Monthly food shopping over £350!!

dlb

Cooking from basics really does help, i have cut my monthly food bill down by over £200!!!!!

Eg yesterday got 2 extra large chickens £2.99 each. Cooked both, made huge bowl of chicken mayo ( netto mayo 34p), a chicken and veg pie ( used up all the frozen veg i had left in freezer) Chicken stew ( in slow cooker now ready for dinner) And i have frozen the rest ready to thrown in a stir fry later on in week. Plus made chicken stock with the bones and froze to use in my weekly use everything up rissioto.
It isnt easy cutting back but well worth the time and effort.

I did all the weeks meals yesterday and froze them, so no messing about cooking this we for me!

Lavender13

Depends where you shop,but have you looked out for the offers in store like buy one get one free( make sure it is something you would buy,and put away/freeze the extra).Tailor your shopping to the offers, for example if having a roast dinner, look to see what joint and what vegetables are on offer,and buy accordingly, instead of buying what you fancy at that time. Don't shop when you are hungry/peckish,as research shows we buy more at this time.

Heth_2

How much cleaning stuff and loo roll do you use? There are two of us and a 12/16 pack of own brand (not economy) lasts us all month. Kitchen roll buy every 3-4 months at a guess, certainly not every month. I've had the same bottle of stardrops on the go for 4 months and it can't be even half empty yet, and every couple of months we buy some more loo cleaning stuff.
Our total montly food budget is 200 pounds, I love to cook and we eat pretty well I think. That figure also includes about 4 bottles of wine a month, as well as washing powder, washing up liquid and any toiletries we get at the supermarket. We do a rough menu plan, cook almost everything from scratch (in fact I think the only processed things we buy are ice cream (very occasionally), sausages (always organic/best quality) and breaded fish for days when we are working late). We have loads of fresh fruit (at least 3-4 portions a day, e.g. in the summer a nectarine, apple, banana and maybe mango/strawberries/raspberries and veg and hardly ever get economy food.

missk_ensington

Whats wrong with using bleach to clean up?!? I've always use 40p own brand thick bleach for pretty much everything in the kitchen/bathroom. It smells clean and is strong enough to kill most germs.

I shop at Asda/Morrisons/Tesco depending on which is nearest at the time and I scour the aisles looking for 'Buy 1 Get 1 Free' signs, I'm not loyal to any one product. We could be washing up in Fairy Liquid one week cos its a third off a bottle, and Persil the next cos its BOGOF.

The freezers at the end of the aisles always have the offers in.

For a family of 3 you shouldn't spend more than £35 a week and eat very well. It just depends on your lifestyle and who deos the cooking, the age of child, if both parents are working and whats more important, saving money or having that extra time for other things that you gain by eating quick ready meals. Its something I'm forever fighting with because I think my hourly wage works out at about £11 an hour, so cooking a meal that takes an hour has cost me £11 plus the ingredients. I could be using that time doing work that I get paid for.

finc

missk_ensington wrote:

For a family of 3 you shouldn't spend more than £35 a week and eat very well. It just depends on your lifestyle and who deos the cooking, the age of child, if both parents are working and whats more important, saving money or having that extra time for other things that you gain by eating quick ready meals. Its something I'm forever fighting with because I think my hourly wage works out at about £11 an hour, so cooking a meal that takes an hour has cost me £11 plus the ingredients. I could be using that time doing work that I get paid for.

It doesn't necessarily take much longer to prepare fresh food. Sauces can be made in bulk and frozen as can many meals like cottage pie etc. The problem I have with ready meals is the junk they're filled with to make them taste *nice*. I prefer to give my family healthier and tastier food.

missk_ensington

finc- So do I but I stand there huffing and puffing about it! By the time Ive finished work, picked DS from nursery, got home, cooked dinner, bathed DS and put him to bed its close to 9pm (sometimes later if he keeps getting out of his bed and coming back downstairs) then I start cleaning up from dinner, and I'm totally knackered!

Sometimes buy those Blue Parrot ready meals, and Good Stuff range from Asda as they claim to be healthy for DS and I'll grab a takeaway. Not moneysaving, or waisteline saving but certainly energy saving!

nenya

Me and my OH used to buy a lot of ready meals because we thought it was cheaper - turns out it's not. I insisted we buy lots of ingrediants - at first it was very, very expensive. But now it all works out very cheap because usually or we need to buy each week is the meat and veg or a meal as we have everything else at home.

lynzpower

Me & My OH have a strict budget of 100 pcm

I wont go into the ins & outs of how we do it ( with ease now, was a bit of effort in the beginning) but a few tips as below

Turkey fillets are cheaper than chicken and leaner too, so you can use these for enchilada, stir fries, casseroles, as you would chicken.

I have always used quorn mince ( dont like meat mince) and Ive bought a dry version from tescos, and latterly holland & barratt , for a quid. Ive had 4 meals out of it so far, theres at least another 8 meals in the bag Chilli/ bolognese etc

I dont buy anything like Diet Coke anymore ( a rough estimate was I was spending at least 700 per year on it- so I stopped :T)

make stuff. Flapjacks cost very little to make with value oats and they are much better than bought biscuits and easy too.

Buy value versions of whatever you can. ie, the washing up liquid aint great, but the butter is fine. Trial & error.

Every few days have a "cheap" meal - one we have is homemade pizza & jackets ( just normal potatoes, not specific baking ones) that costs less than 50p between us.

chiefpossession

My suggestion is menu planning - it really works. I have been doing this for the last month and I am amazed.

I realised that I had to do something about my grocery bill as during the first week of the school holidays, I seemed to be in a supermarket every other day filling my trolley - and then filling my bin with all the food that we hadn't eaten. I couldn't carry on like this.

I went through my cupboards and freezer and made a list of exactly what I had - including cleaning, toiletries etc. Then I sat down with my three children and we listed all the meals we have. Then I made my first weeks menu. I made my shopping list from that - and I was shocked at how little I needed to buy.

I felt really strange at first in Tescos doing my weekly shop and only spending £25. There are 5 of us and my husband and eldest children have BIG appetites + a dog and 2 cats. I went back later in the week to top up milk and bread - and that's all!

The best thing though has been how little I have thrown away.

Melissa22_Mum

Don't go to Tesco only buy 2 for 1's. You really need to shop around supermarkets hope that you do all of your shopping at once, however it pays to go to several shops and stock up on the offers!