help me to cut our average weekly food bill of £200 to 120, please!!!!

[mrsStubborn]

family of 4 plus a large dog.

anything is anything, we don't eat pork. Chicken everyday is boring and dp wont eat mince or oven food. or even things like cottage pie or spaghetti bolagnese.

I have tried and failed to cut it down.

forgot yoghurts, eggs, tinned beans, 4 tins of tuna, tinned sweetcorn, some microwave rice for emergencies, 4 litres of fruit juice, 2 packs of chocolate digestives, onions, garlic, pack of plain flour, pack of muffins and some microwavable puddings for the boys.

Already have spices etc and some basics in the cupboards and fridge.

Vixx send him shopping then.

Vixx I'd say your dp was the problem! If you're serious about wanting to cut down then he needs to eat differently. We are on a tight budget at the moment, we have no choice but to eat differently. Personally I'm not a fan of mince at all but when you can get a big bag of frozen mince for £3 at tesco and a big bag of their value mince for £2 ish that will do 3 or 4 meals for 4 in various things you can't afford to be fussy.... We also have a lot of egg and potato type nights (egg and chips, omelette and salad, quiche and salad and potato etc). Eggs are quite cheap and good for you.

Value veg for £2 I meant... not two bags of mince!

Vixx the 3 for £10 meat portions are not the problem if you only buy the items which are most expensive by weight. Cheaper types of meat are one of the easiest ways to slash food bills.

Have you got any receipts to look through?

I have found it useful to break down receipts to look at where the money is going.

Things like nice shampoo/ conditioner plus a bit of makeup can add to the bill.

How much is cleaning products/ household/ toilet paper etc?

How much is luxuries like wine/ beer/ snacks/ chocolates?

How much meat?

How much fruit/ veg?

How much is processed/ ready meals?

How much is store cupboard staples?

Next I tend to look at favourite family meals and price them. For example we used to like fajitas quite often. I'd buy chicken breast, a fajita kit, guacamole, sour cream, grated cheese, bag lettuce, tomatoes, onions, wedges. As a meal it worked out more per head than steak and chips. I'd rather steak and chips and mentally I thought of it as a cheap midweek meal, it wasn't.

Pesto and pasta is something we also enjoy, quick and easy and very low cost per head.

Reducing the overall shopping bill can be helped by planning your meals, as everyone has suggested, but also costing them so you have a balance.

I think most people can find an excuse - dont like bargain brands / aldi, children / dp wont eat X, dont have time to plan / shop / cook from scratch. I think as someone else has said, if you are committed to saving money, you have to change.

I agree that a local market is brilliant for fruit and veg, good local butcher and planning. I would seriously have to put the whole lot back and start again if the bill was £100 nevermind £200.

We are a family of 5.

Not everyone has access to a local market or it isn't open at a time that they are not at work, so it isn't always that easy, they are maybe not just making an excuse for excuses sake.

That said, planning will definitely help as will people not being so fussy - Without a significant change to lifestyle or working arrangements, I couldn't feed us all on much less than £130ish a week. That is nowhere near the £200 in the OP though so even with a lack of shopping around it's perfectly possible to slash that budget. Not buying too many ready meals helps but tbf some work out reasonable. I used to buy a large cottage pie for £5 that would feed us all with just peas and carrots on the side. so, probably £1.50 a head. I would struggle to make a cottage pie for that. Can't buy it anymore as they have "improved" the recipe by adding diced carrots and now DS1 wont eat it :(

sounds like a lot of waste, a lot of paying for ads and packaging and a lack of planning.

will you post a list, OP?

Are there any threads which have cheap meal ideas?

I do really want to cut down as well as the op.

a pack of chicken is about 3quid. But theres only so much you can do with that!

Does anyone have any recipes.

Dp buys crap when shopping so I'd never send him!

Loads of these ideas about bulking up with veg and puddings etc are great and a bowl of pasta with a decent tomato/veg based sauce is cheap and healthy. However, I don't think they can be a permanent healthy option for long term everyday eating.

Everyone needs protein, and particularly fast growing teens need protein in sufficient quantities to fund their muscle growth. Obviously that doesn't necessarily need to come from meat, but a lot of protein sources are expensive and the cheaper ones are generally the ones that fussy people are less inclined to eat. A good cheap one I have found is tinned mackerel in olive oil. DS1 is quite fussy and doesn't really like stews and things with a lot of gravy (though he will eat mince) so sometimes if we are having that, he will have a tin of mackerel (currently about 70p) drained and mixed with a packet of rice (50p) and some spices and soy sauce and tabasco with frozen peas chucked in for some colour. It's cheap, nutritious and filling and he'll have a banana or something with it if there aren't veg he likes on the go.

We also have an omelette night or french toast night every so often which is pretty cheap and we do a big fruit salad for after since it doesn't involve much veg.

Vixx - I buy £3 worth of chicken drumsticks, I chuck them in a roasting dish with a bit of olive oil and spices or I mix a chicken stock cube with a little oil and warm water and maybe a dash of soy sauce and coat them in it and roast for about 45 mins or until they are at the stage you like them ( we like them a bit crispy on the outside and still juicy inside) and we serve with some instant noodles on the side and a corn on the cob. £3 worth is usually enough for 3 each if they are small, sometimes I buy more and we have extra for lunch boxes.

I also make this recipe a lot: www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/1167651/chicken-and-chorizo-jambalaya

Another favourite is to make home made cheese sauce and we will usually have mac and cheese but I make enough sauce to do a huge dish of cauliflower and broccoli mornay too. I'll have that instead of the pasta as it's a lot less calories and I don't need them. tough I will sometimes add some chopped grilled cheap bacon into it for interest.

I do toad in the hole which is pretty cheap. Home made yorkshire batter is cheap and even decent sausages are fairly inexpensive relatively - there are always loads in the bargain area at the supermarket too.

Asda do £2 cook from frozen chicken breasts , 500g which is great. And actually an adult's portion should be 80g.

There are lots of threads on here about cheap eats and if you go on the bbc good food website, there are budget meals / freezable meals / family dinners etc.

I think most markets are open on a Saturday, as are local shops which no doubt are accessible to most people. It doesn't need to be a huge supermarket shop every week. I do think it really is a question of putting some time and thought into thinking about what you can do and how you can save without it impacting on your lifestyle / requiring massive changes. Just for instance, if I know I am going to be in the kitchen making a meal, I never just make one meal - so if I'm stood there stirring a risotto for 20 minutes, I'll have some veggies roasting in the oven that I'll whizz into a pasta sauce. And I never ever just make bolognese sauce / lasagne whatever for one meal, I always double the quantities and freeze the other half.

And whilst I agree that protein is important particularly for growing children, it doesn't necessarily need to be 1 full portion per person - so if we were having chicken for instance, I wouldn't use 5 chicken breasts for the 5 of us, I'd use 4 or even 3 if they were large.

And I never cook separate meals for any members of the family which I think must invariably increase the cost of food, but I don't have fussy eaters so no need.

And if it helps, keep a tally of what you're saving. For us, an extra £100 a week would obviously be £5,200 over the course of a year. Even £50 a week would be £2,600. Thats a very nice holiday?? Deposit for a car?? Paying off the overdraft?? Is that worth a bit of meal planning and a trip to the green grocer??

Meal planning all the way, and I have found online grocery shopping the best way to reduce the food bills. I love Asda. Shop online and set yourself a budget (£70 a week in our case for two adults and two children, including all food and drink, cleaning stuff, nappies etc). Put stuff in your online shopping basket - gulp when you see the total, then start taking unnecessary stuff out/swapping for a cheaper alternative until you are within your budget.

We easily manage on just one shop a week by -

• freezing milk so there is enough to last the week
• making bread/keeping some in the freezer
• planning fruit and veg, so things that don't keep get eaten first (berries, bananas, soft fruit etc, then apples and pears towards the end of the week). Carrots keep for ages and are dirt cheap.
• growing our own where possible, obviously there isn't so much scope for that at this time of year.
• Buying meat when on offer and keeping in the freezer. I actually get most of our meat and fish from Ocado when it is half price.

Batch cooking helps stretch the budget, as does careful planning, e.g. chicken roast on Sunday, followed by chicken and veg pie made from some of the leftovers on Monday, then a chicken curry on Tuesday to finish up the leftover chicken.

Eat more veg and less meat - just adjust the portion sizes of each.

Use frozen veg - frozen peppers, mushrooms etc are perfectly fine - impossoble to tell they were frozen once they are in spag bol etc.

Use a slow cooker if you have one - cheaper cuts of meat cook very well in a slow cooker and it is very economical to run.

Buy things that keep in bulk -rice, oats, pasta etc.

Try 'value' brands - I'm amazed at how much 'value' stuff is indistinguishable from the big brands once it is out of the packaging.

Online shopping can definitely help to cut it down. I use click and collect at Tesco mostly - I put everything in my basket, check the total, then take out the things I like to choose myself - bananas, meat, green veg, bread mostly and make a separate list and choose those by hand, by popping into the store before I collect my grocery order. Or I can pop in there after, in case there are any missing items from my order. It only adds an extra 15 mins to me collecting the groceries, and click and collect is free in most places. Because you've done it online you're not so tempted by shit offers, you've got more time to think about your meals, you don't buy random stuff from homewares, toys or the shampoo section and you know within a few pence usually, what the total will cost.

We spend about £105 for 2 adults, an 8yo, 6yo and 2.4yo, no pets, this includes all cleaning/laundry/night nappies/wipes/basic toiletries. One week it might go to £110, but then I'll have 2 weeks of a £95 shop so it evens out. And we eat meat at least 4 times a week, probably 4 fruit/veg portions a day plus juice, vitamins, plenty of branded stuff in there cos it works for us, I tend not to skimp if I can help it.

Happy to share some receipts or lists in the future, I haven't any here at present. I try to buy it all on one day, as I know a trip to local shop for bread will result in a £10 extra bits and pieces spend!

It can be done - we were spending approx. £370 monthly on food plus cat food. We really needed to cut back our spending and the last six months I've spent £200 a month on our food and have started giving the cats cheaper brands and less treats. We maybe eating differently, but we are still eating well and no one has gone hungry.

I've worked out which items are cheaper in Lidl and get them from there, the rest is from Tescos. I do look for offers on goods we use, generally buy Tescos own brand or even value - their tinned tomatoes are good for recipes, value biscuits are fine, even the bread. If I'm buying freezer food, I look at the approx. cost per portion and think about whether there is something else I can buy mealwise cheaper. Supermarkets do rotate what they have on offer, so buy a couple of something you use and wait until it's on offer again.

I try to stick to £80 for 4 of us. £20 meat/fish usually an expensive thing (beef joint/ leg of lamb or some really nice fish) then 2 or 3 cheaper things such as chicken,bacon,cheap fish (or fish cakes), mince or sausages. £20 fruit and veg ; always buy 2-3 kg carrots, 2kg potatos, 1kg onions, broccoli , cerely cucumber, cherry toms and lettuce (roughly£5)plus a couple of more expensive items like mushrooms, peppers or avocados. Again with fruit basics are clementines, apples and bananas, then 1 or 2 more expensive like berries or melon. Similar with dairy basics are milk, butter, yoghurt and cheddar plus usually 2 or 3 extras such as ParmaSan,feta or brie, but not all the same week. We spend about £5 on bread and pasta with weekly one of rice, cous cous or noodles. £5 on tins and the last £10 is treats ( wine, coffee, juice, crisps etc). Hope that helps.