"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.

There are much cheaper wholesome meals than these that don’t require a recipe or meal planner app. Roast chicken, a gammon joint (boil first then roast), pork chops, jacket potatoes, omelettes with toast and salad, macaroni cheese, bolognese…

But lentils cost almost nothing, but you need spices to make them tasty. Asda sell packets of Asian branded spices that work out much cheaper than what the OP bought, and you can get 400 g of frozen prepared garlic for about £1. You could buy everything you need for many meals for under £10 so pennies per meal.

Use that to make dhal, rice and veg and you can eat for a fraction of what the OP is spending. But MN likes to perpetuate the myth that home cooking is 'too expensive' even though all the OP needs to do is to cut down the ridiculous amount of chicken that she's buying and make something like a bean chilli instead if she is missing meals to save money. Then it would free up money to buy oats, eggs, beans and bread, which would also make a good amount of breakfasts and lunches for not very much.

I'm using Cherry Pick too and the Sainsbury's prices are eye watering when you're used to Asda / Aldi. This week I've chosen based on Asda and will manually build my list on their app. But also, check for swops as I found a lot of cheaper options that way i.e. Sainsbury's harissa paste rather than branded.

Oh, and try the Fajita Rice, Smash Burger Tacos and Moroccan Chicken and Chickpea Stew!

Reduced to clear is your friend, assuming you have freezer space. I hardly ever buy full price meat and fish. Every time I'm in the supermarket I buy whatever is yellow stickered and freezer it. Last night we had fish goujon things with rice ans veg, just got a pack of mince out for tonight and we'll have chilli/spag bol or similar.

It does mean that you're kind of planning on the spot - they have mince reduced, so i'll make chilli, or there;s chicken pieces I can use for fajitas/curry/pie or whatever rather than going into the shops to buy for a fixed, pre-planned menu.

Reduced to clear is your friend, assuming you have freezer space. I hardly ever buy full price meat and fish ... It does mean that you're kind of planning on the spot
I sort-of do what you do. I pick up yellow labels - if they are good value e.g. the sort of thing that we would eat and not just cheap for cheap's sake - and put them in the freezer. I am constantly re-stocking.
But it doesn't mean that I am meal-planning on the spot. At home I look in the freezer, see what I've got and then plan around that. Effectively, I'm always one jump ahead.

DM makes and gives me one a delicious curried lentil pie and also makes lentil burgers. You can mix lentils with tomato puree and tinned tomatoes and top with mashed potato to make a veggie shepherds pie.

I get much of our meat from a local butcher supplier - there will probably be something similar to where you live. There's no shop but your meat is delivered direct to you and is really good value.

Don’t forget the carcass for a stock. I made a lovely chicken and red pepper blended soup the other day.

I use the Cherrypick app and have done for a couple of years now, and I feed a family of 2 adults, 2 older teens (so effectively 4 adult portions) for approx £100 a week, including all 7 main meals, stuff for breakfasts and lunches, regular household items and toiletries and maybe the odd bottle of wine or two!

There is a knack to using Cherrypick. If you just blindly pick any recipe you fancy the look of and add all their suggested ingredients to the trolley it can rack up.

My suggestions, specifically for using Cherrypick would be:

-Be sensible about what recipes you choose - duck/salmon/lamb dishes are super expensive - so no more than one of those a week

-Start by shopping from the freezer. If you have chicken breast in there -search for a chicken breast recipe. Likewise if you've got mince - search for something where mince is the base.

-Following on from above - assuming you have the freezer space - buy big packs rather than small. It's far cheaper per Kg to buy a 2Kg tray of chicken breast than to buy a tray of 2 breasts or even worse strips or diced. So buy big, portion and freeze.

-Mix up some veggie recipes in with the meat ones, and search for some of their "budget friendly" recipes too.

-Watch the brands and costs that Cherrypick choose. Sometimes they use eyewateringly expensive ingredients which can easily be swapped for own brand. Also look at things like grated cheese, rather than just grating from your everyday block, heritage vine tomatoes when regular salad tomatoes would do, pre cooked bags of rice when you can cook your own etc. Also double check whether ingredients are really needed - a £4 bottle of pomegranate molasses really isn't essential if it turns out that its just for drizzling over some salad leaves. I also do things like sub very expensive cod or haddock fillets for frozen white fish fillets etc, which when in a delicious flavoursome sauce work absolutely perfectly.

Personally, I would stick at it, as now we have a stocked spice cabinet and larder, and with canny swaps, we eat a really good range of interesting flavoursome food for the same kind of costs as I was previously paying for a boring rotation of spag bol/jacket pots/omelettes etc.

Just don't be fooled into thinking its a simple click and go process - you definitely have to think about it more than that. That said, it's still simpler than starting meal planning from scratch without the app!

If you're really, really struggling, can you not just do bread, butter, apples and some fruit juice?

Not that the state of CoL in this country isn't appalling, you shouldn't have to, but its an idea.

Don’t forget extras like washing liquids but either at Costco if you have a card or Savers/Poundland if you don’t.

I haven’t been that impressed by Asda, Aldi or Lidl meats but do like Morrisons one. Also if you use Indian shops for meat be aware this is always going to be halal so if you prefer more ethical meat don’t buy from there.

I like Aldi/Lidl for lots of dairy items but was a bit shocked that in Iceland their chiller cabinet stock was the same price if not more expensive than Sainsbury’s.

So couple of things from me (note I am ethnically Asian). 1) Cook in bulk to gain the economies of scale and re-heat/freeze. In our view curries improve if they are cooked and chilled for a day or two before freezing but we cook lots and then freeze. For spices depending on where you are go to the local Asian supermarket and buy in bulk. As well as making curries from scratch we often use a base powder- the Eastern brand you will see in Asian supermarkets is good for this and is much much cheaper than some of the brands you get in main supermarkets. Buy a rice cooker. Its really cheap and makes it far easier to eat rice and other things as a main dish. Get rice from the Indian shop in bulk. Some herbs and indeed garlic are quite easy to grow and freeze. We often use a base of chilli, garlic and ginger which we make and freeze on mass- the chilli and garlic comes from the garden and only takes a little space. If your taste will stretch to it think about dahl as a dish. It is nutritious tasty and relatively cheap.

Stop eating so much meat. Bulk buying legumes is so much cheaper.

Also, get the Olio and Too Good To Go apps. Olio gives away unwanted food for free, and Too Good To Go enables you to get nearly out of date parcels of food from restaurants or groceries from supermarkets really cheap.

Are there any local gardening cooperatives near you? There's one in my town and it helps people to grow their own fruit and veg pretty much for free. Volunteers also get bunches of free produce from them.

Make use of your garden space for growing vegetables like salad leaves, herbs and runner beans. Look around locally and online for free seeds.

Leave a potato on the windowsill until it sprouts, then chop it up and bury it 10 inches deep, and have a few bags of free potatoes in the summer.

Yes I know what you mean - before shopping you look in the freezer and see what yellow sticker bargains are there. Sausages, so we'll have sausages and mash or I'll get buns and we'll have hot dogs. Chicken so let's plan a curry etc. Leftover beef/pork, make a stir fry.

Shouldn't the cooking child be budgeting as well?

Ps yes musclefood can be better value, the chicken I used to buy from them was certainly better quality, but why are you not looking at prices and doing your sums?

Same here. I think it’s often the extra bits and pieces (like pancetta) that add up.
We cook from recipes occasionally, but most of the time it’s simple meals (or rather simpler, easier options with some extra ingredients left out).

Try growing your green vegies too.
Broccoli, zucchini, kale, silverbeet, letuce, cabbage, cauli.

Have frozen beans and corn in freezer.
Large bag of brown rice in pantry.
Cans of fruit in pantry

Buy vegetables and fruit in season, when they are the cheapest.

Choose a few cheap meat and meat free meals per week based on - canned tuna, eggs, sardines, lentils, canned beans, mince steak, sausages..

Loads of savvy meals for around £5 on you tube and facebook. I watch Right Guys. Typically quick and easy meals that I'd add more veg or a fruit dessert to. They tell you what to buy and where from.

I have to admit though, I haven't yet tried any - I'm a lazy cook working long hours, so I'm more likely to do a roast in the airfryer and add a veggie dish to it than anything else followed by fried rice or pasta leftovers the following day. You can pick up meat to roast for a fiver but sometimes I buy bigger so I have several meals from the meat. If we do a pasta leftover, it has beans of some kind in it too. Great sources of additional protein.

To reduce the cost of lunches, I buy in bulk from places like Approved Food or Discount Dragon - be careful what you buy, mind. I recently bought a case of quorn meals that worked out about £1 per lunch and are very tasty. I had been paying £5 a day at work...

I'd also suggest making up your own flap jacks/cereal bars.

This CoL crisis is a nightmare.

I'm doing my garden next week to get my veggies and fruit planted. Hoping this year our fruit trees actually produce fruit, 5 years since planting...

it's hard to say without you posting the list of your shopping but that seems very expensive. of course it's an investment if you are buying proper sized spices etc. But think of all the waste packaging and money you will save long term. Cooking from scratch doesn't have to be fancy meals - could be jacket pots with toppings, omeletes, egg fried rice with whatever veg you have.

Have a look at Sorted Food. Their app is exactly like Hello Fresh except that you do your own shopping.

I’m sure loads have said, but the chicken will be bumping up your costs so much.

Veggie meals are so much cheaper. We love a lentil bolognaise, often do bean quesadillas, veggie baked gnocchi is super cheap even with branded tinned tomatoes. BBC good food “Mexican bake”. We do a one pan rice dish with Cajun spices and coconut milk and black beans and a tiny bit of chorizo.

The spices thing can be a pain in the bum, but once you have a good selection they last ages.

I find rice can be super expensive, I buy the massive 5/10kg packs and per 100g it works out much better prices. Same with loads of other stuff. If you can afford the initial outlay it’s much better to buy in bigger packs and split. Leftovers for lunches.

I wouldn’t necessarily say £5 per portion for meat meals is expensive. That’s what my mum used to budget per head per meal when I was a child which was 14+ years ago and we weren’t particularly flush but all her meals had meat and at least 3 portions of veg. As others have said, substitute the chicken for veggies/lentils. Now I have my own family we eat veggie about twice a week partially for ethical reasons, partially because we enjoy it and partially because I think meat will become a luxury when my children grow up so they need to get used to it. I budget about £7 a head for the adults and £3 for the toddler.

Oh and really good tip . When you buy a bunch of spring onions/ shallots/ green onions/scallions ( whatever they are called where you live) - I mean the long green thin oniony things with a slim white base and sold in a bunch with roots attached.
Cut the roots off about an inch or more up and put in a glass of water on the windowsill. Plant them after a week or so in a little pot in the sun. Water every other day or so. Withing a month you will have lovely spring onions growing and it hasn't cost you a cent!!