budget healthy/organic food - how much?

[picklepud]

Sorry if this is a bit cheeky, but trying to simultaneously slash budget and eat more whole/organic food. Looking for tips on keeping costs down and realistic idea of how much I cold feed dh, me, dd (4) and ds (15 months) with a large proportion organic. I cook from scratch but don't think I could grow veg. What do you do? WHat does your weekly menu look like? Do you manage meat or fish most days? We're warming up to pulses but think we'd need a fair bit of meat. Thanks for any suggestions.

I'm looking forward to seeing what other people have to say and getting some good ideas!!

We are a family of 5 with 3 DC's ranging from 5 to 10 months. Most of our fruit, veg and meat is organic but rice, noodles, jars of stuff etc is not. I used to be a vegetarian but we all eat meat now so manage to have a few meat free meals a week.

We buy organic food in bulk from Suma (though Infinity in the South is better!). We also find local organic farms have much cheaper veg than shops / delivery. Eg 20Kg bag of organic potatoes for £10!!

Abel and Cole frequently do an "organic on a budget" article on their leaflet - Couldn't find online in a 30 second search, but you could ask them.

Contraversial but organic meat tends to be better even if more expensive so you possibly need less - eg, I put loads of veg in sheperds pie, risotto, stews etc.

If you need to think about deciding between organic and non organic, think about what motivates you to choose organic and base your decisions on that, eg animal welfare - some "happy meat" farmers only give antibiotics when required rather than routinely so could be a good compromise, inorganic residues are lower in some foods than others and some foods are not a big part of your diet - eg herbs etc. If it's an environmental driver, organic food shipped from the other side of the world may not be better than non organic grown down the road. And some might be a "no compromise", some nutritionists say that if you do one thing it should be milk, others say meat and for me it's unsulphured dried fruit! Fish is tricky as organic = farmed and I'm not sure where on the moral highground that fits compared to poached on the neighbouring organically farmed estate?

Some typical meals:
Noodle soup
Roast chicken (with chicken stew and stock for the freezer)
Rice, fish and veg
Puy lentils (with veg, bacon and grated apple) goes down a lot better than it should given how "earthy" it looks!!
Tofu, veg and noodles.
Sheperds pie
Pasta and vegetables
Happy meat (not organic) sausages, mash and peas
Homemade Fish fingers ("happy fish" - not cheaper than shop bought!!)

I have a veg box so have to eat what we're given, mostly seasonal - a typical week includes

Stir fry anything stir fryable
Roast vegetables and chicken
Couple of meat/fish-and-potato-and-veg meals
Pasta with any suitable accompaniment
Casserole or cottage pie
Pizza with salad/coleslaw (there is cabbage all year)
Hearty soups
Veg/chickpea curry with anything I can't figure out what to do with.

Farm shop/farmers market definitely cheapest, especially for things that will store/freeze.

Rather than getting too hung up on 'organic' particularly we try to eat 'local' and 'seasonal'. I don't think it helps either my budget or the planet to eat organic grapes shipped in from somewhere exotic thousands of miles away. A British apple is cheaper and just as good... if it's organic, great.

Mostly I shop at a big supermarket. However, I buy organic milk and dairy products from our milkman. Meat comes from a local organic farm but probably only eat twice a week as a treat because it's expensive. Fish about once a week on average. My weekly menu would be based at the moment around winter crops such as root veg, cabbage, leeks, potatoes, celery... We eat a lot of casseroles & soups with beans and chickpeas for protein but yesterday I made a beef casserole using very tasty but cheaper shin beef and cooked on a low light for several hours. As it's not worth making this kind of dish in tiny amounts I cook a bulk quantity and freeze in portions to save time another day.

Come spring and summer the menu is going to change to more English salad crops, runner beans, corn etc. And we'd also buy berries and northern hemisphere stone-fruit. I quite like the way we eat different things with the seasons. We look forward to something new.

I economise a lot in other areas. We would eat oats or eggs rather than expensive breakfast cereals. We make our own bread in a bread-machine from organic flour... Even accounting for the cost of the machine and the electricity it's defintely paid for itself compared to commercial loaves. Packed lunches are standard and we don't really eat out much.

I'm shopping for two and my weekly bill for all groceries, toiletries and cleaning products is about £40-50

has taken me ages to get back to this one - thank you for helpful responses