Please help me economise

[LEMAGAIN]

Right!! THATS IT im not spending another penny i don't need to on food. But i want to eat HEALTHY, TASTY food, but its gotta be cheap as chips.

I struggled in tesco today to get four meals for £20, no essentials in that lot, just food for meals and a pint of milk. I got a chicken, some tuna (tinned) a pack of seasonal veg (carrots, potato and parsnips) sausages and diced beef for a pie, oh and some bramley apples.

I will never stretch that for a week (luckily i wont have to) but our shopping usually comes in between £80-£100 and im like where does it all go. I don't buy processed foods, i cook from scratch, but its mostly meat and veg or something

HELP!!!!! Money saving tips wanted, i want my shopping bill down to £50 a week including cleaning stuff and bog roll. There is me, DP, DD (aged 3) and a small dog.

Plan a weeks meals in advance, buy online and only buy what you need for your meals + your weekly staples like bread, loo rolls etc. Doing this has saved us vast amounts of money. You may find doing this once a fortnight saves even more.

Go for basics/savers/whatever range for everything and see if you can bear it, and if not, try the next level up (supermarket own brand but not basics).

Have you checked out moneysaving expert? The forums esp old style are great.

Things like using porridge oats to bulk up minced beef. Homemade cleaning solutions.

I always get my toilet roll from Somerfield as every other week they are fantastic offers. Eg 9 rolls £2.50 and its decent stuff.

I think £50 a week is unrealistic. Food costs what it costs. Sure, you could feed yourselves and the dog and keep your house clean for £50, but it would be mononotonous carb heavy and not particularly healthy or tasty. IMO.

Def agree with online shopping. It helps me budget, plus I can check out the special offers and adjust meal plan if necessary. There are always free delivery codes somewhere.

If you are going to shop online I would recommend Asda over tescos. If they subsuite a product its always a more expensive product and they dont charge you the extra money. However Tescos do charge you the extra but you can reject the sub...but if Its something I need its hard to reject!

It's not unrealistic, just difficult. My total budget for a family of 6 (no dog, though) is £100. We eat organic fruit and veg too, and our milk comes from a milkman, so it could be much less than that if necessary.

Lindenlass...can you post a weeks meal plan or some meal ideas? Sounds like you have it sorted!

My food bill came down when I started meal planning.

Last month dd and I sat down and made a 4 week meal planner. I stuck to it religiously and found that
a) I didn't have to waste spare time chewing my thumb nail over what to eat that evening, and
b) my shopping bill reduced.

I also spend less doing an on-line shop.

Last week I also bought the Value loo paper from Tesco. I tried this a couple of years ago and thought it was terrible stuff. However, I don't see a problem with it now. I think it's improved now. It's a little bit rougher on the bum than the expensive "soft" stuff, but at £1.17 for 12 rolls instead of £4-£5 then I'm not complaining.

What i find when i buy too far in advance or sort of menu plan, is that i don't fancy what i have planned. I have wasted food like this in the past . But i will just have to be more imaginative in my planning. Felt good tonight because dinner was great, we had my mother over and we had apple pie and custard for the cost of the apples (£1) and a pint of milk.

Find the value bog roll blocks my toilet though

LEMAGAIN, just because you meal plan doesn't mean you have to have a certain thing on a certain night. Just you have 7 meals lined up so you don't have to worry about it. Or plan for a weeks meals & throw in a few extra bits so you can adapt or change a meal if you really don't fancy it

How about shopping around? Perhaps you have a weekly local market close by where you can buy fruit and veg cheaper than the supermarket, which might help the budget? I also try to look out for things on special offer, for example, chickens and then freeze some which I can then use over a few weeks.

My mealplans? They're a bit boring . Mince is cheap and easily bulk-out-able so I do a few mince meals a week - lasagne , spaghetti bolognaise. I remember my mum had a book called something like 'a 100 things to do with mince' - I keep meaning to look for it on amazon. I don't do this, but I also mean to look up recipe books from the war years - should be full of handy hints to make food go further and still be nice to eat! Anyway, because you add so much to it, you can buy cheap mince (but the frozen stuff IMHO is a waste of money because you get so much water with it!)

We have jacket potatoes with beans and tuna and cheese.

Oh, stew is a great meal because you cook it for so long you can get away with buying really cheap meat - in fact, the cheaper the better for stew!

Bangers and mash is nice and simple and very yummy indeed (sausages is one thing I don't get the cheap ones of though!).

Buying for two weeks saves on the delivery costs as it's usually free for over £100 (we use sainsburys).

We actually don't eat snacks and treats v. often - we don't have puddings and make biscuits or cakes if we want a treat, rather than buying them. I prefer to spend extra money on getting organic stuff than on treats!

We found that using our breadmachine to make all our bread is now cheaper than buying the bread we were buying, so that saves us a few pennies. And we bake it the day before we want to eat it so it's easier to cut - thinner slices!

Make food you can put the leftovers from in the fridge and re-heat the next day for lunch.

Will post again if I think of anything else

Our meal plan this week is

Mexican Bean Fajitas

Lentil Soup

Chilli Con Carne and bulghar wheat (not rice)

Hot chicken Salad

Stuffed Pancakes

Toad in the Hole

Tortilla (with potatoes and veggies)

that is for 2 adults and 2 children.

The trick is to train the family not to need meat at every meal. DH eats lunch at work and the children have packed lunches. I try and bake instead of buying cakes for lunches and only buy fruit on offer.

Some really good ideas here - hmmm, this could become my personal challenge i think. I grew my own veg for the past two years but i think im going to scale it down this year as to be honest, it didn't work out much cheaper - but will do beans and tomato's as those are always good.

What is bulghar wheat like? It looks nice, but ive never had it - why not rice? Or is it just the change you like?

We likes the pasta in this house and you are right, i have got into the habit over my life of having to have meat

Recipes recipes please?????

veg growing - see it as a family project for fun, rather than as a money saving activity, unless you have a HUGE plot and lots and lots of time!

I am loving the personal challenge of saving money and totting up the saved pennies at the end of every four weeks - very gratifying!

Spag bol: fry up onion to soften, stick in mince and cook stirring until brown, add tin of chopped tomatoes (basics of course!), a splash of ketchup and worcestershire sauce, and some mixed herbs. Also add a tin of basics baked beans. Yum, yum, yum. Can have as base for shepherds pie, put with spaghetti or rice. If you leave out the beans, then it's the base for lasagne. Make your own cheese sauce - v. easy. Melt a big knob of butter, add milk (3/4pt is enough for us, but you might need to experiment), grated cheese and a tablespoon of cornflour per 1/4pt (so 3 tbsp for a 3/4pt mixture). Cook on low-med heat and make sure you stir it, especially near the end as it thickens and boils - turn off as soon as it boils. basics lasagne sheets are fine. Soak them in boiling water for a minute or two to make it easier to use.

Stew: cut up whatever veg you want in big chunks. Soften onion/leeks, add in stewing meat (if you put stewing meat in a hole-less plastic bag and put in a few tablespoonsful of flour and shake it up to coat the meat, there's your ready-made thickener!), and stir until browned. Add in veg and some mixed herbs. Pour over boiling water to just cover everything. Crumble in a couple of stock cubes. Stick in oven on low (150-180 C) for 1.5hr-2hr to get the meat really yummy and tender. Have with mash or rice! Can also do same thing but with chicken breasts - put the chicken on the top of the mixture though, not in it. Can have dumplings too - cheap way to fill tummies - recipe on packet.

We don't do meal plans. Buy joints - then dice it yourself as it's cheaper than buying diced meat. Or eat the left overs in a stir fry with lots of veg.

Pearl barley is a filling and cheap ingredient for stews, if you can get anyone to eat it. Buy some pork and beans for another cheap meal.

Veg are cheaper than meat - make vegetable soups or curries, eat beans or cheese on toast or omelette and serve with salad. You can grow salad leaves even if you don't have a garden.

Toilet roll I won't economise on but Sainsburys own brand is OK.

For future years plant an apple tree or two, even if you train it along a fence.

My little tip is to making a big batch of home made tomato sauce and freezing in small pots.
You put an onion, garlic, any herb you like (I like basil), tomatoes (preferably pealed but not essential), chopped carrots, a tiny pinch of sugar, a bit of salt, a bit of water. Let the whole thing boil slowly until the tomatoes are soft, then blend everything.

You can use it with chicken, meat, pasta, fish, etc. I tend to make a patch and freeze it in smaller pots and use it once or twice a week.

It is also good to make big patches of soup (broccoli, mushroom, spinach) and freeze. I give a small bowl of soup before the main course to give my DCs some more veg, specially the smallest one who is a fussy eater). Very little waste doing it this way.

I never give them ice cream or treats like that (only on weekends when going out). For dessert they get chopped fruit with natural yogurt (they love it). I am finding the fruit eats up a lot of my food budget though.

The sausage meal sounds yum!!

Am following this thread with interest. The only thing i'd add is cous cous. Filling and my DC love it. They also enjoy pasta bakes.

If everyones DC have a cooked lunch in school, do you then cook for them again in the evenings? Sometimes I just do sandwiches,fruit salad and a yoghurt.

Mintty - I disagree, I can easily (when I put my mind to it keep my family and buy nappies cleaning stuff etc for £50 a week, and feed them healthily.

Definitely meal plan, like others have said you don't have to do X on Y day, so long as you've got the ingredients for all of the meals on your list for that week it's enough.

If things are only available in quantities that are too big for just one meal, make sure you plan meals which use the excess up.

theres alot of interesting tips and ideas here i to would like to cut down on my weekly shop, which is normally about £140 approx.

There are 6 of us, 2 adults 2 teenagers and 1 nearly teenager and a ds 8, we also have 2 cats and a tortoise.

ive tried the cats on cheaper food but its gives them very upset tummys so have to stick with felix abut find im giving them more dried and they enjoy it.

tortoise i do pick as much free stuffs from garden but still have to buy leaves etc from shop.

now i do a menu and list weekly but it never seems to be cheap. I wouls ideally like it to be under £100 if at all possible.
Every one of us takes a packed lunch incl dh who does manual work and is therefore always hungry.

Plus to add to it all i hate cooking and have little time for preparation durin the week days.

We like to eat healthy meals and all eat at least 1/2 pieces of fruit per day which i finds adds alot onto my bill.

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Pruners - I do that, I buy bulk sizes of non-perishables, or things with long lifes - always scutinising the cost per kg/ltr/whatever to make sure it really is a deal.

I'm about to finish my massive box of washing powder.........that I bought just before Christmas

and today I bought another pack of Cheerios at the Co-op (despite the new box only being opened today) because the special offer is going to end soon - it's curently just £1 a box.