Food has become so expensive. How is it sustainable?

[Prunnhilda]

I've noticed a real change in the past couple of weeks: everything seems to have gone up by 10 or 15%, suddenly. (Except junk food, which is always on special offer, naturally )

We can't go on being blasé about nipping into the supermarket for a few bits and pieces. What foods are you cutting back on to save money?

We don't buy alcohol, but we do still have one in pull-up pants and those are £££.

Because the puddings include some fruit, the main course is not large portion and to avoid cries of we are hungry later I do a pudding which is mixed up with fruit (there is no way dd would eat fruit from the bowl, but bake a pear and add yogurt and she will lap it up)

I don't buy coffee for the house, I do buy washing powder usually the smallest box going as there is no benefit in buying on mass as the per kilo price is the same whether you buy a £2 box or a £5 box, hand soap in a bar, it works out the same for 4 bars of soap as it does for budget hand gel/liquid.

We have porridge for breakfast, or home made breakfast muffins (I make a batch and freeze when I have to much milk) with a poached egg, lunch is often dalh or a vegetable casserole made on Monday and eaten through the week. Packed lunches are made from my own bread, home made fairy cakes or biscuits and carrot sticks and hummous with a bottle of water and marmite. These types of things I don't need to buy each week porridge lasts a long time and so does my big bag of flour and a pot of marmite, a bag of red lentils and a bag of onions and the vegtables are usually left overs.

ivykaty44 thanks very much for the portion size guidance. My chickens are often 1.4kilos rather than 3 kilos!! Isn't that a turkey!!!

I think you are right though that we are eating too much meat

fattyacid, if you are buying a 1.4 kilo chicken then you are getting around 900g of meat - if you buy a 3kilo chicken then you are getting around 2500g of meat and this is why you are getting one meal from a chicken and some sarnies 2 meals, whilst I am getting 5 meals from a chicken.

We are both getting 500g of meat roughly per meal - I though buy a bigger chicken and proportional get the same bones and far more meat

Small chickens 1.4 kilo chicken is small to me, are expensive and not ecponomicla way of buying/purchasing meat. You would be better of buying chicken thighs and roasting them than buying a small chicken as there is only one tiny bone in each chicken thigh thus you get far more meat for your money.

Or buying as big a chicken bantom as you can get and then making it last for a few meals.

We are a family of 5, and I usually get the large bantam chickens too, I make it last 3 evening meals, and carcass for stock, and sometimes get sandwiches too.

Roast it on the sunday, in a stir fry with noodles and soy, ginger honey and garlic on the Monday, tuesday is chicken pie day, with prozen pease in it to bulk it out!

My mum does call me a chicken miser, but I think we eat too much meat anyway, and her portions when we go there are huge! I always try to bulk it out with veg. Although DH won't eat veg!

I try and do the same with a gammon joint, make it last 3 meals too.

I have got a really nice simple JO tomato sauce recipe, and I sometimes bung the chicken in that with pasta too, plus have some sauce left over to have as a veggi pasta dish.

this is a total con you pay for two lots of bones..?

You often can't get larger chickens in the supermarket (they don't pack on the shelf easy so they don't like to sell them) and you will need to go to the butcher or source a butcher in the local area that can obtain larger poultry for you, you may pay £7-8 for a larger bird but it will work out cheaper than buy two birds and having two carcas which is wasteful.

Remember that supermarkets sell you what they want you to buy, thus all the two for one offers you think are a bargin. What you want to do is get in to the mind set that you need to shop for your needs and then you will go elsewhere and find it is a lot cheaper to stay away from the supermakets for all but dry goods, as the two for one deals are often a load of c*rap and its just a way of getting money from your purse into their till and nothing more - no your not being savey buy bunging it in the freezer - you didn't intend to purchase it and they have got one over on you.

totally agree with the 2 for 7 quid con - i did usually buy them however this week i bought a £7 free range, organic, corn fed chicken, it lasted just as long and tasted much better!

Also, what's wrong with eating the same thing two nights on the trot?
I often do midweek.

Often also people come on here, fretting about making different packed lunches for theri kids? Why? What's wrong with a sandwich and a piece of fruit and a yoghurt, every day?

Too much choice.
It cripples people, doesn't liberate them.

There is nothing wrong with choice - if you can afford to do so.

If though you are tight for money think casserole in the slow cooker for three to four nights on the trot in the winter. Go and see your butcher and get a cheap tougher cut of beef that needs long slow cooking and it will be cheaper to purchase. Silverside, shinna beef - ask your butcher if your not sure - he is sure not to bite and often they are very happy to show you the cuts and advise you, if they advise you well they know you are more likely to come back again.

Then add 2" cuts of carrots, parsnip, turnip, stock & tomato puree and a few lentils and pearl barely - It will cost around £5 and feed you for four nights add another tin of beans or tomatoes on the third evening. Sliced potato along the bottom if you want

Not only is it cheap on food its cheaper still and hassle free on the washing up.

One slow cooker and three or four plates each evening and the same in cutlery - you save on hot water and washing up liquid on top of labour.

it is the fast food as when you walk in the door you half fill your plate, you don't even need to all eat together so is idea for weekday nights when dc have activities on or someone is home late.

Sometime I turn the slow cooker off as I go to bed and then just flip the switch in the morning agian so it will be ready when I come in from work.

I use my slow cooker nearly every day. It doesn't use as much power, either, as the oven.

I have stacks of recipes books for slow cookers and even do some puds in them.

Also in Autumn, our old landlord asks us over to clear off his apple trees. It's just him and his wife and 4 fruiting trees. There's too much.

I make apple butter in the slow cooker and can it. It lasts all year and is fine to substitute for oil in a lot of muffin recipes.

I bought a chest freezer used and it's worth it's weight in gold. Whenever I see butter or some cheeses on offer, I stock up to use in my baking.

Old bread can be croutons, treacle tart or blitzed up into breadcrumbs to freeze.

Make pizza dough in the slow cooker and freeze it. When I feel lazy about tea, take it out, along with spag bol sauce I batch cook and freeze, some cheese and voila, there's tea sorted.

I've got some meatballs in the slow cooker right now. Just need to do rice for tea.

I'll sling a chicken in there tomorrow to use for lunches all weekend as we're having guests and the weather is perfect for picnics.

A good thing for diehard carnivores to do is to make a huge pot au feu: a whole chicken, a bit of pork, or beef, or whatever else you fancy, simmer with onion, bay and other herbs for 40 mins, put in some carrot chunks and whole potatoes for the next 20 mins or so.
You get enough cooked meat for several meals (done in whatever way you fancy), and a load of excellent stock for soup/freezer. All the work is done in one go. V good for quick home-cooked meals for most of the rest of the week.

I was talking to my mum about this. I can't believe the rise in the cost of butter, bread, cheese.

She says in the past these things were proportionaltely expensive but the difference is that meat was much cheaper than it is today.

FWIW we shop at the Indian grocers for chickpeas, greengrocers for fruit and veg and only have meat once or twice a week.

Fortunately the kids love dahl and pasta, and are happy with home made pizza,sausages and chips etc

tonight DP and I are having yesterdays leftover lasagne.

Fruit is now apples, bananas - we rarely have grapes or berries. I also have started the kids on tinned fruit chopped up with squirty cream. They love that.

Also, shred up the meat and if you don't use it as a sandwich filling, make meat pies with it and throw in the roasted veg.

I'd find life way harder without: my bread machine, my food processor or my slow cooker.

Stewing or casseroling is best for cheaper cuts that need long, gentle cooking such as shin and leg, brisket, chuck and blade, neck and clod and skirt. Many supermarkets sell packets of "stewing steak" that's likely to originate from the tougher cuts and which need longer cooking than cubes of "braising steak".

taken from here

Go and ask your butcher - if you ask in tesco or sainsbury for skirt, shinna beef or clod - they will look at you like and shake there head from side to side as they are really not sure of which meat is which cut.. its in packets and thats about as much as they know.

I have cut back on a lot of the crap we used to buy - treats, sweets, convenience foods. It is saving us money and means we are eating more healthily.

I have also swapped from Tesco online to Asda online and am saving us about £20 a week for almost exactly the same items.

I cook more vegetarian dishes - at least twice, sometimes 3 or 4 times a week. I use eggs, lentils, chickpeas and rice a lot more than previously.

On the down side, I have stopped buying organic meat . Even with only buying it twice a week it is just too expensive to buy organic. I do still try to buy free range chicken and eggs where possible, though and organic milk.

3 years ago our basic weekly shop (not including 'top ups' of milk, bread and the odd luxury during the week) cost £70-80 a week for a family of four. It crept up to over £100. I have got it back down to £80 at Asda, which I hope will continue! Tesco seem to have really upped their prices and their BOGOFS and half price deals are absolute bullshit.

same here - I would find life not only harder but more expensive without my bread machine, food processor or slow cooker, as they take the work out of making food for me.

it is so easy to whip up some pastry for onion tarts make pastry, saute a couple of onions, bake pastry blind, then pour in onions and top with milk and beaten eggs and put over the top soem cheddar and then bake for half and hour in a medium hot oven - nothing fancy with goats cheese or expensive cheese needed and the cost is low for a few onions and some dairy products that are probably in the fridge anyway, or make cakes and puddings to make meal times more interesting, slow cookers are a life saver on work days with swimming club in and hour - how else would I feed a child an hour before swimming otherwise when I walk in the door at 5.40 and she swims at 7 grating carrots and then swill out the FP is easy to bulk out a summer meal with salads.

The only one that gets put away from the work top so the slow cooker, as my kitchen is tiny

Shinna beef is 'shin of beef' no?
I know what skirt is [Scottish] but what is clod?

I find the biggest barrier is dh. I was brought up with good home-cooked Scottish food and it's a poverty cuisine, mostly: exactly what everyone's saying, eking meat out and reusing leftovers.
He was brought up on pieces of meat cooked in butter, strong italian and French flavours, very nice veg (no neeps and carrots for him five times a week, not that they're horrible but ykwim).
So if I suggest we make a big pan of soup and eat it over three days (as we were happy to do as kids) he gets a bit antsy.

taken from here clod is shown on here it is under the chin

re cheaper cuts of meat, though, i have trieeeeeed them. they just don't taste/feel that good in the mouth, i don't care how they're cooked.

so i just eat less of it and more pasta. [fat]

Then you cook expensive receipes with cheap cuts of meat in the slow cooker so your dh doesn't know he is being conned

aitch - possibly you are not used to cooking them or the person who cooked them isn't and you are not cooking in the correct manner to get the best out of them and theus they will not be feeling right in your mouth and you certianly get more flavour with some of the cuts - as they will often have a lot more flavour due to the area of the cow they come from.

I never got used to expensive cuts of meat, thankfully :o.

I've been veggie for Lent, but I'll be giving that up on Easter Sunday :).

We are trying lots of different cuts of meats, the cheaper ones which is helping, but the prices of most things are extraordinary.

We eat loads of eggs, as we have our own chickens and not only are they almost "free"** they are absolutely delicious and we eat them much fresher than bought. We've got quite inventive with egg based meals and probably do that twice a week now!

**A sack of chicken food is approximately the same price as two dozen eggs and provides me with two months worth of 3 eggs per day... happy days.