I need help with food budget

SHEILA54

How about using beans or lentils to eek out the protein. You can use them in casseroles, mince, soups etc. and they are cheap to buy in packets.

For smoothies, frozen packs of fruit are often 1 pound or 3 for 5 pounds. Add them to some cheap fruit juice or yoghurt and blitz in a blender and you can have a great smoothie. Bananas that are overipe are good to eek out smoothies as well so don't throw them away.

I buy frozen fish and make fish pie or have it as a meal. It is cheaper than fresh fish and I can get 5 pieces for 4 pounds in Iceland or when supermarkets have them on offer.

Make a pomadoro sauce to go with spaghetti and add some grated parmesan or other cheese. Just needs a tin of tomatoes, onions or garlic and some basil. Fry the sliced garlic or chopped onion in a little oil and then add other ingredients and cook for 10 mins. Season to your liking and blitz if you want a smooth sauce.

Iceland have good grocery offers and Cvit backcurrant squash usually has 100% extra. Teabags often have 50 or 100% extra as well. I am not so keen on their ready meals as I like to make my own but their desserts are often good value and the ice lollies also. They do good quality toilet rolls at 4 for 1 pound, milk at 1 pound for 2 litres and other good household offers also.

sysadmin

We're probably in a bit of a worse situation as we have 3 children (6, 2 & 4 months) so were having to buy milk and 2 lots of nappies but we seem to be able to manage on about £60 - £70 per week. We've started to shop at aldi and its seriously cutting our bills down.

Our food bill from Aldi comes to about £40 per week but that includes things like biscuits & crisps etc. And to be honest most of the things you cant tell the difference!

There are only a few things that we still go to asda or tesco for.
Nappies (asda's own - which are really quite good)
Baby Milk (cow and gate)
Soup & Beans (heinz)

The rest, including toiletries and cleaning products all come from Aldi.

star_ka

Hi,

Just thought I would share my tip. I make a batch of home made tomato sauce, This can be used in spagetti bolognaise, lasagne, burritoes, chilli con carne and of course pasta napolitan. To add to the nutrition of other dishes it can be added to cottage/sheperds pie and other foods but in smaller quantities.
For the spagetti bolognaise and lasagne just fry meat then add sauce. For the burritoes and chilli concarne, fry meat and place con carne powder in the saucepan with the sauce.

The sauce recipie depends on personal preference and takes a few trys but here is my basic recipie:

1 onion sweated in a little oil (i prefer olive oil but I dont think it makes that much difference)
2 tins of tomatoes
1 pack of passata
1 Courgette
1 pepper a little sugar
1 carrot
mixed herbs
garlic
Some white wine.
Cupfull of lentils

I used to place the sauce in the blender for my youngest and even when weaning her she used to eat it and OH. I divide the sauce into freezable containers, then portion it out which makes it convinient.

For dishes that has a strong tasting sauce, e.g. curry try swapping beef mince for turkey mince, this works out better.

HTH and good luck with your target

:j

andrewmp

Smart Price Mince £1.20
Half an onion 20p
Carton of Smart Price Passata 25p
Spoonfull of cumin (store cupboard)
A few chillis (pence)
Chilli Powder (store cupboard)
Few herbs (store cupboard)
Kidney Beans 19p
Garlic 15p
Stock Cube 5p

Cost about £2 and makes enough chilli for 3 hungry adults.

Soften the onions then add garlic, fry a little then add mince and brown mice, drain excess fat and dump everything else in with a bit water, leave to simmer for 90 minutes or something, done.

cocolgooh

I don't know if this would help anyone with kids but in Tesco you can get 100 nappy bags for 9p. We use them for our dog and litter tray and my friend uses them for the same thing (as well as for her baby's nappies of course) so they can be quite useful for 9p, considering you just throw them away. I would imagine that could cut costs a little if you're spending a little less there.