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.

If you look on the hubbub website for community fridges, bread and butter project various names but basically it’s free food as it’s waste from shops and over production
generally it’s a mix of food but quite a lot of veg and bread usually.

So dh isn’t a vegetarian.

I was assuming some of the high cost may be down to cooking two separate meals all the time
That can be expensive not least because of the potential for more waste

I've got similar aged boys (2) but we are pescatarian and I use quorn quite a bit in cooking- the mince, sausages etc, along with fish.

I tend to be a bit boring with weekday meals, pasta bake with tuna and mascarpone sauce (£1 sauce from Waitrose, tin of tuna, some pasta) with some tinned sweetcorn in its and veggies (usually carrots and broccoli)

Then another day spaghetti bolognese with quorn mince (about £2.50 a pack or less) with bolognese sauce (again £1 Waitrose essential) and veggies

Another day might be baked potatoes and beans. Sometimes Friday / Sat nights might be shop bought pizza.

Dh tends to cook at weekends, he will make home made fish fingers for which I tend to buy hake fillets as a bit cheaper (about £4.50 for two) or home made fishcakes with tuna - again not expensive and uses up tins of tuna in the cupboard.

Not sure if we are quite as healthy as you- maybe a bit more reliant on carbs and I know some people criticise veggie (quorn) stuff as processed, but for us it is a source of protein.

Another quick meal they like is the filled pasta (fresh) again Waitrose essentials.

I do have some health problems and struggle with cooking much so things tend to be quite simple. I have my own fresh ready meals from Frive as I am on a diet right now, they are about £40 a week, Dh tends to cook his own dinner (eggs and salmon mainly with some tomatoes / veggies most nights)

I get a weekly delivery form Waitrose on Friday and the is £2 for the delivery which I think is really good.

Some treats we have is Dh really likes camembert cheese so we get one of those (about £3) and the Charlie Bigham's fish pie. often when it is on offer as £10 otherwise. Boys usually have that and DH a bit (not a big eater)

We spend around £100 - £150 a week, (for the weekly delivery) which includes e.g. washing powder and shampoo etc with top ups on top.

We have cut down a lot through a few things.

-avoid Sainsbury’s are much as possible - unless it’s stuff you can only get there, they scored highest for price recently when they compared lots of basics across lots of supermarkets
-reduce supermarket visits, temptation will get you each time! Try and do the big shop once a week and try limit yourself to every second/third day to pick up bits like fresh veg/bread. We tend to visit a big supermarket like Waitrose once every week or two to get ingredients we can’t get in the likes of Aldi (nice coffee, fancy goats cheese, epicure lentils etc) but do our main shops in Aldi. I’m a big Waitrose fan and like it for the occassional bits, just not the main shop.
-meal plan! I find eating what we feel like on the day always ends up costly, also means we end up getting ingredients in local shops where they cost more.
-Freeze extras, don’t let your kids eat all the leftovers, freeze some in portions and have those the days you would usually have ready meals.
-try a subscription box like gousto for a few weeks and try and make at least one meal vegetarian. You could even split it so your husband cooks one a week as they give step by step instructions. It should give you ideas for some cheap tasty meals - we’ve done them a few times and they introduced us to some lovely new recipes.

My partner is veggie so we eat mostly vegetarian - I batch cook and freeze meat dishes for my daughter as she tends to eat meat or fish about 4 days a week though at the moment she would eat what she calls “eggy cheesy pasta” for all her meals, every day or peanut butter sandwiches lol.

Our go to recipes are paneer/chickpea masala, black bean chilli, daal, feta & pea or Mediterranean veg risotto, sage and butternut squash lasagna, ragu, cottage pie, hallumi and veg tray baked, pasta bakes, enchilladas, stir fries etc… My partner is a foodie - I’d often be happy with a simple food but happy to have tasty dinners. He cooks more of our dinners, I cook more of our daughters. He used to polish off the left overs and I got cross because I am not a fan of cooking every day so now we agree what portion are beforehand so no eating all the leftovers. I would usually do a pot of curry and either freeze half or have it over two nights. With a chilli we would usually have it one night with rice and then freeze some and at the weekend have it with home made chips, topped with guac, cheese and yoghurt - or my partner might make his into burritos.

One thing I would say is if you venture down the veggie route and try any lentil dishes is that not all lentils are equal! We find the lentils that are just called “green lentils” much less tasty than “lentil verts” which are a slightly smaller green lentil!

We find when we do meat and veg based meals we eat at least double the amount of meat compared to meat in a sauce.
We always add a few tins of pulses in to a sauce and plenty of veg to bulk it out and make the meat go further.

We do tumble down meals so roasting or slow cookering a big joint having it as a meat and veg meal the first day turning it into a curry or casserole the next day. There's an incentive then to not spend the evening picking at the meat all evening too as the more you eat the first night the less you get for the next day!

I'd pick a couple of days a week to have your more gourmet meals. A couple of days a week to to a have a tumble down meals and then a couple of days with more simple meals.

We do a mix of supermarkets and a mix of sized shops. We currently probably do Sainsbury's once a month, 2-3 times a month and Tesco 1-2 times a month.

Sainsbury's is probably the only place we can do a fairly complete shop. We find the Aldi has far superior veg to our local Tesco but the meat is best in Tesco and can do a fairly complete shop there, especially if it's a week where we don't need a lot for fresh veg or fruit. Our Tesco is on the small side so the monthly shop in Sainsbury's online which comes from a much bigger store than we have in a drivable distance from our house so we benefit from the bigger range that they have there. Once every 4-6 weeks we have a using the fridge/freezer week where we try to get by with getting as little from the shop as possible and making use of any food we have frozen and trying to run the fridge to empty just to avoid waste and it forces us to be a bit more creat

We keep an eye on nectar and clubcard prices and stock up whenever key products are on offer. My daughter has allergies and also needs special toothpaste due to reflux so there's some things where we need specific items and there's also a few things where there's a particular brand we favour but we have a set price that they have to be before we buy them.

We are foodies too and love cooking there's food we would love to eat every day but we go by the principal that when we have a particularly good ingredient we make a meal of it (literally and metaphorically!) so that we really savour and enjoy the ingredients. The rest of the time it's about using our skills to enhance the flavour of less luxurious ingredients

You could probably knock a third off your bill shopping at Lidl or Aldi. I'm surprised that you are struggling to see how you can cut your bill shopping at Waitrose and sainsburys, I feel like I've been mugged when I shop there.

From your menu there is no way you need to spend more than £10 most days and still eat really well.

try making some big tray bakes eg lasagna, cottage pie etc with plenty of veg, both come in under £10 for 6 generous portions plus side salad/veg.

skip the ready meals and instead make spice pastes in bulk so you can make quick curries - I can make plenty for 4 bigger meals eaters for £10. Extra veggie sides is key and healthy

Another big trick is to cook a large pork shoulder joint (around £10) and that will give you meat for a roast then 2 other meals eg a stir fry and a filling for wraps (tomato, black beans, onions and peppers) plus sandwiches