Food, my biggest expense....

TimeforTea wrote: »

I am trying to be DF but we just can not seem to lower out Shopping bill, We like to eat healthy but i just can`t figure out a way to do this on a budget...

We spend £100 per week for a family of 4.

I see other claim they spen £50 per week, i just don`t know how they do it?

xx:cool::cool::cool:

In my opinion £100 a week for a family of four is acceptable. Dividing out £100 by 4 makes £25 per person then dividing that out over the number of meals in a week makes £1 a meal with £4 left over for snacks and drinks.

Whenever I shop I aim for every meal to cost less than £1 per person per meal. So a meat portion being about 100 grams then the meat should cost less than £5 per kilogram so that each portion is 50p or less and then another 50p for vegetables and sides such as pasta and rice.

Ironically, the expense of food is one of the reasons I was diagnosed with anorexia at 22. It's not that I couldn't afford food, but I loved nothing more than going round supermarket as a student, list and calculator in hand. I used to spend £50 per month on food, really your spending £100 per person and eating well, doesn't sound that bad to me. Food is what sustains us, maybe complain about sub-standard produce you have bought and stock up on coupons they send in apology

It's really a case of adjusting your expectations.

For a start, nothing that can be made is bought. So, if you want sausage rolls for the week, instead of paying £3.50 per 25cm sausage roll, you buy a pound of sausage meat for £1.16 and a block of puff pastry for £1. Therefore, where you would have bought two large sausage rolls from the supermarket 2 for £6, you actually made the same amount (or more) for £2.16. Before you say that making sausage rolls takes time, I timed it once and it took me 20 minutes including 15 minutes cooking time to make a dozen 3 inch wide mini rolls for the weeks lunches.

Baked goods such as cakes, scones and pastries are made at the weekend, usually a Saturday morning and sometimes (depending on how I'm feeling) involve the kids. These last all week and serve as both snacks and lunch fillers.

Same with pizza. I bought a large domonios pizza last week for £9.99. I can make the same pizza with toppings for £5. If you have a bread maker, the dough is stupidly easy to make.

All bread is made in our house daily. Partly for philosophical reasons, partly in protest at the appalling standard of commercial bread these days. Bread is made overnight and takes about 5 minutes of an evening to set up the machine. 3kg of flour is 69p and from that, I make 6 good loaves of fresh bread...or a weeks bread for under a pound. When it's on sale, I buy flour allot and stock up.

Tomato sauce. I used to buy stuff like Lloyd Grossman at about £3.50 a jar. Now I buy at least a dozen tins of tomatoes a month and make my own.

Veg is bought and blanched and frozen. Cheap as chips from the market.

Meat, I intersperse offal with better quality cuts and have found that a Sunday roast, used properly lasts until at least weds. This is a much more economical method of buying meat than in small packets. Kidneys, hearts, liver etc are firm favourites in my house along with less fashionable meat such as venison (shockingly cheap) and mutton (also shockingly cheap). Steak and kidney pies with suet crust pastry is a wonderful winter meal.

All you need to learn these skills are a few old cook books and some common sense.

How much do I spend a month? £200 for 2 adults, two children all in. I even manage organic veg boxes ever other week.

So, how? Firstly, ditch the supermarkets. Go fir the family butcher, the local Market and Aldi. Buy nothing you can make cheaper. Learn to make soap (ridiculously easy) and stop buying anything in a box, carton or tin foil tray. Grow what you can, make do without what you don't actually need and boycott anything advertised as a bargain.

I agree with making things yourself and also going to the supermarket when things are reduced and getting meat & bread items. I can't remember the last time I bought full price meat which really does bring the cost down. Markets, farm shops and reduced times at the supermarkets for fruit and veg

I buy a sack of potatoes that lasts for about 4 months for £7 (stored in the shed). alcohol really increases the price of food shopping.

And lastly seems like a no-brainer but we all do it, try and have a week where you don't go shopping, in fact don't spend anything other than on milk and petrol and you will surprise yourself at what you have already in your cupboards!

I go shopping once every 8 days instead of once a week. After 8 weeks, I have saved a week's shopping money! That's £80 for two of us. Over a year that works out to £480, which I use to pay a lump sum off of my mortgage.:T