Frugal Living 2010 -The Cost of Living Challenge, INTRO

cw18

I used to make a fair percentage of my own baby food (my youngest is now 18 ), but it was always a version of what I was cooking for the rest of the family (I've never added salt to food in a pan, so that was easy).

I reckon it was a lot cheaper than buying tins/jars, but then I never bought 'exotic' veg like sweet potato (tried them for the first time a couple of years ago, and the entire family said 'never again'). It also meant they were used to the taste of "our" food by the time they were reading for weaning onto real meals - something friends struggled more with, as their children were having to discover new tastes at the same time as getting used to lumps that needed chewing

But cost wasn't my main reason for doing it - it was because I didn't want to be feeding all the additives that were in the commercial versions to my little 'uns

knithappens

Iheart2poundcoins wrote: »

Good Luck with the blogs, going to look back and try and find you all! xx

Does anyone make their own baby food here?
I think it's costing more than buying jars.
I spent nearly £2 on parsnips and sweet potato and only got 5 meals out of it. Heinz jars I can make 5 meals out of 2 1/2, for around £1.40 with far more variety than I can make.

It might be cheaper if we ate fresh food but we eat different things and I am currently on Weight Watchers frozen meals.

ANyhoo, good luck planning all your budgets. I have started buying farmfood saving stamps - it's quite a cheap shop there! And am going to order from Tesco over the internet next year as can save alot in bus fares plus alot less hassle!!

i give baby exactly what we have, i dont cook with salt, we add it at the table. I have done away with dieting so to speak, not lost 1lb since bubba was 6 weeks, since i started eating everyday stuff but watching portion size have dropped 2lb.

Also shop for yellow labelled fruit and veg it is the first place I look, i get alot of organic stuff that way, buy it in bulk, batch cook it and freeze in individual portion sizes.

also lidl Aldi have good offers on fruit and veg. Also shop in season, I am not buying baby pots, but homebargins have organix fruit and dinner pots in at the moment 29p for the 4 , so stocked up on those for when i have a lazy day.

ceridwen

Nessa56 wrote: »

How on earth do you do that, I have always wondered?

v
x

Here y'are:

https://www.blogger.com/start

Theres also Wordpress that does blogs - they have more scope for altering the appearance - but are a bit more difficult.

Blogger is easy - its gotta be if I can manage it;):D

Kellylea

knithappens wrote: »

do you mind if i add you on mine, i have one too, would be great to see how others are saving/cutting back

Not at all, go ahead. Should I add you, how do I do that lol? I am useless

x x x

knithappens

ohh and just to add, i decided that enough was enough with us all eating different . it was costing to much, I thouht my son was a fussy eater ,(my eye), he was eating different because I let him get away with it.

I have to be disciplined myself on this too though. I have found by us all eating the same , there is less food wastage, and my shopping bill is lower.

knithappens

Kellylea wrote: »

Not at all, go ahead. Should I add you, how do I do that lol? I am useless

x x x

at the top o the blog pages it has a link that says follow click that and you can follow that persons blog

Kellylea

Iheart2poundcoins wrote: »

Good Luck with the blogs, going to look back and try and find you all! xx

Does anyone make their own baby food here?
I think it's costing more than buying jars.
I spent nearly £2 on parsnips and sweet potato and only got 5 meals out of it. Heinz jars I can make 5 meals out of 2 1/2, for around £1.40 with far more variety than I can make.

It might be cheaper if we ate fresh food but we eat different things and I am currently on Weight Watchers frozen meals.

ANyhoo, good luck planning all your budgets. I have started buying farmfood saving stamps - it's quite a cheap shop there! And am going to order from Tesco over the internet next year as can save alot in bus fares plus alot less hassle!!

I could not believe how expensive the baby jars were when I was weaning my little one, not so much with the stage one as you could often get 10 for £3 on offer. But as the ages went up it was more like four for £3!

I decided to make my own and its great because he actually prefered my food and as he got older it was easy to give him what we were having.

I got mself a stick blender and would spend a day pureeing things for the freezer. Home made pasta sauce is great for when little one get's bigger. I would buy a bag of baby pasta (he has normal pasta now age 1) and put lots of veggies in a pan to boil, drain add one tin of chopped tomatos and puree! Tadaa hidden veg sauce. Great actually for a sauce over meat and veggies for baby too. Mash is great I still make up too much mash on sunday and freeze cubes of it for little one to have with peas sweetcorn carrotts and gravy. Try the annabelle karmel site for ideas and adapt it in an old style way. I made her chicken korma recently (well kind of followed her recipe made up my own) froze it in little portions for my litle dude only to find his daddy defrosting about four portions of it for his tea cause it's too nice for just kids!

x x x

the_cat

Iheart2poundcoins wrote: »

Does anyone make their own baby food here?

Well not anymore as mine are stapping lads nowadays! But I certainly used to and I think it saved me loads. When they were very tiny I used to make up big batches of a variety of different things once or twice a week (think 'baking' day) and freeze in icecube trays. That way I could give a lot of variety over the course of the month and could adjust portions by defrosting an extra cube or two as they got older. I always had a variety of fruits, main meals made of chicken, lamb,beef, fish, lentils etc or sometimes pork plus a selection of veg in each to create different tastes

As they got older, as much as possible I incorporated taking out a portion (well several and froze the rest) of food from what we were having and relied on my HM food as a variety of pasta sauces for soup pasta on nights where we were eating something unsuitable.

I used the occasional jar when going out but like CW didn't want the additives etc on a regular basis. I have been rewarded by 2 very unfussy children growing up who are happy to eat pretty much anything! I think that the additives in jars are something that a baby gets used to and that leads to a craving for manufactured food that can last throughout a lifetime. So even if you don't save money in the short term, think of how much you will save on McD's over the years - mine both hate them!!:rotfl:

Debt_Free_Dreamer

DEBT FREE DREAMER

Count me in for 2010...

kittiej

Hello Everyone

Well I haven't come up with any budget figures yet as I'm waiting for a couple of renewal letters to come in, car ins etc. so I'll do that later in the month.

What I have decided to do is cut back on some of my everyday spends particularly at work.

I currently buy a mushroom roll every morning which costs 50p, but if there aren't any mushrooms I have cheese on toast which costs 40p so the 10p saving goes to one side. (and before you say why not just have chees on toast, I love mushroom rolls lol)

Then at lunchtime I always have a cheese and tomato sarny and packet of cheese and onion crisps which costs £1.03 altogether. I have started to just have the sarny which is 68p so the 35p I would have spent on crisps I put to one side.

I have decided I should also make much better use of my staff discount (50% on most items) , a loaf of bread is 60p, or a bag of large rolls are 86p so I shall use this more.

If I go to one of our shops I am allowed up to £15.00 discount per week but if I buy from the staff shop in the canteen I can buy as much as I like.

I was thinking of buying a food processor, but are they really any good?

Time management is important as I work full time.

Hope everyone else is doing OK.