Can't afford to feed my husband

[Prusik]

Gah, the title sounds pathetic! Please don't rip me to pieces for the fact that he should be feeding himself but it's the simplest summary I can give.

DH is 6ft7 and skinny. He eats a lot to maintain his weight. He's both milk and egg free (milk is allergy, egg is intolerance as his gut tends to get inflamed). He also tries to avoid sugar as he was finding he was getting major energy slumps during the day and reaching for sweets.

Ok, so here goes. I did the food shop last night and it was £100. Haven't bought any luxury items apart from I bought four cartons of supermarket brand apple juice and haven't yet bought meat for the week.

Try to fill him up on protein, ie nuts, chicken wraps, etc as empty carbs just don't seem to cut it. I rely on cheap meat where I can, we eat a lot of mince. And I bulk things out with cheap veg and potatoes. We cook chilli with beans, pulses, etc and I make my own humous as that's a good fix and so much cheaper than the supermarkets.

I'm just at my wit's end. For various reasons we're now at the arse end of poor. We're going down to one vehicle and are really struggling. We don't buy coffees out, don't go anywhere which costs parking... everything we do is free. But I'm still struggling to afford to feed DH. I do buy fruit in for the baby and am starting to cut corners with what I eat just so DH and Ds can be fed. I'm not going without but will just have jam on toast for lunch rather than anything better as I don't want to use food up. This is far from ideal as I'm 28 weeks pregnant change in circumstances happened after I conceived

We get tax credits and child benefit.

Any tips for feeding a very hungry person on the cheap?? He's not greedy, he genuinely needs the food. ds is beginning to look like he will be the same

Have you checked on muscle food or protein world they do big meat hampers. I used to buy them and divide them up and freeze.

They do new customer offers etc

Check out local butchers for deals. You might find them on Facebook. One of my local ones has this for €20:
Joint roast beef
Large fresh chicken
Joint loin pork or bacon
2 supreme of chicken
Tray dinner sausages
Tray spicy wings
Tray steak burgers
Tray famous sausage burgers
Tray bbq style drumsticks
2 large stuffed chicken legs
Tray garlic potatoes or garlic bread
Tray spicy wedges and onion rings mixed
2 chilli ginger chicken steaks

My DH has a manual job and needs a big lunch, so we often make a huge chilli, or curry and he takes it with him over a few days. A huge bag of jasmine rice is €10 in the local Asian market. Much cheaper than the supermarket.

Aj all three of them have dietary/allergy issues I’m in the same boat with only one of us (me) with this issue and struggle to keep food costs down so I’m not overly surprised by the spend.

Can you make your own bread? Bread maker not required. Let it prove over night every night and bake first thing. That costs pennies.
Is there a market near you where you could buy your veg & fruit? If not, is there one near your husbands work & he could go at lunchtime?
Iceland’s Food Warehouse sell chicken breasts amazingly cheap. Lidl for the rest. Some Lidl’s are fabulous (Poole, I’m thinking of you).
Write a menu for the week and rotate stuff & use a wide mouth flask for chuncky veg soups.
If you want to buy a bread maker get one second hand, they are amazingly cheap & you can make fruit loaf in them too.
Rice cakes & wraps are a waste of money in terms of nutritional value. Rye bread keeps you fuller for longer and is much better for you. And google how to make almond milk, it’s not difficult.
Good luck - you’ll get through this!

It sounds like you are working really hard OP in what sounds like a very difficult situation. If your DH is insisting on eating bags of almonds and other higher cost food while your food budget has been slashed and in addition is trying to self medicate and diagnose his way around possible food allergys he really isn't managing the best he can. I completely agree that he needs to take responsibility for his health, by eating poor quality food yourself so he doesn't have to make any changes you are enabling him not to do so. If he is a decent bloke I am sure this is thoughtlessness on his part and not deliberate.

Someone else has already mentioned it but please look at musclefood website. I buy meat for my sister who is changing to universal credit and it has been a life saver! They do regular deals and you can stock up. An example was recently I bought their lean hamper for £45 and got the same amount again for free. This was 5kg of chicken plus burgers, meatballs, sausages bacon. Their meat is good quality to.

I don’t work for them either but believe they are good value.

When my daughter was egg/dairy free I used the Allergy-free Family Cookbook for most of our meals - it is without the 14 main allergens so would be fine/good for you all. I'm sure not all the meals in it are cheap but it has loads of freezable options like risotto, chilli, chicken & bacon stew, paella etc that you could do in bulk.

The poor bloke is going to be hammered when he gets home tonight his parents are bringing dinner up today as I've been poorly so as soon as they've gone I'll try and chat to him. Might have to be tomorrow as his dad is pretty draining as he has quite complex mental health issues but for now I've made lentil soup and put some overnight oats in the fridge. He'll appreciate it, I know that. But he'd also better bloody enjoy it

Weve never been wealthy but with careful planning and no splashing out we've always been able to afford decent food. Eating what we fancy has always been our luxury. I do want to tread a little lightly as our fall from grace is purely down to the loss of dh's business. He was self employed for twelve years so he's taken a massive knock this year

Downgrading to one family car will definitely free up some extra money, although it's difficult to adjust to. Cars are so expensive to run!

I hope you can use some of the advice here to improve things. It's probably harder to shop on a small budget when you've been used to having more disposable income, your whole mindset has to change. It is possible though.

Oh we eat a lot of risotto too. Is good for using up leftovers. We are good mumsnetters and buy whole chickens and boil down the bones for stock to make risotto. Also whole prawns but they are more expensive

Liver is cheap as long a not calves liver

Ok, so here's the damage. Looking at it like this it's clear things have to change.

1 Morrisons Bananas £0.94
4 Morrisons Long Life Unsweetened Almond Milk Alternative £5.60
1 Bisto Reduced Salt Gravy Granules £1.00
1 Hula Hoops Original £1.00
4 Morrisons Almonds £8.00
1 Morrisons Cream Crackers £0.40
1 Morrisons Mini Blueberry Wheats £1.95
1 Morrisons Porridge Oats £1.18
3 Morrisons Salt and Vinegar Rice Cakes £2.85
4 Morrisons Salted Peanuts £7.00
1 Morrisons Sultanas £1.57
1 Nairns Rough Oatcakes £1.00
1 Weetabix Minis Chocolate £1.50
2 Whitworths Soft Dates £3.00
1 Morrisons Apple Juice £2.90
1 Morrisons No Added Sugar Lemon Single Concentrate Squash £0.85
1 Morrisons Toilet Tissue White £4.92
1 OXO Softworks Can Opener £7.95
1 Morrisons Paracetamol 500 Mg Caplets £0.30
3 KTC Chick Peas (400g) £1.00

Fridge

1 Alpro Soya Single Cream £0.94
1 Morrisons Baby Potatoes £0.87
2 Morrisons' Carvery Breaded Ham 10 Slices £4.00
2 Morrisons Chicken Breast Fillets £11.88
1 Morrisons Closed Cup Mushrooms £0.85
1 Morrisons Cucumber £0.45
1 Morrisons Free Range Eggs Medium £1.77
1 Morrisons King Edward Potatoes £1.85
1 Morrisons Market St Hot Rocket Salad £1.00
1 Morrisons Satsuma £1.25
1 Morrisons Seedless Mixed Grape Selection £1.72
1 Morrisons Sweet Potatoes £1.00
1 Morrisons Wonky Vegetables Selection Box £3.00
1 M savers Lard £0.42
3 Vitalite Dairy Free Spread £3.60
2 Morrisons Wholemeal Tortilla Wraps £1.80

Freezer

1 Morrisons 4 Chicken & Vegetable Pies £2.00
1 Morrisons Broccoli Florets £1.22
1 Morrisons Corn on the Cob £0.75
1 Morrisons Roast Potatoes £1.00
1 Taj Diced Garlic £1.07

DH is planning on buying some liver and making up some pate over the weekend. Mostly making it for DS but I'll have a small amount

A full English isn't that expensive, surely?

If you buy all the cheapest bacon/ sausage/ bread.

Very calorific and filling though.

2 Morrisons Chicken Breast Fillets £11.88
whoah, British chicken prices are high! Or how big are these fillets?! That's more than 13 euros, I'd pay just over a euro per 100g here in Germany.

Admittedly from Lidl and not a farm shop ...

4 Morrisons Almonds £8.00
4 Morrisons Salted Peanuts £7.00

That's £15 on nuts - what size bags? How long will that last for? If he wants to have some nuts to snack on there's got to be a cheaper way to buy them.

I think that means 2 packs ravenmum!

Ravenmum that's probably two kilo packs of chicken breast fillets rather than just two individual fillets!

Baguettes are a really good idea

No, baguettes are sugary white doughy pap.

You should feed him as if he is an Irish farm hand, nobody eats like those fellas. Mountains of floury spuds with some meat and cheap veg. Nobody goes hungry on that.

I've deleted a couple of packs of rice cakes and one of the packs of peanuts. Problem is if that's all he eats I'm going to have to wean him off slowly

They are big packs of chicken breasts. They'll do two evening meals for the three of us, plus two lunches for DS and I and four lunches for DH - I think

The nuts will probably last just over a week, maybe ten days

Just on the peanuts front - from google I'd guess they're the 400g bags,
4 x £1.75 is £7. So that's 43.8p per 100g. You can get Morrisons savers peanuts for half that price, 24p per 100g it's still only peanuts, oil and salt. groceries.morrisons.com/webshop/product/M-savers-Salted-Peanuts/217763011

It's a very infantilising way to speak about your husband. You sound like you're talking about either a toddler or a pet.

Buy him a loaf of bread every day and give him a jar of peanut butter. Or get him to buy it out of his pocket money.

I don't normally buy the cereal. That's for me as I'm a bit funny with bread during pregnancy. The veg box is a new purchase so no idea what that'll be like. Oat cakes are a new purchase - wanted to see if DS would have them with some humous as a snack. Also, I don't normally buy the pies

If £15 worth of nuts is lasting him less than 10 days then while you're on a tight budget he needs to find a cheaper form of snacks. You wouldn't be going out and treating yourself to a takeaway coffee every day right now, would you? If he's oblivious to the cost of food then now is time for him to learn. He needs to know what your weekly food budget is and what proportion of that is currently being spent solely on snacks for him.