how much do you spend on your weekly shop

[thegardener]

my dh & i have 1 child and are trying to cut back a bit on our weekly shop after a few expensive months which have caught up with us. We currently spend about £65 a week & maybe a bit extra for things we've ran out of from local shop.(making a start having one less bottle of wine a week)

Just wondered what other people spend on their weekly shops and any tips on where we could cut back please before dh has a fit!

Vet told me cats often prefer pilchards in tomato sauce. Have tried with my cats and they'll eat them a couple of times and then refuse. I only pander to them because no. 1 cat is 16 and getting a bit thin, so I give her all the things she likes best to keep her eating. When she snuffs it Cat 2 will have to put up with what she's given! She's a terrible hunter so it's a wonder she needs any cat food. She eats whole birds except for the beak & feathers and whole mice except for the stomach, which she leaves under the dining room table so I come downstairs all bleary to eat my breakfast and put my foot on it!

my cat can't hunt... he's a bit useless really. his mother was a crazy stray i fed and dumped him on our doorstep. (think he might be my previous cats son too, lol) he spent his first 6 months with us sleeping in my just deceased cats litter tray and is still weird and nervous. i've seen him climb a tree exactly once and it went badly! he lets insects walk across his paws and if he sees a bird he runs at it meowing.

not exactly a hunter extraordinaire

Cat 1 is like that - yesterday she had a rush of blood to the head and tried to climb our apple tree - she didn't even make the first branch so had to sit and wash herself pretending nothing had happened. In 16 years she has caught precisely one bird - a little robin. She didn't know what to do with it so she put it in the tumble dryer with a load of clean washing...

God, your vet told you to feed the cats fish in tomato sauce??? That goes against everything I've ever read about cats, for three reasons:

1. They're carnivores. They cannot eat vegetables, and usually detest tomatoes.
2. Although they do like and will eat fish, it's not actually what they're supposed to eat and it's not ideal for them. In the wild, only one type of big cat eats fish, and even that is only as a supplement to meat. All other cats eat meat.
3. There is an important additive in catfood called Taurine which cats bodies simply do not make, which is essential for their eyes, heart, digestive system and reproductive system.

"Chronic deficiency of taurine induces a progressive degeneration of the retina, leading to a total blindness within 2 years"

That isn't to say I never fed our cat the odd tin of tuna or mackarel when we ran out of food for him, but I'm just amazed your vet reccomended that!

pmsl

ours got one accidentaly one day too...... 45 mins of batting it ands it still escaped relatively unharmed

hope it wasn't expensive bedsheets or something

DS1 cant get the gluten free on prescription as he is intolerant rather than allergic

I do have a bread amker actually, hat I simply don't have is anywhere locally I can buy the rice flour etc that is used in the only bread DS1 will eat, I make cakes / sauces / cassroles etc from scratch every day and as we do get the extra money anyway (DLA< he has HFA / AS) I feel its worth the cash for my sanity LOL! I ahte ordering stuff in- it invariable arrives when i'm at Uni and Dh ahs to get put of bed to answer the door (he works nights)

Its an economy for us, in that the extra cash is worth more than the stress caused by the alternative, iyswim.

well our prefers mushrooms and tomatoes to meat every day!

he knocked over the bin yesterday to get the pasta sauce and ié seen him leave meatballs beneath ds's highchair to eat the potatoes!

When our younger cat arrived (post op, severely abused, missing limbs etc) we were told to alternate between poached chicken and fish for a few eeks, but it wasn't a long term diet. Cats need acess to a variety of foods- vegetarian cats exist but usually die iirc. having said that, house cats do require access to grass boxes for optimum health as they do ustilise that in their diet.

Although I should add said cat prefers kebab with chilli sauce above all else lol

Older cat is a bit more sane, prefers crisps if he can get them but will stick to his Iams diet

Yeah, I do know what you mean. I chucked a handful of cooked sweetcorn out onto the garden once for the birds. The cat left his "oh so meaty" and ran off up the garden to gobble the sweetcorn. And once I found him chewing a leftover piece of lettuce from our caesar salad under the table.

To be fair though, he IS mad as a kettle full of squirrels.

PinkTulips - no expensive sheets in our house! No - just a load of underwear, fortunately, so it just had to be washed again.

he must be my cats cousin then!

my parents cat used to attack bread.... couldn't leave anythin baked out of the cupboard or she'd drag it to her basket and gnaw on it

according to that link both my cats should be completely blind by now as they have not been fed catfood for 2 1/2 years.

Needless to say they are not. Vet is quite happy with their diet and they are both very healthy (though getting on a bit).

Cat food (won't say which brand) killed one of my cats and left another within 10 minutes of death. They were the 10th and 11th cats the vet had seen that month on the same type of cat food with the same problem.

Am I feeding my cats cat food again - erm no.

if you read the ingredients list of cat food you'll find that none have more than about 8% meat (most less) so are nutritionally useless tbh. i give cat a few pouches as he likes them but they're by no means the main food source he has or he'd starve!

yeah 80% ash I think I read on one of them.

Dried foods such as Royal Canin are really good but they need to drink lots of water with them.

real info on taurine seems to contradict alot of what that article claimed

about £120 per week for 5 of us. it depresses me every time i go to supermarket. alot of it seems to go on things for packed lunches eg crisps, cake type things. and with cakes you generlly get say 6 in a pack, well then thats gone in 1 day. should bake them myself but utterly loathe baking and am rubbish at it.

red mills is similar and is quite good too, about 35% meat and quite affordable.

about £90 for 5 of us.we plan menu for week and stick to it and buy mostly fresh and use cloth nappies.

Bugger
Im in Australia and thinking about conversion your shops cost around $250 to $300.:0 shocking for me anyway. How much do you pay per kilo or pound for meat and fresh veg??? would really love to know
We spend hoping my math is correct on cnversion
40 pound($120)a month on meat includes a whole rump and a side on lamb or pork and other stuff
40 pound($120) a month on staple products such as flour and cleaner and nappies
35 pound ($100) every ten days on fresh veg & fruit cereals, milk 15litres and 3 big tubs of yoghurt, and general other stuff if we run out.
I also buy alot of meal bases, but only get nappies when priced really low other wise no pants for my son except at night

veg varies alot tbh, a 2kg bag of spuds is about 4.99 euros though (3.50 pounds i think), milk is 90c a litre and meat is through the roof. value pack of mince (800g) is 3 euros and everything just gets more expensive after that. 2 fillets of value chicken in tescos is 3.89 euros

(as an aside, why the hell does my keyboard not have a euros symbol!!!!!)

money saving expert As a nation we?ve been hypnotised into judging the quality of our food by brand and packaging. Over the years, we?ve been taught that things fall into four different brand levels:
The no frills/basics brand. E.g. Tesco Value, Asda Smartprice.
The supermarket own brand. E.g. Tesco, Sainsbury?s.
The mainstream brand. E.g. McVities?s Jaffa Cakes, Ribena.
Premium brands. E.g. Tesco Finest, Somerfield?s The Best.
Let's applaud the sheer marketing genius; this stratified system automatically allows supermarkets to justify huge price variations. Think about it: who says Tesco premium is the best and worth spending oodles more on than Tesco value? Well Tesco does, of course! We let it dictate what ?good? is, and packaging and placement provide the pricing.

Don?t get me wrong, there are differences in produce and production quality. Yet this isn?t uniform; the fact the salmon en croute is great doesn?t mean the gourmet mousse, made in a factory in another part of the world is too.

£55 limit for DP, me, DS and dog.

Got a wedding to pay for soon!

Has anyone actualy worked out the difference between organica and non organic? I buy all organic dairy and most fruit/veg'. I've never actually worked out the exact difference.