Weezl and friends Phase 2 -giving it a whirl for Shirl! Testing meal plan for a month

weezl74

weezl, should people in debt seek to claw back all their savings from food? And if not, why are you so focussed on the food?!

My answer: absolutely not! I am assuming that these are across the board savings of which food is only a small percentage.

So why I am so focussed on the food?

Boy this could be a long answer, brace yourselves!

1) If someone pays £65 a month for a sky+ subscription, and someone else says 'cancel it to save money!' there's not much more to it. They either agree, or decide that saving isn't worth it compared to the pleasure they lose in having it. End of story.

Say to someone: 'reduce your food spending to 10% of what it is currently!' and they say, 'I couldn't possibly, I'd damage my kids health!'

So they need more 'proof' that it's ok. So I'm trying to give that.

2) I like the taste of food as much as the next girl, but I feel there is a horrendous amount of money wastage on something which, sorry to anyone having a late breakfast, you are going to wipe off your bum tomorrow with a nice piece of Andrex.

Food will not save us from sadness, make us successful, give us the Jools Oliver lifestyle at sainsburies. We just think it will because we are sucked in by advertising.

We think, yes! If I eat the special asparagus with hollandaise from waitrose with delia's recipe, I will have become that pretty, successful happy woman I see in the advert! I will be like her!

In truth, no. You will be you tomorrow, with asparagus in your poo.

So have a nice chicken and onion pie and pocket the £4 saved, or rather don't pay barclaycard 18%apr for that £4. They don't love you either.

3) the other types of savings seem easier and I love a challenge! And Martin has the rest very well covered, but I felt there was an absence of a guide to saving a shedload of cash on the groceries, without it somehow being sabotaged by the health police.

I feel I need to justify this: I think the old style board is superb, and the board guides have me in awe with their hard work and helpfulness. Sadly though, anyone attempting to be radical in their savings gets a plethora of posters saying 'you can't do that you're hurting your kids!' and so of course they feel they have to stop!

On the other boards- like how to get cheaper car insurance, you can take it as low as you like, even into minus figures via quidco, and everyone says yay! :T:T:T:T do it with food, and there's a glass ceiling for cash savings below which you're a kiddie health saboteur and no-one will applaud you.

I have more but I think I should stop!

*zippy*

Hello all :hello:

Is it ok for me to join or are you still at the testing stage? I wasn't sure reading back as couldn't see any newbies. Theres 4 us with two teenagers and reducing our food bill would be wonderful as it would free up some money to save for some desperate house repairs.

Can I ask too who's shirl?

weezl74

*zippy* wrote: »

Hello all :hello:

Is it ok for me to join or are you still at the testing stage? I wasn't sure reading back as couldn't see any newbies. Theres 4 us with two teenagers and reducing our food bill would be wonderful as it would free up some money to save for some desperate house repairs.

Can I ask too who's shirl?

hello! It would be great to have you, and I certainly hope that whilst some of the recipes may be a little in need of better descriptions I feel that it's good enough for you to make a start

Thanks for thinking you'd like to join in

Shirl is in her 40s has 2 teenaged kids and would very much like to save money on her food spends.

I invented the website for her, with help from MSE friends

Sian_the_Green

Hey Weezl, please empty your inbox

Allegra

Have a read of the website, Zippy If you feel ready to have a go, and anything is unclear, just ask - it might also be worth checking out essential lists as there might be info there that has not yet been added to the site.

The first month's mealplan has been tried and tested (I was one of the people testing it) so you can rest assured it's all safe to use And Shirl is the mythical woman the month 1 planner has been created for - she is married to Bob, has two teen kids, Jenny and Jason, and has a large debt that she would like to get rid of whilst still feeding her family good food without any danger of compromising their health.

weezl74

there's space now sian!

How very kind of that guy to email

*zippy*

Oh i'm shirl thank you for your replies, i'm definately in :T

Just a little about us, we have two teenagers 18 & 14, hubby is having problems with wheat at the moment so i'm buying spelt flour, which is expensive, but we have chickens so I don't have to buy eggs and have alot of veg in, which hopefully will be ready to pick soon. We currently spend around £400 a month, crunch time was Sunday when we did a shop and it came to £104 and had very little to show for it.

domesticgoddess789

Just a quick question for anyone who has made the Tangy Bean Pate before...

How many servings can I expect to get out of a batch? Just want to make sure I am not being too greedy with the portion sizes! Thankyou :A

weezl74

yay for zippy being on board and nice to have a fellow south Walian

If you have any thoughts on welsh-medium schools I'd be very interested (sorry very off topic!)

more of my psychological thoughts re shirl and the debt:

there's a theory that people have either an internal or external 'locus of control' Locus is just a clever way of saying position or location.

If you have strong external locus of control, you think that the control of your life and the reasons things happen is all external, things are a product of your circumstances, or someone else's fault, or just 'that's life' and so either you can be passive happy 'oh well I'll just poddle along' or 'passive angry' how dare the politicians do this to us, how dare the world be this way!'.

If you have strong internal locus of control, you believe and act as if things are largely a product of your actions: 'I'm in debt cos I overspent for a while, but now I'm going to reduce that! Yay!' or 'i'm not very fit cos I'm a bit sedentary, so I'll do a bit of walking this week.'

Someone wisely said on radio 4 that there was a marked difference in the way groups of people abroad responded to the ash cloud debacle.

Groups of people where the powerful leader types had a strong external locus of control got miffed and wrote letters of complaint to the airplane companies and their travel insurers, looking for someone else to fix it. They didn't get home for a while.

There was another group of holiday makers on a greek island, where there was a fairly charismatic extravert chappie with a stron internal locus of control. He rounded up all the brits abroad, pooled cash, hired a mini bus and drove them all home.

What I want to be a part of is helping all of us, kittys and shirls to find our internal locus of control and make it stronger.

We can swap energy providers to save cash and that's great, but ultimately we also have to take responsibility for food spending if we'd like to have more cash.

We talked about shirl being in a hole. She's got 2 choices: sit in the hole and think how horrid and I blame Gordon Brown! Or she can start thinking, hmmmn, those walls look a bit slippy, but with a bit of rope maybe I could climb out.

So we want to help her be that way, and see our rope as good and strong.

And most, most, most of all I just want her to hire the ruddy mini van and drive home!

weezl74

pinkhayley789 wrote: »

Just a quick question for anyone who has made the Tangy Bean Pate before...

How many servings can I expect to get out of a batch? Just want to make sure I am not being too greedy with the portion sizes! Thankyou :A

pink I think it's 20g per meal, and the whole recipe makes approx 530g of pate, but I'll check and make sure for you after ferg's lunch!