Please help me reduce food bills

[TheGander]

We are a family of foodies. There’s 2 DS: 18 and 22, both live at home , plus DH and me. Apart from DH who can only cook about 3 dishes, the boys and me love cooking. But it’s gotten out of hand, I estimate I can spend £40 per day so that’s £1200 pm, half my salary. I’m the main earner. The boys are obsessed with chicken, each meal has to have a protein.DH doesn’t eat meat. We shop mostly at Sainsbury’s, also Waitrose about once a week and Lidl occasionally. Trying to be more mindful, planning meals, agreeing on some value meals either the boys. Any other ideas? TIA.

chicken for husband has to be free range, preferably organic
Thought you said DH doesn't eat meat.
Do you buy chicken breast swap to legs they are so much cheaper. Skin on with a roast. Skin off with different marinades with salad and side.
Now it's getting colder cheaper meals like cottage pie and veg. Sausages, mash, peas. Fishcakes, wedges, peas. Curry and rice. Chilli, fajitas. Spaghetti bolognaise, pies.
Just seen you do some of these.
Why do you buy a curry and not make it with a paste.

I use mob app for batch cooking. Its brilliant. £30 for a years membership but I think you can get a free trial, try that and checK out the batch cooking sections.

i use tesco for premium products and then aldi for everything else. Butchers for meat.

i may have missed it but £40 a day (?!) is fine if everyones chipping in aye

bulk out mince dishes with lentals, oats grated root vegg,

try too good to go

make a big humus out of chicpeas for wraps

by frozen fruits and veggitables and fish

show boys levels of protein in say tofu with peanut and soy sauce rice bowl with veg inc frozen edamami and greek yogurt with a chopped banana and sprinkle of oasted alnonds

chicken gyros with less chicken but greek yoguryt dips and loads of vegg and chips
pull or shrred chicken or pork to make it go further
would tjhe boys eat say home nade bake beans including herbs and spices and perhaps ch cheritzo and peppers on baked potatoes?

veggitable and goats cheese tarts

tagine

If you get the Lidl app they have

a 5 meals for £20 recipe idea
plus

Once you spend £250 in a month you get a 10% discount on your next shop up to a maximum of £20 off.

If they are obsessed with protein like my son, who is a gym bunny, get big pack of chicken breasts from lidl £12.50, 8+ large breasts. Packs of chicken mince £3.50(add bread crumbs and onion to make chichen meat balls or burgers) In the freezer section bassa fillets are very reasonable as are prawns. Lots of eggs, Skyr yogurts big tubs are reasonable. Tinned butter beans and lentils very cheap.Try one week just Lidl, one just Aldi,Asda etc then you can find what suits you.

The answer is not to let them hoover up the left overs - I have a DH who will do this. So buy and roast the largest chicken. Serve a quarter of the breast plus thighs etc for the roast with a lot of veg yorkshires and spuds etc. Put the rest in tinfoil and in the fridge and say it isn't for left overs. Then the next day you can have curry with the whole chicken breast. Pick over the carcass and bung it in the slow cooker to make stock. Then make a risotto with loads of veg (green beans/peas etc for extra protein) plus the remaining chicken and a bit of bacon for flavour. Next day a veggie chilli with loads of beans (Cookie and Kate has a great recipe) with a couple of big dollops of Marmite for extra umami. Serve with a tomato and sweetcorn salsa and a big salad plus rice or wraps. Box up a portion for the freezer before serving. Then a spag bog where you use 1 portion of lentils to 2 portions of meat plus 2 portions of sofritto. Again a dollop of Marmite makes it taste meatier than it should. Again box up a portion to freeze or use later. If you use it later bulk it out with more beans or peas or lentils and top with mash for a quick cottage pie. Even if the big organic chicken cost £20 you've got 3 dinners from it.

I agree with the suggestion to serve soup as a first course - I have a soupmaker and can just chuck a load of veg and water/stock in it, turn it on and 20 minutes later there is a big jug of soup - if they are hungry they can have left over soup/fruit/greek yogurt or make themselves a salad.

Breakfast - eggs - eg a big frittata with beans and smoked fish, or kippers are cheap or greek yogurt and oats (soluble protein).

Lunch - cheap tinned fish eg mackrel/sardines or cottage cheese plus ryvitas and salad or veggie soup.

Ask chatgtp to do you a meal plan. Tell it how much you want to spend, in what shop and what to include/avoid

I do it every week. Saves time and bother trying to think of what to do for dinner every night

I’m on the run up to retirement ( well that’s the plan anyway) which has definitely concentrated my mind.
Thanks everyone for all the good tips, I won’t have time to answer all individually but I hope this thread will be helpful to others who are also trying to keep food expenditure under control.

Thanks for your thoughtful post @Londonmummy66 . Lots of great recipe ideas. Also like the idea of using Chat GPT @zippydeedoo .

Food prices are really depressing atm. My weekly online shop hit a record high this week and that’s not all I buy, there is the odd top up and a recipie box on top. I only ever shop at waitrose on special occasions though, don’t think I have been in there since Xmas eve.

@Iloveeverycat DH eats chicken as
long as it’s feee range. No red meat. The weekly curry is because I’m in the office on Wednesday and too knackered to cook from scratch when I get home. But I could consider reducing to twice a month and just cooking something simple instead.

I think you need to put each of them in charge of meal planning for one week with a food budget of £120.

Could DH cook? I think you said he could cook three things, time to step up!

We shop at Aldi weekly; just top up a few things at Sainsbury’s. Family if 4, 2 teens girls. I think we spend around £650 per month including cleaning products. We don’t eat meat every single day though. A mix of chicken, fish, beef and vegetarian. Meat has gone over the roof.

I would try to reduce the number of supermarket visits, as they are masters at flogging us stuff we don’t need! How many times have you gone in for milk and come out with a basket load? This used to happen to me often.

Look at sourcing food from places other than supermarkets. Get your milk delivered. Think meat or fruit and veg boxes online, some of the bulk buys are quite good value. Try bulk sacks of grains, flour, nuts, dried fruit and oats from Suma or Essential trading, sacks of beans and pulses from hodmedods. If you are foodies you will find some really interesting things in their catalogues. The headline prices may be more expensive than the supermarket for some foods, but it will be good quality and no impulse buys to break the budget.

Also, insufficient fibre is far more of an issue in modern diets than insufficient protein. It is not necessary to have a full quota of protein at every meal according to the Zoe podcast. I think Dr Karen Rajah talks about this as well.

Your adult children urgently need to learn to cook on a budget so that it is not a shock when they leave home, so bring them on the learning journey with you.

Or one of the three other adults in the house could step up and do something about dinner on a Wednesday?

I always have frozen dhaal in the freezer - whenever I make it I make a batch. So either I'll make a curry and serve it with defrosted dhaal plus rice or if I really cba I'll pick up a yellow sticker curry and a cauliflower. Chop the cauliflower into florets, chuck in a bowl with oil and curry spices, tip onto a baking tray and roast whilst the curry is cooking. Defrost dhaal and microwave some rice and serve the lot - there is not a lot of meat but plenty of food.

not sure what we are doing different. But our shopping is about seven hundred a month for six adults(two are older hollow legged teens)3 cats and teens friends are here a lot of the time and are fed to.We eat well and varied diet ,daughter and myself meal plan and online shop for freezer ,and visit supermarket once a week I bake and flat breads are favourite at the moment the teens turn them into pizzas and fill with cheese ,ham and salad.I make cakes ,biscuits ,scones, which browsing teens can snack on,we tend to make extra pasta ,shepherds pie etc and that portion goes in fridge and is fair game.

I get a 400g pack of boneless chicken, either breast or thigh and slow cook it with a load of mushrooms, onion and peppers as well as a couple of packs of seasoning. Take the chicken out and shred it then put it back in and reduce any liquid down to a sticky sauce. and that makes 4 good sized portion of shredded chicken. Serve up with a load of veg, wraps, rice or a jacket potato. Can do similar with a cheap cut of beef or pork.

Sausages or chicken legs/thighs make for a great tray bake, big chunks of potato, onion, peppers, carrots, bit of oil, plenty of seasoning and then roast it in the oven till it’s the right a,out of brown and crispy for your taste.

pasta bake or Mac n Cheese served with salad is another cheap filling meal

It’s very possible to make tasty cheap meals that will fill them up without costing a fortune.

Shredding chicken is easiest in a big bowl with an electric hand whisk.

we have some specific food nights, Wednesday is jacket potatoes with batch cooked high protein chilli, Thursday is always pasta. Having easy routine of stuff we can batch cook makes life a lot easier.

Apart from teaching them to cook to a budget - great life skill. Budgeting is the only way to go really - once the food budget is gone then it's scrambled egg on toast.

They can learn to joint a chicken - a whole free range chicken is eyewatering but not nearly as eyewatering as buying free range chicken breasts.

Also cooking a lump of meat and then using up the leftovers.

They are going to have to embrace different protein sources.

Coop goats cheese is good as is Lidl and Aldi - save the lovely cheese for Christmas.

Also unfortunately the Med diet - with lovely proteing and veg and olive oil - has become ridiculously expensive to replicate here....

Sounds like you’re running round like a headless (free range) chicken thigh, to accommodate a load of men who aren’t even contributing much to the household? Why doesn’t your DH cook ever? Or your sons? Chow mein and bolognese are both not really foodie territory for me, but bolognese shouldn’t cost £40 or thereabouts if I guess you’re including breakfast and lunch?

I have the same amount of hollow legged protein fiend people as you, and they get what they’re given. They do have a lot of protein but also everyone has a protein smoothie in the morning which ticks off a load of our protein requirements - and me being the only cook will not be happening when everyone’s an adult in the house.

If I make bolognese I use x2 pork and 1 beef, from m&s or W, a few tins of tomatoes, loads of stock/herbs/tom paste etc, onions and garlic, celery, and half a bag of carrots grated and a punnet of mushrooms. I cook mine for 6 hours so all the veg basically melts. That’s enough for 2-3 days of meals I sometimes convert into lasagne and no way does it cost £40. I do always do salad on the side but still not £40. Have you itemised all the ingredients I just don’t see how chow mein and that type of thing is costing you a bomb every day I’d be fuming.

Yeah, you're being taken for a mug! I would suggest stop planning each evening meal around a single meat - so get a joint and do a couple of days out of it, rather than chops/breast etc.

Also - protein does not mean meat. You can have a more veg-based main course and then Greek yogurt for a pudding. We use lots of lentils and pulses as we are predominantly a vegetarian family.

You can bulk buy from places like Suma and Infinity. Not sure how it compares to cheapest supermarkets but if quality/origin etc important to you anyway you can save that way. Do the boys contribute to food etc? Would they offer if you raised this huge cost to you in a meeting?

I agree with less shopping. This is a few years back now but we used to shop at Waitrose because of their better treatment of farmers and get our food delivered because Dh was too ill to cope with going to the supermarket, and he was a genius at keeping rigidly to our budget. Going in to the shop is a fast way to double what you spend. Go to a very busy Aldi and it’s so unpleasant you will get out as efficiently as possible.

I spend a lot on our veg box but we then build the meals around it. You’re a dietitian - tell them what protein they actually need and stick to it. I wouldn’t say eggs are cheap these days but as a proper main meal (frittata with plenty of potato, cheese omelette, huevos rancheros, curried eggs) they aren’t bad price wise. We eat a lot of potatoes and rice. Get them used to much less sauce on their pasta, it’s only supposed to make it taste good not drown it, I think in general we conform to the amounts supermarkets think we should buy and use per meal rather than what we need.