"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.

I don't!!! It's perfectly safe to eat but the quality may not be quite as good. As long as it has been well wrapped and doesn't have freezer burn then I use it!

I never ever look at dates on tins. I rarely look at dates on any foods. I use my eyes and my nose.

I regularly eat yoghurts out of date, sometimes by a couple of weeks and as I don't eat much cheese any blocks of cheese I buy last ages so must go out of date.

Oh that is useful, thanks!

My daughter is also a single parent working full time and, like you, does a straightforward online shop when she needs it. We have a local supermarket so she sometimes picks things up from there but doesn't really have the cash to keep a fridge and freezer full of food, just keeping the basics, with enough in the freezer for an emergency meal when there's no time to shop.

She cooks from scratch, sometimes for a couple of days at a time, and sticks to the tried and tested which she knows her young children will eat.
She reckons that her food bills have gone up by more than 25% recently though she's buying much the same as usual.
We try to help, cooking a roast meal over the weekend and feeding the children on the days we pick them up from school, but it's tough when a parent with a good job can't afford to buy anything but very basic food.

Do most people have stuff in the freezer like bags of chicken pieces or mince or a joint of meat, or all kinds of different vegetables….that aren’t labelled to be a particular meal, but can be used for multiple different dinners when combined with other ingredients?

I do, I have a well stocked freezer with meat, vegetables and stuff I’ve previously batch cooked. When I shop I have a rough meal plan in mind and shop for what I need. If I see a good deal on chicken, mince or whatever I’ll buy a couple and freeze one. There are always staples like tinned tomatoes, curry paste, rice and pasta in the house along with various frozen fruit.

I usually have a couple of options in mind for dinner depending on time available to cook, the number of people at home and what I fancy eating. Being able to combine different ingredients into a variety of meals is an important life skill, while I think many people can cook following a recipe, fewer can take some chicken, mushrooms, leeks and the contents of their stock cupboard and make a few meals from those basic ingredients.

Sorry for my ignorance but what is freezer burn?
is it safe to eat, but quality reduced.
or
unsafe to eat?
i have a couple of things where the lids have opened when it expanded during freezing. Ordinarily I’d eat them but is this wrong?
is freezer burn the layer of ice that’s formed?

I sort meat and fish into meal lots and freeze- so a number of different meals can be made from each bag, leaving the greatest flexibility. I also have things for a quick fix=like cooked sausages, fishfingers, and the odd bag of mashed potato-so a quick meal can be microwaved if something unexpected crops up.
I also cook a double portion of many meals, such as curry, bolognese sauce etc so meals can be accessed quickly.

@MumofBoyzTW , it's when the moisture has gone from the food. It's safe to eat but not very nice.

I buy meat frozen and vacuum packed so I always have it in the freezer in roughly 500g portions that then makes dinner for two for three nights.

I tend to have basic meat frozen in suitable portions - although I occasionally experiment with doing a marinade before freezing (chicken wings are especially good this way, and I had lovely lemon/garlic chicken breasts this week - 1 roasted for dinner and the other diced for salad lunches during the week). But mostly I freeze fish and meat raw and unadorned.

I always have a bag of frozen peas and possibly 1 other frozen plain veg, as bought frozen. I Blanche and freeze gluts of french beans in summer. But I also do batches of mixed Mediterranean veggies and freeze those either still raw to cook quickly with little prep, or having roasted a large batch I freeze the leftovers to add to plain tomato sauce (and maybe bacon, or meatballs made from Toulouse sausages) for a quick pasta dinner. Those are seasoned as I chop them, so before either option of freezing.

When you have the spices it's much easier but also I would throw in a couple of cheap meals like baked potato