weekly food for four on a tiny budget

[moonshaddow]

I am looking for some serious money saving tips for my weekly shooping budget, We have worked our way up to spending nearly £100 per week for the four of us (!) I would love to cut it back to £70, DS1 is 6 and hardly eats anything although lunch boxes cost a small fortune, DS" is 7 months and has an enormous appitite for homecooked organic wonders... DH is very slim but very active and eats a hidious amount of food.
We do prefer organic and would love to buy all local produce but I can't ever manage to get enough of everything and before the week is over the boys are saying 'theres no food to eat..'
please help!
recipe ideas that go a long way such as chicken in a stock pot ect. are just the sort of tips I am after.
thanks...

1. don't buy the packed lunch crap. some sarnies (or, things ike pasta salad if you're adventurous), piece of fruit, yoghurt. refill drinks bottles with water/juice.

1. feed baby mushed up versions of what you eat yourselves. just cook the same amount and then whizz up a small portion - nobody else will notice.

1. recipes: liver and bacon (use pigs liver, fry, then remove from pan and fry oniions and bacon. add stock, simmer, then add liver back in before serving). beef stew. or any stew in fact - cut the meat small and add mushrooms to make it go further. anything with mince - meatballs, spag bol.

I do a roast chiken on a sunday then make a big pot of soup with the carcass to make the stock, left over bits of chicken masses of veg and potatoes and have that for a couple of lunches etc. Also look for the bogof and 3 for 2 offers and stock up freezer.

Why are lunchboxes costing a small fortune? What are you putting in them?
I put 2 bits of fruit some crisps and a sarnie/vegetarian sausage roll and feed them something decent when they get in.
Does having no food to eat mean the boys have nothing left to snack on? Fill the fruit basket 2/3 times a week...let them munch what they like from it.
I do a little shop 30 quid at the weekend, including stuff for picnics and then top up twice with 10 quid shops...never is there nothing to eat!
Dont go down the cleaning/smelly aisle unless you need something. Cut my shopping bill down loads like that. Things like loo roll/kitchen roll/washing powder, when its on a good offer buy loads of it. Then you dont have to for another few weeks.
Someone will be along soon with recipes /im sure but thats my imput :)

go veggie, lentils etc cost less than meat.

srir fry
soups
use lots of beans, lentils etc
grow stuff, tomatos and herbs and salad and crap.

we do family of 4, all organic food, £50-£60 pw but thats veggie.

this is great, liking the veggy idea
charliecat lunchbox stuff cost a lot I think because I end up buying so much stuff -ds1 and dh constantly eat masses of fruit from the bowl and snack on tracker bars, yoghurts and flapjacks ect, this would be ok but it costs loads try not to buy crisps unless for a treat.
I need to get dh to stop pigging out, it's horrific! -Am I unfair? should I accept that he needs all this food or should I make him snack on things like lentil dishes? (instead of 1 bars, 1 apple 1 banana 1 yog and a pint of juice in one go-all between 3 huge meals)
seriously thinking of stopping cereals and go for just porridge for a while to see if that stops him getting hungry so soon (he likes crunchy nut)

leek and potato soup - add ham if you like - make a big batch serve with bread.

when buying beef - ask for 'braising steak' dice it yourself for casseroles.

washing powder at Lidl is 40% cheaper than the main brands in UK shops. Less perfumed as well - a good thing methinks. infact all their cleaning stuff is on par with major UK brands but cheaper.

If you buy lots of little yoghurtpots, try buying the liter pots of plain natural yoghurt (around 80p at Tesco's I believe). It's not organic, but add a little sugar or squash and it goes a long way.

So you have 3 big munchers as well as big meals............hmmm can you bake flapjacks etc cheaper and freeze them in bulk? Or do fairy cakes instead, they are cheap.
Also homemade tracker bar type thingys??

moonshaddow, yes breakfast cereal can be really expensive. As you say, why not try porridge - mine have it with mashed/sliced banana, it's really filling and cheap.

What does your ds have in his lunch box?

Make flapjacks, so much cheaper and great fun for your older one

We spend about £60 a week for five of us, a six year old who barely eats (sigh) a greedy git of a five year old and a two year old. Three of us are dairy intolerant.

We take advantage of offers- eg, we had duck Sunday because I was standing in the next aisle as they reducewd it o £3 , but the basic diet involves a lot of one pot things for ease. DH's favourite is a bean chilli, just lots of tinned beans passata and spices with onions and green peppers, served with hunks of good bread. That costs very little indeed but you can still polish your halo happily afterwards (we tend to spice after kids have been served).

home made hummous goes a long way and is really cheap to make even more so if you soak the beans rather than using tins, then you can serve with loads of chopped veg and fresh bread.

I am a big fan of casseroles, particularly chicken, all the supermarkets do big packs of drumsticks or thighs and I cook those with carrot onions tomatoes, whatevers lurking in the frig really (plus chuck the potatoes in as well if you want to) that makes a huge portion for four and then I put a puff pastry top on the leftover and make it into a pie for another meal.

Find the lemon cake recipe that's a great one for treats and snacks and not expensive to make.

Dont forget the good old jacket spuds with cheese and beans and a huge salad, mega cheap.

I had to do this a while back when my dh was out of work for a good few months and its amazing how much you can save when you put your mind to it.

Oh homemade yoghurt too, invest in a couple of airtight mini containers, add fruit and brown sugar to it and use that to fill lunchboxes.

good luck!

I would definitely recommend you have a casserole dish once a week, and make soup. We find a chunky soup with bread a really filling meal...I stick red lentils into both soup and casseroles as they give a nice 'filling' texture

Deffo porridge for breakfast, as it lasts for ages and is cheap...we have a drizzle of golden syrup on ours which again lasts for ages.

If your DH is swigging PINTS of juice, I would cunningly cut off his options here...if he is that thirsty he should have a pint of iced water. Buy one carton of fresh juice and make home made ice lollies with it, your DS1 will love these now the summer is coming, and obviously he'll still be getting fresh juice...

Another good thing for us is buying a pork joint or chicken and roasting it, then keeping it for DH's sandwiches during the week.

One last thing I wanted to say was that this was obviously the bane of my mum's life when I was a kid as I remember thinking 'there's no food left!" and I think everyone stuggles to keep enough in for the week. My mum used to find ingenious places to hide the fruit and biccies and bring them out half way through the week so we had stuff all through. Of course if it was out, we'd have eaten it!

Good luck!

I don't know where you live and what facilities are available, but I find that I save loads of money if I shop for veg in the market rather than the supermarket. Its not organic, and its not very exotic but it is about a third of the price.

I would definitely cut down on the more expensive cereals, and just not buy juice. (Its better to get the vitamins from fresh fruit anyway). Alternatively, to make juice go further, mix it with inexpensive fizzy water.

Does anyone remember who had that meal planner spreadsheet? I always wanted to get a copy.
Hi Moonshaddow!!

\link{http://www.orothemarketplace.co.uk\this has just opened not far from me} We went the other day and the stuff is great but possibly a little pricey in parts - brill idea though

agree abut home made flap-jack - very cheap and easy - you can make a big batch and freeze it - and just get it out when you need it. also home made buns for your lunchbox. If you're not used to it I know it sounds like a faff but you can honeslt rustle up a plain sponge in 10 minutes, throw some choc hips in and you don't need to bother with icing.

or even some choc chips

Can only really second what everyone else has been saying - home made soups, casseroles, roast then left overs etc. We use meat because we like it but don't use v much at all e.g. 6oz chicken will do a pasta dish that feeds all four of us (dh, me, ds1 who is 5 and ds2 who is 3). Everything gets padded out with lots of veg. Buying local is better than buying supermarket organic and if you can't buy local then buy supermarket organic. Making your own bread isn't cheaper but baking definitely is and lovely for lunch boxes (I would do soup for lunch boxes too).

Does your DH snack like that in the house, or when he's out? Could he not make himself a quick sandwich instead? Is the juice fruit juice, or squash? We get through 2 or 3 litres of squash (which makes loads of drinks!) a week, so if that was fruit juice we'd be bankrupt!

hi, dh works on a farm so is forever popping in to grab food, he has juice which I think I will stop for a while -love the ice lolly idea for juice. So dh doeas get quite panicy if there is no instant goodies available, although he is very health concious too and hates junk food so for health and money reasons he is willing to try out some changes!!

ds1 in lunchbox has a sarnie (so boring, everyday) 2 peices of fruit, a bought kids yoghurt a cereal bar and sometimes some pombears or a croisant. he gererally comes back with something in it but will eat it at home after school but I would prefer to change his snacking habits and encorage him to be more hungry at tea time.

hi satine- o just spotted my, rather embarrassing spelling mistake (shadDow)
ooooops!

Local fruit and veg from a greengrocer or market is usually very cheap and may not be organic but at least has not travelled half way round the world so probably has more nutrients in some cases.

Lentils, rice and beans all very cheap, filling and nutritious. If you buy dried beans and cook them yourself instead of the tinned sort you can make vast quantities of meals to freeze for a very small amount of money. Veggie shepherds pie with lentils, bean stew with whatever veg are cheap and in season, red lentil sauce for pasta are all good and cheap and tasty.

Invest in a breadmaker. We found that one loaf of dh's 6 seed wonder bread lasted much longer than shop bought ones because it's so filling.

Pulses are cheap and filling. Make felafel from chickpeas, or add them to casseroles. Petit Salle is just sausage caserole with lentils.

Roast a chicken on Saturday, shred the meat off it's bones and have in pasta on Sunday.