SOA Groceries, How do you do it.

nanna58

:rotfl:Hi dc
bet you can cook a sausage n sum onions thicken with gray granuals add sum mash bingo hot cheap quick meal.Got my shop down to 40--45 weekly cook much more and guess what I ENJOY IT (well most of the time)Hang on ill just pop and make you a cake

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Back i a bit

metalgal

cutting down on groceries bills is something i always seem to struggle with. For food toiletries papers etc. i would spend about 50 pounds a week. This is for me and my partner and slowly but surely our daughter. She has recently graduated to smooshed whatever we are having.

When i would go to tesco etc. i would easily spend over 80 pounds and come home with nothing for a dinner. I have since changed to M&S. I know that may sound wierd but the offers they have are fantastic! (Our fav at the minute is a pie, portion of mash, and pack of veg for £5! We have the pie with the spuds and veg for dinner and cos the pie is huge i have the leftovers with bread and butter for lunch.) When i go there i spend much less for nicer food that will do me longer. Its the way the big supermarkets get you. I went in to one for a tub of baby milk, and a case of dog food. I came out having spend £40. :S

Plan of attack in a M&S is scour all the offers. Then dander round for things to go with what you got on offer.

RobertoMoir

Cooking is one of those things that we seem to think is more of a chore than it usually is. I decided I wanted to learn to cook because I didn't want to be one of those guys who can only manage to prepare a ready meal by carefully reading the instructions and praying, and I'm doing quite well I think - enough that people at work are now asking me for recipe ideas - something that would shock my dear late parents to the core if they only knew.

It got to the stage where my brother used to tease me about visiting for family dinners and expecting pot noodles all around if I was cooking - I did get him back one day by serving the family a lovely roast and him a pot noodle.

I learnt a lot from the jamie oliver books and TV shows and website about cooking - I know people mock him for this and that, but he's easy to learn to cook from and he talks about cooking for the home instead of fancy ideas and techniques you only ever would use in a restaurant kitchen.

I think cooking does require a bit of time but can actually give you it back - often it doesn't take that long to prepare something and place it in the oven (If you're stood in the kitchen for a couple of hours all the time you're either preparing something really fancy or you're doing it wrong) and like anything else you get better over time.

Don't forget if you make a casserole with 6 servings, that's half an hour (if that) prepping and cleaning up spent on the night it's made, sure, but on the nights you and your g/f have the rest of the servings you only spend a few mins heating it up, just as it would be if you had got a ready meal in.

IWantToBeFree_2

piggeh wrote: »

I often find the pitfalls that I fall into are:

1) Lack of fridge space - as I houseshare it's difficult to get more than a few days' of stuff in one shop. So I have to go everyday almost, and then it just becomes laborious and I just get a pizza or something!

2) Lack of time - when I lived by myself I regularly spent a few hours cooking a lasagne or shepherds pie - worked out to be cheap portions. However it's difficult to spend so long cooking in a shared house, and not very relaxing.

3) Inspiration - the meals I do cook (pasta, salads, etc) get boring after a while. I look through my cookery books and online recipes and can never seem to find appealing 'simple' recipes! Or they always put one or two ingedients in there which I've never heard of I also try to avoid processed meats, like ham, corned beef, etc, so it limits choice a bit more.

We used to have real problems with this, it wasn't so much fitting things in the fridge, but the freezer which was our problem. We didn't really get on with the people we lived with, so we only ever cooked for 2, this meant that we had a lot of wastage because we couldn't freeze things to then reheat, and I struggled to just cook for 2 re portion sizes etc, as when I made things back at my parents, it was always for at least 4 people.

Since we got our own house, we have a freezer full of stuff to reheat. We bulk buy veg, cook it and then freeze ready to reheat in the oven once we are ready to eat it, not only does it save us money re bulk buying, means we don't have to prep it on an evening, and I actually prefer the taste once it has been cooked in the oven.

In terms of other thing, we buy a lot of value products, we shop at asda so always have a fair bit of smart price, or asda branded products, infact, we rarely buy branded stuff, and its more of a taste decision than a price decision.

Beanbag

So this is gonna sound stupid, but what should I use to store frozen meals in and how would you recommend reheating them, for example if I make some soup, do I just freeze it in portion sized tubs? and then leave it out to defrost on the day I want to eat it, then reheat it in a pan or microwave?

We currently spend £300 a month on food on toiletries for 2 adults, 1 5 year old and soon to be having baby number 2 and we desperately need to get out shopping bill down!

zarazara

How to cut back on grocery spending? Dont buy processed stuff like biscuits and crisps. buy oats and make porrige for breakfast. make your own bread and cakes and biscuits. mix your own museli by diluting expensive brand which you like with some from a cheaper brand, ditto tea and coffee. drink hot water and reduce use of tea and coffee. dont buy squash or fruit drinks. eat seasonal cheap freash fruit for snacks.
stretch meat by adding lentils or pearl barley to a casserole. make your own pies and pasties. buy potatoes and onions and root veg in bulk and store in a cool dark place,they keep for ages. make your own pastry and potato cakes.
eat a decent sunday dinner then be very frugal during the week . use up left overs for bubble and squeak etc. make your own soup. take HM sandwiches,soups,scones etc to work for lunch.

Beanbag

dandm1 wrote: »

I've also been a lot more inventive with meals, trying a huge range of new recipes (try goodtoknow.co.uk - there are loads of really easy, quick and CHEAP recipes).
My favourite at the moment is sausage in onion gravy. I do it in the slow cooker but could easily be changed to an oven cook recipe. Brown sausages in frying pan put into casserole dish. In frying pan add onions and cook until soft, sprinkle over some brown muscavodo sugar until slightly caramalised, add some beef stock and some flour. Cook until thick. Cover sausages with gravy and bung in oven until cooked through. Serve with mash/ veg. Super easy, super tasty and super cheap...

Also, have a look on the Old Style money saving board, it really helped me.

Many thanks for that link, i'm having a look through now as I plan to create my own meal planner!

JasX

Beanbag wrote: »

So this is gonna sound stupid, but what should I use to store frozen meals in and how would you recommend reheating them, for example if I make some soup, do I just freeze it in portion sized tubs? and then leave it out to defrost on the day I want to eat it, then reheat it in a pan or microwave?

A few options

Tupperware type sealable plastic tubs are probably most popular.

Depending on what it is plastic freezer bags are a good option (personally go for the cheap small ones that come on a big roll of 80 like bin bags rather than the overpriced premium ones where you get 10 with a fancy sealing strip for the same price.

Finally I have a cheap set of small square glass bowls I snapped up at Ikea and are perfect for freezing individual portions in when covered in cling film, they have the bonus of being durable, microwave proof, dishwasher proof and I even eat out of them saving on effort with the dishes


My other secret is living in a city centre with a few supermarkets on the way home I tend to pass just before they close, amazing what you can pickup for 10p-20p at that time

RobertoMoir

Beanbag wrote: »

So this is gonna sound stupid, but what should I use to store frozen meals in and how would you recommend reheating them, for example if I make some soup, do I just freeze it in portion sized tubs? and then leave it out to defrost on the day I want to eat it, then reheat it in a pan or microwave?

That's what I do. At the risk of stating the obvious, a big "family sized" tupperware box full of soup or chili will take longer to defrost than the smaller portions I go for, so take it out the night before and let it defrost at least partially in the fridge overnight first if you are worried.