"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.

Cook some things in bulk and over time you'll build up a bit of a freezer stash. To be fair we spend about £100 but it does vary a bit. As for the chickpeas - chickpea curry is nice.

nice rhetoric would you like some attention with that

@rahoolio

its dead simple

she has found it to be really expensive

lots of people have suggested to eat less meat to save money

simple really

which part of what i said are you asking about this just feels like a low effort dismissal of what i said

For those asking where I shop I did post up thread but we went to Asda this week. We've not been impressed and will be trying Morrison's next week. I've been to the big butchers today and got a few packs of mince and a few packs of chicken thighs to freeze. If we eat those before I can get back I'll either try Morrisons or check what Muscle Food has on offer.

We used to shop at Iceland for freezer fillers for the kid's lunches and top-up veg, fruit, pasta, etc from either Morrison's via Prime or a local grocer but I tried Asda this week thinking it would be cheaper to do one big online shop instead of getting X from Y and A from B, etc. I think it probably was cheaper than the big butcher/Muscle Food for meat but the difference in quality was very noticeable. The price difference was negligible.

Meat used to be from either Muscle Food, the butcher, or Morrison's via Prime if I was making a roast/Sunday dinner on top of what we got from Hello Fresh. Cleaning stuff we'd get from Morrisons/Prime or the local cleaning supply shop and pet food is either from Morrisons or an online pet retailer.

I cannot get to Aldi or Lidl as they are not on the bus route and I don't drive yet. I am learning and perhaps when I get a bit more confident at driving my own car on roads I could use some of lesson/practice time to drive to Aldi and back. The butcher's is about 20 miles away over motorways and in the arse end of no-where, so I will need to be driving before I can go there as and when.

@rahoolio

its not clear why you said op needed to get better at cooking and about living off takeaways not being the answer. I’m not sure op has ever mentioned takeaways

We don't really eat takeaways and never as a family. The kids might order their own takeaway with their own money now and again if DD1 or I CBA to cook and I'm partial to a Gregg's for breakfast if I'm hungover but it's not a meal we'd sit down and eat together.

Good call!
I'm a bit of a spice obsessive and have 38 jam jars dedicated to them, so haven't tried putting the excess in the (overstuffed) freezer. I do freeze chilli peppers and robust fresh herbs like curry leaves, kafir lime leavesn etc and they freezer perfectly well.

@Frequency , should a recipe call for a fresh herb like basil and you have to buy more then you need, put the rest in the blender with some olive oil and freeze it in ice cube trays. It gives the same fresh herb flavour when used. That includes the stalks of soft herbs like parsley and coriander, so there's no waste and it goes much further.

I find cooking from scratch cheaper. I do agree buying spices, oil etc is expensive the first time but then it lasts so long.
I mostly cook from scratch in the evening and use the leftovers as lunch next day.
We buy rice, flour , spices, lentils, pasta in bulk ( usually buy extra when in deals!).
We don’t prefer to eat meat as much ( mostly twice or thrice a week)! As an example a box of takeaway chicken curry will cost anywhere between 8£ to 10£. I think it’s possible to cook atleast 2kg of chicken curry (using thighs) with that money!

does OP need to have mentioned takeaways for me to suggest it lol you seem very moved by what i said

Sainsbury's do 2 kilos of chicken thighs for £4.30. I make the skin into chicken crisps in the air fryer, use the bones for chicken stock, flatten thighs when I've filleted them, cut them in two lengthways and marinade them in oil, soy, ginger, spring onions, five spice, white pepper, garlic, Thread on skewer and grill. Serve with white rice (buy huge bag of basmati to make it cheap per portion) and cucumber salad. Easy, cheap and enough for two meals.

@rahoolio

nah not moved, just a bit confused!

@Frequency

My DC are grown but when catering for 2 parents and 4 bottomless pit young adults plus a steady stream of visitors the key trick to managing costs were a combination:

• meal planning (I used to do this by the month rather than the week)
• heavy use of seasonal ingredients
• cooking doubles (freeze and have one night later in the month)
• cooking to allow a couple of lunches from leftovers
• "fridge" meals once a week eg soup, stew, salad built around whatever is in the fridge toward the end of the week
• rice, pasta, pulses and other frequent dried ingredients were bought in bulk from Costco or similar

I was cooking vegetarian food which isn't automatically cheaper but certainly can be.

Some useful sites:

• https://foodsubs.com/ - been around almost forever and still my GOTO for ingredient substitution ideas
• https://ohmyveggies.com/?s=meal+plan this has largely moved to instagram/youtube but they still have a lot of the meal plans on the site plus individual recipes
• https://vegweb.com/recipes lots of veg recipes you can search for by a primary ingredient eg mushrooms
• https://www.budgetbytes.com/category/recipes/seasonal/spring-recipes/page/2/ good for seasonal suggestions. Their meal plans are now chargeable but the individual recipes are still available without charge

I think Savvy bites is covered up thread.

Its worth using pre made meal plans for a while to get the hang of keeping the overall week economic and avoiding waste. Picking random recipes for the week adds to cost.

I grow some of my own but as PP say - not automatically cheaper. I use the garden as a handy source of fresh herbs (particularly for teas) and salad leaves plus fruit and veg which are hard to get or would be expensive in the shops such as pink fir potatoes or special varieties of tomatoes. These are worth growing where standard potatoes and onions are cheaper to buy (I use a box scheme for a good supply of seasonal veg).

You need to eat more pulses. Buy dried beans, soak them, cook them in pressure cooker.

I'm not sure I understand why you suggested eating less takeaways as a way to save money if you didn't think I'd mentioned eating them?

I had assumed you'd mistaken Hello Fresh for a takeaway delivery service.

To clarify, we do not eat takeaways for our evening/family meals, not unless it is a rare birthday treat and even then we usually either eat out or have "cheese and churro" night. Cheese and Churro night almost always wins out over a possible takeaway for special occasions/big family nights.

I buy yellow sticker, portion & freeze.Meat & fish is much cheaper this way.
I also roast, every Sunday, 2 whole chickens & 2 small gammon joints (total £20 from aldi) Plus £5 extra veggies & a fruit pie & cake bits (£5) in whilst oven is on. So we have a great roast & pud on Sunday. Loads of chicken left over for soup, stirfry, curries, sandwiches. Gammon becomes 'bacon rice', gammon pasta, rissoles etc. Omlettes & jacket potatoes can be a light dinner as well as a filling lunch. Cake. But, yes, I have two voracious teens &, Aldi or not, it's really spendy.

no as in order takeaway while figuring out how to meal prep without Hello Fresh if Hello Fresh is expensive and meal planning is proving unmanageable

Tesco do a feed family 5 dinners for £25 - they give you the list and is meant to cover a family of 4 for dinners at least, it used to cover myself and my partner for dinner and a lunch for one the next day so might need to double up depending on age of kids!

I can get Tesco online @Essexthroughandthrough, I will have a look at that, thank you.

Make bolognaise with lentils that is cheaper. Make shepherd's pie with less meat and bulk up with veg. Use slow cooker double ingredients and freeze rest for following week. Less meat, fill up with more vegetables.

I'm lucky I have most supermarkets and a couple of old fashioned market/discount butchers within striking distance, I don't drive at all, so i know how tricky it can be going to lots of different places-it has to be done though, as nowhere is cheapest for everything. Try the app trolley-put an ingredient in the search and it will tell you how much it is at several supermarkets-very handy, it also lets you know if it would be worthwhile having an online shop from a supermarket that isn't otherwise accessible to you-good luck.

Food prices have gone up well beyond the overall rate of inflation since 2021.

https://foodfoundation.org.uk/news/food-prices-tracker-february-2024
https://www.statista.com/statistics/537050/uk-inflation-rate-food-in-united-kingdom/

You can eat less meat, try cheaper cuts, stick to cheaper in season veg and change supermarket but everything is more expensive than it used to be.

Sorry to hear things are tough OP. I was just going to add could you stretch the budget to include a bag of oats so you can at least add breakfast in each day?

I think the trick is to do a mix of cheaper meals with more extravagant ones.

So, for instance, we sometimes have a bacon and pea pasta. 6 rashers of smoked bacon, 1 tin of tomatoes, 1 small onion, bit of garlic, dried herbs, bit of chicken stock and frozen peas. Plus pasta obviously! I use 'very lazy' garlic so one jar lasts ages, supermarket own brand stock cubes and tomatoes.

Sometimes we have home made veggie soup with sandwiches for tea. Cheap to make if you choose the veg carefully.

I also look at what ingredients can be used more than once to keep costs down.

I shop mainly at aldi. Meat from a local farm though as I am fussy! In fairness, his prices are really good.

These threads always become a competitive 'I can feed a family of four for a month on a tenner' though. Several people always suggest growing veg, even though it costs more to do that than it does to buy it at the supermarket. A packet of carrot seeds, for example, is more expensive than a cheap bag of carrots, and also takes a few weeks to grow, if it grows at all (not unless your soil is quite sandy!)

Food is ridiculously expensive now. I don't set a really tight budget for my family but I am still pretty sceptical of any claims to feed a family of four for less than £100 a week, for every meal. That's £25 per person per week. Hmmmm.