For those that struggle with good shopping/budget.

[Loveduppenguin]

Family of 4- budget 100-120 per week and I try to keep it as low as possible to be honest so under 100 is 🙌. We have one take away most weeks but not every week.
Today I spent 96.44 on food for the week and a few items that will span over a few weeks.
The weeks meal plan is:
Sun- Boiled Ham, cabbage, potatoes and carrots and a white sauce.
Mon- chicken Kiev, wedges and salad.
Tues- cheesy, creamy ham pasta bake
weds- homemade pizzas with salad
thurs- chicken curry with rice, poppadoms and naan.
Fri - take away
sat - sausage casserole
Im going to make a potato and leek soup also for lunches and I’ll make a banana bread tomorrow to have for breakfasts. I like to stew some of the apples and pears for breakfasts too.
boiled ham leftovers wil be used for the pasta bake and a little in a pizza or two.
I already had carrots, lettuce, tomatoes and olives, Greek yoghurt etc
receipts attached and I don’t think I did too badly. I’ll probably buy milk on weds or Thursday again.
Just posted in case anyone was looking to m ram plan budget similarly.

Oh you can’t beat a bit of banana bread. It’s yummy toasted and with a side of stewed pears and apples 🤤

Top tip from me: I’ve just started getting two supermarket deliveries per week, rather than one. The deliveries don’t cost anything, I pay for a subscription and could get them to come every day if I wanted. But meal planning feels less daunting if I’m doing it for 3 or 4 days rather than 7; and it means I’m spending about £140 a week (family of four) but that’s IT: no popping out for bread and milk midweek, no top up shop which ends up costing 30 quid, and no takeaway on a Friday night because we’ve run out of food and imagination. It’s a game changer so far, honestly.

I appreciate your post OP. I always find it interesting to see people's meal plans and actual shopping lists. Of course there are things you don't need to buy because you always have them and similarly there are things you have bought this week that will last for weeks to come. But unless you throw everything out, start from scratch and show us a years-worth of receipts then I suppose some people will gripe!

Lidl in UK currently selling 6 mixed weight FR eggs for 86p - so £1.72 for 12.

I also thought some of the veg etc prices looked high.

Also, do you have the lidl app? As the large bag of potatoes should be free as your £50 spend item.

Thank you for sharing your ideas.

2l of milk isn’t going to be covering everyone calcium requirements.

yeah I don’t understand the griping. No one buys EVERYTHING every week! That’s not how it works surely?

No and I said in my original post we will buy more milk on weds/thurs.

I do have the Lidl app. But that offer isn’t available to us. We get points so we can use them for different items. And the meats are 3 for €9 (different items each week)
You’re welcome ☺️

I enjoyed your post too OP. Always someone ready to jump in and gripe. Gripe Pie and Gripe Pudding washed down with Gripe Water. 😬☺️

I shop like the op.....I buy what I need each week, not the same items every week.
Family consists of me, dh, dd (20) ds (18)....food covers all meals as lunch is either eaten at home or taken packed.
I track all of my food spending ......if I divide my spending to date this year it averages out at £96 per week.
We eat healthy home cooked meals and very little UPF. It can be done.

I love seeing other people’s meal plans
I’m shocked how costly gfbread is
and tbh tastes like shit for the costly privilege

So Saturday we ended up out visiting and had our dinner at a friends which was lovely.
so I had the sausage casserole on Sunday instead which meant it was part of a new week meal plan wise.
I spent 54.83 topping up with a few things for this weeks meal plan
sun- sausage casserole
mon- chicken burgers
tues- quiche Lorraine and salad.
weds- spaghetti bolognaise
thurs- chicken and chorizo with mash
fri- fish night/ salmon (already have) for me and dd and the cod goujons for dp and ds with rice and veg.
sat -out for dinner.

i was in Tesco yesterday evening and bought milk, peanut butter, tomatoes and cream and spent 11. So for this week I spent 65 in total.

Thanks for sharing, op. I never understand the "but you already had xyz in, you're cheating" crowd. Nearly everyone has food left over, and definitely toiletries/cleaning items. Plus, I find budgeting and meal planning means we have more flexibility to eat out or have takeaway if we want.
I've started a thread that is similar, so I like to look and see what others are making for inspiration.
So, thank you!

Ooh I’ll have to find yours and get inspiration too! Thank you 😊

Here you go

It's a bit different to yours as I try not to have many ready made things. At first because they.were expensive (we have 3 kids, 2 left home now), and then now because I prefer to avoid upfs. I didn't really realise I was doing it until recently, it just sort of happened.
Plus, I work 3 days, so more time than most to meal prep and cook.
All that said, I'm a lazy cook, so there's hardly any work or time involved with the majority of dishes I make.

We have just started down the same road. Made our own chicken burgers last night! They were delicious! I’ll never buy frozen pre packed again.

Chicken burgers are a good shout.

1 thing I found has helped is to avoid 'single serve' items. So, things like burgers, Kievs are rare in our house as they don't stretch beyond one meal. Even things like quiche or pies. Dont get me wrong, we do sometimes have them, but I prefer something I can bulk out to make more servings. I guess 'family style' would be a more accurate description.

Yeah I totally get it, i like to have leftovers too to be fair. Chicken burgers was definitely a no leftovers dinner. The quiche will have one slice leftover for someone s lunch though which is handy.

Now I want quiche. And burgers. And a pie. And its not even lunch.

🤣🤣🙌

Do you buy tea, coffee, washing detergent, fabric softener, toilet roll, toiletries, kitchen roll, soap, herbs and spices, any pet food?
We make sandwiches for lunches so need bread and sandwich fillings.

We buy cereal every week as all four of us eat it daily, we have it with plant milk, which is expensive and we buy a few cartons weekly. Vegan cheese weekly, sandwich fillings weekly, as that's 28 lunches needed over a week!
Coffee lasts a week, toiletries and cleaning stuff is expensive so the cost needs spreading over the month, so at least one or two items are bought weekly, sanitary towels, deodorant, shampoo, shower gel, etc...
Dark chocolate and biscuits are bought weekly, we don't have puddings or cake so that's a treat.
That said we don't get takeaways and spend around 140 a week, everything included, so not too different.

Yes I buy all of those things but not every week…there is thyme and cayenne pepper there on yesterday’s receipt. No pets though.
washing detergent…does anybody buy that every week I don’t even buy it every month!
my receipt for yesterday has turkey slices and wraps on it for lunches. I have gluten free bread which is quite expensive for (see my first receipt from last week) so I don’t have a sandwich every day. However, in saying that we went to a friends house for lunch on Saturday and they bought gluten-free bread for me to us. They gave me the rest that was left because they had no use for it. Which was lovely of them.
For lunches I will have a mix of a sandwiches, salads and leftovers.
my dc have wraps for this week and my dd sometimes has leftovers as she can reheat food in school.

Yeah the toiletries are spread with me too mostly, but if I run out of a couple of things at the same time. I wouldn’t stop myself from buying them.
We’re not big cereal people. My DC will have a mix of- overnight oats, warm porridge, toast, Stewed fruit as well as cereals. So it takes us a few weeks to get through cereals. Sometimes they have eggs or rashers too. Some weeks I bake banana bread or porridge bread and they’ll have that too.

Could you please post your recipe for the chicken burgers. I'm trying to economise and also cut down on upfs.
Thanks.