help me out with my food bill

sandhabibi

My weekly shop is about £25 aweek,I've strted using alot of value products which tbh you can taste the difference but it's not horrible. The main thing I still buy a brand name is weetabix as I dont like the cheap brands. Last week I tried asda own make non bio wash tabs and they brought my wash up better then persil or fairy does.
I also discovered black saturns menu planner today and will be trying that.

calleyw

earwig wrote:

sunday roast beef roast spuds yourksire pudd peas cauli

Do you not have any leftovers from the meat. That you could use to make another meal with.

There are only two of us and I have now got in a habit of buying a joint that I know I can get at least two meals from it.

I have found since using my slow cooker that my meat does not shrink even cheap cuts. So that means I am getting more meat for money.

I tend to freeze the left over meat and have the meat cold with gravy and steamed veg.


Yours


Calley

black-saturn

thriftlady wrote:

I'm with you there Thriftmonster,I don't care if Jamie Oliver himself is cooking the school dinners,I can still do it for a lot less and make sure it is healthy and junk-free.;)

The thing about school dinners though is that there are usually 2 to 3 options available. Chips arnt on the menu every day and there is always a choice of salad or vegetables or a sandwich and an option of yogurt and/or fresh fruit for pudding. The trick is training your children to choose the healthier option.

cerce123

Personally, I do a lot of food shopping at Lidl and Aldi. These are particularly good for continental type food like salami. I've found the Aldi chicken breasts to be very good, at £2.99 for three. DH also prefers their brand beans. We get tinned tomatoes from Lidl or Aldi, and find the quality is often a bit better than the budget lables at the big supermarkets.

Buying a whole chicken and either cutting the breasts off when raw or roasting it and then using the meat usually works out much cheaper. Frozen or tinned fish is way cheaper than fresh. I also get a lot of out-of-date food from the big supermarkets.

If you have a good market near you, you may well find the market is much cheaper for meat than the supermarket. I also buy a lot of cheaper cuts and slow-cook or roast them.

If you have storage space and eat a lot of rice, that is *much* cheaper bought in the big sacks rather than in the little bags from the supermarket, especially from Asian foodstores.

Best of luck

Sarah W

pickle

earwig wrote:

thanks for your help the dinners we tend to have gose like this
monday takeaway
tuesday hamburgers home made chips
wednesday fishfingers chips and peas
thursady pork chop mash peas and green beans yorkshire pud
firday takeaway
saterday spag bol
sunday roast beef roast spuds yourksire pudd peas cauli

is this where i am wasting money as i know the meat can be dear but like i said we are meateaters and dont like things like pastys flans ect that much
i also do the weekly shop in sainsburrys our tesco is to big and i can never be asked to walk round it all we have an asda but not sure what there food is like as i have herd my freinds say its mainy cheep rubbish and although i want to save money on my bill i dont want to feed my famley rubish when it comes to dinners as we eat enough of that allready and i hate online shopping i done that before had loads of subitutes and short date meat and bread with one day on it you know the kind of thing and allthough i told the store and they didnt charge for the short date stuff i still had to go out and re buy it so it cost me more that week than normal so its not somthing i would do again thanks

Why not make homemade pizza and freeze it and then it can replace the takeaways? It is healthier. I make the dough in my breadmaker.

If you're shopping at the prime supermarkets then you'll spend a fortune. I remember shopping at Sainsburys and it cost me about £80-90 and when I switched to LIDL it was only about £30 (this was a few years ago!). Haven't been back to Sainsburys since. The quality is IMO just as good at LIDL if not better sometimes but you have to cook from scratch to get the quality. The frozen meals aren't too good but I don't buy them as a rule anyway. I sometimes shop at ASDA (which is exactly like Tesco or Sainsburys in quality I've found) for extras, but try not to because you can spend a lot more that way. Asian stores are fabulous for spices and soooo cheap!

lynzpower

Earwig

Is it that you are running out of ideas?

Or that the ideas you are having are costing you too much?

Lynz xx

pickle

cerce123 wrote:

Personally, I do a lot of food shopping at Lidl and Aldi. These are particularly good for continental type food like salami. I've found the Aldi chicken breasts to be very good, at £2.99 for three. DH also prefers their brand beans. We get tinned tomatoes from Lidl or Aldi, and find the quality is often a bit better than the budget lables at the big supermarkets.

Buying a whole chicken and either cutting the breasts off when raw or roasting it and then using the meat usually works out much cheaper. Frozen or tinned fish is way cheaper than fresh. I also get a lot of out-of-date food from the big supermarkets.

If you have a good market near you, you may well find the market is much cheaper for meat than the supermarket. I also buy a lot of cheaper cuts and slow-cook or roast them.

If you have storage space and eat a lot of rice, that is *much* cheaper bought in the big sacks rather than in the little bags from the supermarket, especially from Asian foodstores.

Best of luck

Sarah W

I never thought of doing that - that's a great idea!! If I get 2 x £1.70 frozen chickens I can get 4 chicken breasts and use the rest of the carcass for soup!! It still works out cheaper than buying the chicken breasts alone.:T

brokenwings

i get the distinct feeling that my lidl must be pretty useless as theres NO WAY i could get everything i needed for the week there - its very limited - will have to try and find another aldi or lidl somewhere i can drive to.

angela110660

We allow £100 per week for our food budget when we work out our money. However, I have been keeping all the receipts for last 3 months and this weekend I sat down and did an an analysis of all the spending. It appears that our average weekly food is actually between £55 and £70 per week and the cleaning stuff eg loo rolls, soap powder (liquid), etc. comes out at about £11 per week; alcohol £8 per week and personal items eg razors, underarm, toothpaste etc. about £7 per week ! Quite an eye opener for me.

Raspberry_Swirl

the nearest LIDL/ALDI is 30 minutes drive from me
that amount of petrol probably cancels out any savings from shopping there rather than my local tesco/asda which is a 2 minute drive....