My food budget has halved! Need lots of help please, including veggie recipes!

jackieglasgow

So, where are you at with it all Cheeselady, have you started a mealplan, do you noeed help with meal inspiration for certain ingredients?

Cheeselady

jackieglasgow wrote: »

So, where are you at with it all Cheeselady, have you started a mealplan, do you need help with meal inspiration for certain ingredients?

Oh thanks, that's really nice of you to ask. I haven't done a mealplan as such yet, lol, but now I have the soya mixes that will help put a bit more variety in our meals. I am going to do the weekly shop on Thursday, so will sit down tomorrow and see what I need to buy and also what I have in the house already, and try to work out some meals, so if I need any help I will take you up on your kind offer! :T

Hellyboo

When I have a tight budget for a week I usually menu plan, and then go to whatever supermarket I'll be shopping at's website or mysupermarket.co.uk and do a "virtual shop" as if I was going to order online for delivery. I can't justify the £5 delivery costs so once I've added everything to the basket I print off the list and it gives you a total so you know how much you're going to spend. It saves adding everything up as you go along - you only have to add/delete things any extras or things they dont have when you get to the supermarket, and it takes a bit of planning, but it saves you having to go around with a calculator! The amount of times I accidentally pressed the 'c' button and lost my total as I was going round the shop :mad: lol

HTH x

9217niall

If your your son is going to college in September, is he going to claim EMA which I know is his, but he may want to make a contribution to the food budget or buy his own toiletries etc?
(Don't shoot me down anybody, thought it may be worth a punt...)

hob

i thought this link would be helpfull to you. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/346783

PrincessMort

I discovered a lovely veggie meal - sweet + sour mixed bean hotpot and it just happens to be really cheap to make let me know if you'd like the recipe

SailorSam

Cheeselady wrote: »

UPDATE on the mixes. I decided to go to ASDA today and get some, as tomorrow's appointment is cancelled. I checked online and they were still on offer 2 for £1, but when we got to the store, there was no offer on the shelves.

I went to the Asda in Huyton this morning and they were on offer there.
They had 5 different types so i got 2 of each, i didn't see any mention of it finishing tonight

Thanks for the tip.

Cheeselady

9217niall wrote: »

If your your son is going to college in September, is he going to claim EMA which I know is his, but he may want to make a contribution to the food budget or buy his own toiletries etc?
(Don't shoot me down anybody, thought it may be worth a punt...)

I promise not to shoot you, lol, and yes we will look into EMA, and will be seeing if/how much he gets and will go from there, he is also trying to find some part-time work, but no luck as yet, but once he get's his GCSE results next week, fingers crossed he gets good grades and that might help him find something.

Cheeselady

hob wrote: »

i thought this link would be helpfull to you. https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/346783

Oh thanks so much, will have a good luck through them! :T

PrincessMort wrote: »

I discovered a lovely veggie meal - sweet + sour mixed bean hotpot and it just happens to be really cheap to make let me know if you'd like the recipe

Oh thanks so much for offering your recipe, but we are not really into sweet and sour kind of things, well DH would eat anything, lol, but the rest of us are more into italian/traditional foods. Thanks again for offering, appreciate it!

jackieglasgow

Cheeselady you should also know that the sausage mix and the burger mix need a lot of seasoning, particularly the sausage, which lends itself to some salt (a fair bit actually) and pepper and chilli powder. The burgermix not so much, just in case you end up cooking a big batch and it's yuck!