Has your regular ‘menu’ changed since food prices hike?

[Ilovecleaning]

Mine has. I was never a chicken-nuggets-frozen-pizza mother but a cook-from-scratch cook. This continues into retirement. Now, around 3 meals a week are something like:

• egg, chips, beans
• Heinz Spaghetti on toast with a poached egg on top (I can’t believe it myself 🤣)
• jacket potatoes and whatever I can scrape together from the fridge/freezer

Generally:

• I serve smaller portions of meat, fish, chicken.
• bolognese/chilli bulked out with finely chopped vegetables
• use minced beef to make pies as it is much cheaper than chillis/bolognaise which use a lot more ingredients.
• add diced potatoes to meat pie filling to bulk out even more
• drastically cut down on bought puddings- I make more jellies and rice pudding - far fewer snack food/biscuits/cake in the cupboards.

Has anyone else’s cooking habits changed?

Similar to others - cut down on more expensive meals like salmon, though we have fish once a week, just alternate with frozen cod. Always buy frozen king prawns and use more sparingly.

also cut down on sides eg samosas and poppodoms with a curry.

Trying to have a leftover / freezer meal or jacket potatoes one night.

Not buying lamb unless it’s frozen mince for shepherds pie, bulked out with lentils.

And basically being careful of surprisingly expensive meals such as fajitas which require loads of elements!

Im making bread but that’s more to do with eating less processed food.

experimenting with making soup as that’s gone up a lot - but kids are fussy!

The next thing I need to do is curb spending on baking entertaining!

Dacadactyl makes the chicken stretch to 2 meals and the minced beef chilli is stretched to 2 meals. I think she is being economical.

I really need to Google the price of using hob vs oven. I don’t think I am careful enough about using the oven. I have a gas hob and an electric oven.

To clarify, it's because we are cutting down on the amount of meat and fish used.

So previously, the 4 of us could easily polish off a whole roast chicken on the Sunday. Now I buy a slightly bigger chicken and stretch it over 2 days with more veg.

Previously, the 4 of us would have 2 cans of mackerel in the pasta, now its just one between 4 of us and more veg.

Previously, I could easily use a 500g pack of mince between 4 of us and would have just put in kidney beans and an onion. We could easily have eaten 500g of mince between us in just one meal. Now, I use 250g of mince, pad it out with lentils, peppers, onions, mushrooms, kidney beans, courgette etc and do it over 2 days.

We may be eating meat or fish over 5 of 7 days, but we are using A LOT less of it.

One roast chicken, one can of mackerel and 250g of mince isn't a lot between 4 people over a week (at least not compared to what we used before iyswim)

@Ilovecleaning i have a halogen oven that I use every day , I rarely put my main one on . The halogen is plenty big enough . I’ve had one for years just because it’s convenient as opposed to being cost saving as you don’t need to wait for it to heat up . I did have a Ninja Foodie but I gave it away as we didn’t get along .

For us its more about using the oven less, its so depressing seeing the smart meter shoot up.

I was already vegetarian so used too cooking with lots of veg and pulses. I'm definitely cooking more basic recipes...not so much ottolenghi. And having less variety in the week to make use of buying and cooking in bulk.

Lurking

We have soup for dinner one night a week and another night it is "DIY" so no formal meal cooked, people expected to find something to eat. Do leftovers for lunch. We have always had home made pizza one night.

Yes, home made pizza is very cheap compared with shop bought. I often make my own tomato sauce with tinned tomatoes and herbs plus any scraps, pepper, onion etc. Top with diced smoked streaky bacon and cheese - although cheese is expensive now 😡

Some great ideas here. Thank you 😊. Rice pudding is a childhood pudding I have recently resurrected.

Leek and potato soup with a modest ham sandwich on the side.

We were eating more ultra processed food for about a year, leading to me piling a stone on. We've had to go back to better eating. We eat less meat, and definitely no lamb/steak/most seafood to compensate. I switched to Ocado where everything is better quality and the fresh produce lasts longer (we were throwing so much away), so I find this is better financially. There have been a lot of swaps where branded would normally have been purchased but Ocado/M&S is cheaper and better quality.
Still spending an extra 50% compared to a couple of years ago 😔

Yes, we eat a lot more pasta and cheese now.

I've got better at meal planning to avoid waste and using what we already have in.

Have cut down on eating out but supermarket shop remains similar except I’ve stopped buying specific foods for adult lunches. We can have a sandwich or leftovers. I used to get a few ready meals or fresh soups a week to break things up. Also make sure we have a couple of very cheap meals a week like omelette and chips or jacket and beans. I’m not that keen but I think the rest of the family actually prefer these meals.

Yes, less fish as so expensive (and poor quality). Less red meat because ditto. More pulses and things like ramen in broth with veggies. Still eat chicken. Less 'nice' things for lunch and more simple soups and eating leftovers. Stopped buying wine completely. Less 'nice' treat bits of food overall (eg piece of fancy cheese). Hardly any shopping in artisan food shops or market, way too expensive.

M&S fruit and vegetables are brilliant. Top quality. I waste none or very little. Cheap fruit and vegetables from Aldi are not good quality and they have a very short shelf life.

That's exactly what we found, although it can vary from supermarket to supermarket. There isn't much of a price difference in a lot of stuff sold at M&S and Ocado now, they've started to become really competitive.

Same.

I am cooking the same style of food but buying cheaper, unbranded products and alternatives where I can. Also leaving out expensive elements like pine nuts etc we rarely miss them!

Dh and I stopped eating meat mon-thurs ( environmental reasons too)

Meals for us-
Soup and bread
Omelette and salad
Veggie rice/bulgar:cous cous
Veggie bolognaise
Ona weekend we usually have a chicken dish, a pork or gammon and a mince.

Ds has
Breaded chicken potatoes peas
Jacket potato beans and cheese
Egg beans toast
Omelette and chips
Homemade pizza

Also add red lentils to bulk meals out

This is really quite saddening ☹️ How can you live on that stuff? Does it not make you feel unwell?

We eat more vegetarian food now but even before CoL we were trying to do that. I find it so much easier to just “throw something together” with a bunch of vegetables. They last longer than fresh meat and by the end of the week, it’s a case of chuck whatever is left into a soup or pasta sauce or something.

This is really quite saddening ☹️ How can you live on that stuff? Does it not make you feel unwell

What is going to make her unwell? The odd tin of spaghetti and less meat?

Salmon was a once a week meal now it's maybe once a month.

I've stopped buying chicken breasts and instead buying chicken legs. The kids prefer them so win win!

Saturday night dinner is chicken wings and chips rather than steak or fajitas or a takeaway pizza.

I made my own naan the other day and I'm looking up some fakeaway recipes so we can have a nice curry without the takeaway price.

Also bulking out Bolognese with lentils and grated veg.

Having more veggie meals like mushroom risotto or pasta whereas before we'd have had meat every dinner.

Know this isn’t possible for some but we grow a heck of a lot of our own fruit/veg. DH has just harvested 75 squash which should last a long time. Tonight we’re having a pasta dish with courgettes from garden - very filling and just need ricotta and some chilli flakes. We also had first crop of potatoes a while bsck so he made a bunch of chips to freeze and we’ll often have jacket potatoes once a week (with bacon soured cream cheese and spring onions)

Were definitely cutting down but the shopping bill is still ridiculous as everything has just gone up so much