and for 3 adults ( other 2 at uni ) including all meals ie lunch as well we spend £50 (This doesn’t include coffee as I order that in bulk online )

We don’t eat meat though, so maybe that’s why.?

Perhaps consider more bean / lentil based meals. Bulk cook and stick in the freezer.
If you have a garden and the time and energy you could grow a few veg. Potatoes, pumpkins and courgettes are easy veg to grow to start with.

Apologies if this has already been said as I haven't read the full thread: Chicken is cheaper if you buy a whole chicken and split the breasts, thighs and legs yourself and then freeze what you're not using immediately. You can also make stock with the carcass and use it for a cheaper meal of a filling soup like minestrone if you can be bothered. Also worth having a look at the frozen meat aisle - can be ok depending on the recipe.

Recommend Jocasta Innes' The New Paupers Cookbook if you can find it. Unfortunate title but I have had it since my aunt gave me a copy to take away to uni and it has really good advice on how to do more with less and recipes I still use.

(Sorry this is probably a bit close to the MN cliche feed a family of five on a single chicken for a week!!)

lmao sorry for the commie plug by default but those apps make money off suppliers local to you by enforcing the need of certain ingredients

google 5 soup recipes and interchange steps and ingredients and if you're not willing to live off soup and bread until you get better at your own cooking no offence but you would deserve to pay 75 quid for food

subsiding off takeaway until you put the time in may seem like an alternative but hungry noses make good food better I'm just coming up with fancy things to say at this point because try it out try it out try it out!!

Every time we go to Lidl we keep forgetting to download the app.
I didn’t know there was such a good saving so thanks for that bit of intel.
Thanks for the Ottolenghi heads up as well 👍

I can guarantee you’re using way more meat than you need to, for example I use an Aldi ‘small pack’ of 2x chicken breasts as the meat for my family of 4 (2 growing boys and gym obsessed husband!) when I make curry/pasta etc and a 500g pack of minced beef or pork for any other type of meal such as spag Bol/chilli etc and bulk it out with tons of cheap veg!
I put carrots/onions/peppers into almost everything in varying amounts with extra veg specific to certain dishes! The cheesey pasta dish should be so cheap and easy especially! You should already have cheap 50p pack penne in right? Whole pack of that with a full broccoli head and a homemade basic roux again you should already have flour and milk and butter in, then add half a block of extra mature cheddar and salt and pepper. Will feed 4/5 for £2!
I cook mostly from scratch 5 meals per week for a family of 4 and spend around £60 rising to £75 ish in school holidays that includes washing up liquid and deodorant and kids shampoo and cereal and jam etc but no cleaning products or loo roll or my personal hygiene stuff, literally just food.
I top up as I go each week buying garlic, flour, spices, herbs etc when I see it on offer and or I’m not spending as much that week due to the menu!

Stop eating all this meat. Have a few legumes soup 2-3 times a week, nourishing, cheap and much healthier. Make more simple pasta dishes, lots of delicious and cheap italian recipes you can try with pasta and risottos that won't cost as much as eating chicken every day (which is bad for your health btw)

Stop cooking every evening and batch cook. Big pots of chili, bolognese, curry, cottage pie, Mexican chicken etc.
Add extra veg into everything.

I don't get how you spend £50 for 3 people
By the time I have picked up toilet rolls, butter, milk, bread, some toilet cleaner or washing up liquid I'm at the best part of £10

It tends to be people don't include household stuff or the spices they bulk order or the laundry stuff from somewhere else or the loo roll subscription

I find it hard to stick to £240pm for absolutely everything for myself, cleaning and the house including every single top up of coffee, spices, oil etc

@marmaduke12
they are also really lovely with coleslaw and raw onions.
or egg mayonnaise
my parents like them with tuna mayo
They are a real go to in our house if we have small amounts of leftovers so with any type of curry or stew.

Did you mean to be so rude?

Also, where did I say I cannot cook? And why would anyone be willing to feed two adults and 2 growing teenagers on soup and nothing but soup?

subsiding off takeaway until you put the time in may seem like an alternative but hungry noses make good food better I'm just coming up with fancy things to say at this point because try it out try it out try it out!!

Who is subsiding off takeaways? We don't eat takeaways. Hello Fresh, as per the name, is fresh food which you cook at home.

Aldi mainly. Occasionally Lidl.
In terms of the items you’ve listed for £10

• we buy Aldis cheapest toilet roll
• we don’t buy real butter we buy Aldi butter spread
• I make my own bread, either soda bread or normal bread but just use plain flour as bread flour has got so expensive and during the pandemic I couldn’t get hold of any so learnt how to convert cheap plain flour into bread flour
• I don’t buy any expensive cleaning stuff as I don’t really like them so it tends to be vinegar, lemon or just a good scrub etc but very occasionally have bought that limescale remover stuff
• I buy Aldis cheapest washing up liquid
• i do include spices in that as we use a lot but buy in large quantities and most of our herbs we grow
• we buy Aldis cheapest laundry powder, not those cubes or anything just good old fashioned powder and I don’t and have never used conditioner.

So yes it’s all included. except coffee.
Oh and we never get takeaways and only eat out for birthdays.
We do grow some of our veg which we then freeze. We have wild blackberry, sloe and raspberry bushes nearby so I make jams or chutneys.

I also make my own mead so the £50 includes all the honey I need for that too.

@rahoolio

what are you on about?

I have an allotment. It will be a few years yet until I break even due to all the set up costs but my neighbours do all get free organic courgettes forced on them at the appropriate time. So living next door to a vegetable grower is definitely a good budgetary decision.

The key to growing your own is to do a supermarket cost vs hassle assessment on each item. I would never in a billion years grow carrots because they are a pain in the backside and you can buy them for 40p a kilo, but things like courgettes and runner beans basically grow themselves. Fresh herbs are always a bargain compared to the sad little packets withering in the back of the fridge.

if hello fresh is expensive please plan your own meals

what other problems are there you lost me halfway