Critique please

leandygandy

Meal plan and shopping list for the week. Please could you help me see where we can cut back a bit more?

Brekkies - Toast with jam / marmite / butter or
Cereal
Juice & Cup of tea

Lunches - Hubby invariably has a ham sandwich, bag crisps, piece fruit (apple or banana), small choccy bar and yoghurt.
I'll be having mixed salad (lettuce, tomato and cucumber) with a small piece of quiche.

Snacks - Hubby doesn't snack, but I have some tinned fruit which I've popped in a tupperware pot in the morning, and some carrot and celery sticks in the afternoon.

Dinners

M - Egg, chips and beans
We already have all the things required for this in the house. Monday has to be a quick meal because we go to antenatal classes at 8pm and hubby doesn't get home from work until 7pm.

T - Me : Quiche
OH : Salmon piece
with new potatoes and green beans
We have everything for this bar the quiche and beans. I know I could easily make the quiche but don't think I'll get the time so in this instance it will have to be a shop bought one.

W - I'm off to a pregnancy nutrition class and will be fed there, hubby will eat something from the freezer (various bits and bobs for him to choose from)

T - Hubby is out and I'll have a jacket potato with chilli (home cooked and frozen) and salad.
Again we already have all the key components for this meal in.

F - Home made pizza and garlic bread.
We don't need anything to make this except some meat to go on the top of hubby's pizza.

Weekend - Wing it from whatever is left!

Just for info - I have recently started making bread so we don't buy that any more. Hubby is a big fusspot and will not eat any cold meat other than wafer thin processed ham. With regards to veg, he has only in the past few months started eating green beans and eats very few other types (namely only carrots and cauli) so buying in season is a no go otherwise he won't get any nutrition. Apples and bananas are his fave fruits, along with melon but it's too expensive. I have switched to tinned fruit for me in an attempt to keep costs down. We generally buy supermarket own brand but not Basics and have agreed to try downgrading as much as possible in case the next level down is sufficient for our needs.

Shopping list (as written by me - it needs to be quite concise for hubby as it's him doing the shop lol) BTW K is his initial.

Big quiche - pref brocolli but 'normal' quiche will do
K sandwich meat
K fruit
Green beans
Lettuce
Tomatoes
Cucumber
Bag carrots - basics will be fine
Celery
Meat for K pizza
Cat food (We get sains own brand as it's what they seem to prefer)
Cat litter (Catsan - expensive, but after tinkering with various brands we have found it's the only one that contains the smell in the flat and it's not something we are willing to compromise on)
L roll on deodorant - get Sains own (usually have Sure)
Kitchen roll - Basics (we use this to wipe down the cooker hob after cleaning or it smears, also for the coffee table for the same reason. Hubby is very messy and spills a lot!)
K Crisps
Milk - 2 x 1 skimmed, 1 x 4 full fat
Tinned fruit - cheapest available in juice not syrup. Pineapple, peach, pear, mandarin
Washing tablets if on offer (Can only use Bold 2 in 1 as hubby suffers from bad eczema and this is the only brand we seem to have found that doesn't aggravate it)
Bleach x 2

Any input as to where we could make further savings would be much appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

life_in_termoil

Looks good to me.

Just a couple of suggestions if you have time.
Make a huge bowl of fresh fruit salad using seasonal fruit which you can then portion out.
Instead of crisps why not pop your own pop corn.
Ditch the choccie bars and make some flap jacks, muffins, cookies, cake?
Instead of buying sandwich meat buy a small joint, cook it and slice thinly. Freeze in portions.

HTH x

quintwins

frozen green beans may work out cheaper in the longrun, we mostly have frozen veg with the erxception of carrots and onions, and brocolli if i'm going to use it that day

tinned fruit it quite expensive for example it's 30p for value tinned peachs however at the moment a whole punnet of peachs are £1, an average banana is 14p and around 10-20p per apple if you buy a bag or from the market, or your can buy a bag of frozen fruit salad, or even value grapes are down to £1 and would do a whole weeks worth of snacks (i bought some on sat and we've still got half left tahts with 3 kids who love grapes and eat about 20 at a time lol)

you could switch to value crisps (theer acually very nice taste abit like salt n shake)

if you hubby will only at processed ham why are you buy sandwich ham and pizza meat? could you not double this up usually the bigger pack is better value

could you swap your quiche for an omlette of you don't think you'll have time? or value quiche is quite nice (i brought it reduced once i usually make my own) or iceland do a nice one we used to buy when the twins were little and i had no time to cook

generally your list does seem very good and healthy tho if your happy with what your spending i wouldn't change much

JenniO

re: meat for hubby's pizza. Sometimes I cook a beef burger (frozen) and shred into pieces as a 'beef' topping. You can get frozen burgers quite cheap.

You may also consider tea towels instead of kitchen roll for the mess ups? Cuts down on disposables and they'll just wash with some 'white' clothes.

at one point we used to mix catsan litter with some tesco basics cat litter. it stretches the pricey stuff a bit further.

washing powder instead of tablets would probably work out cheaper if this is made of the same 'stuff' as the tablets.

leandygandy

life_in_termoil wrote: »

Looks good to me.

Just a couple of suggestions if you have time.
Make a huge bowl of fresh fruit salad using seasonal fruit which you can then portion out. My only concern with this would be that it might not last the week, but I'll certainly give it a go
Instead of crisps why not pop your own pop corn. I don't have the crisps myself, and hubby doesn't like popcorn (fusspot!)
Ditch the choccie bars and make some flap jacks, muffins, cookies, cake? Again this is just for hubby - not sure about flapjacks but I might make cookies for him next week
Instead of buying sandwich meat buy a small joint, cook it and slice thinly. Freeze in portions. Hubby again - this would not wash, he only likes the cheap wafer thin rubbish lol

HTH x

quintwins wrote: »

frozen green beans may work out cheaper in the longrun, we mostly have frozen veg with the erxception of carrots and onions, and brocolli if i'm going to use it that day I've never had frozen green beans but am willing to give them a go!

tinned fruit it quite expensive for example it's 30p for value tinned peachs however at the moment a whole punnet of peachs are £1, an average banana is 14p and around 10-20p per apple if you buy a bag or from the market, or your can buy a bag of frozen fruit salad, or even value grapes are down to £1 and would do a whole weeks worth of snacks (i bought some on sat and we've still got half left tahts with 3 kids who love grapes and eat about 20 at a time lol)
Sounds promising - the only problem I have found is that sometimes a punnet of peaches or plums goes rotten before you can get round to eating them

you could switch to value crisps (theer acually very nice taste abit like salt n shake) I'll ask hubby about this - he generally gets whatever is on offer

if you hubby will only at processed ham why are you buy sandwich ham and pizza meat? could you not double this up usually the bigger pack is better value The pizza meat will be a little bit of salami from the deli counter and he does generally add some ham too.

could you swap your quiche for an omlette of you don't think you'll have time? or value quiche is quite nice (i brought it reduced once i usually make my own) or iceland do a nice one we used to buy when the twins were little and i had no time to cook I'm not a big fan of omelette - not sure why?!

generally your list does seem very good and healthy tho if your happy with what your spending i wouldn't change much It's not that I'm not happy with the amount we spend but if we could get it down that would be great - bear in mind theres very little cleaning products etc on the list this week...

Thanks for taking the time to reply. I've added my comments above.

quintwins

if you add lemon on lime juice to your fruit salad it will last longer, or like i said you can get a frozen bag you could take it out and put it in the fridge the night before, if you find your plums/peachs go off you could cook them into something, tomorrow i'm making peach cobbler with the reduced peachs i picked up, if you did make something like this it would freeze well

frozen green beans are around £1 a bag and do us about 3-4 meals, and theres 5 of us so will prob last you ages

i wouldn't try and cut your shopping down too much at the mo, infact i'd be adding more and patch cooking ready for the baby coming, i know all too well how easy it is to fall into the takeaway/convenience food trap with a newborn (or 2 lol)

leandygandy

quintwins wrote: »

if you add lemon on lime juice to your fruit salad it will last longer, or like i said you can get a frozen bag you could take it out and put it in the fridge the night before, if you find your plums/peachs go off you could cook them into something, tomorrow i'm making peach cobbler with the reduced peachs i picked up, if you did make something like this it would freeze well

frozen green beans are around £1 a bag and do us about 3-4 meals, and theres 5 of us so will prob last you ages

i wouldn't try and cut your shopping down too much at the mo, infact i'd be adding more and patch cooking ready for the baby coming, i know all too well how easy it is to fall into the takeaway/convenience food trap with a newborn (or 2 lol)

I know, the list of things to make is on the front of the fridge, we've got all the meat in the freezer and store cupboard bits in as well so it's just a matter of getting the fresh bits and setting the time aside one weekend next month to get it all made. If there's one thing I've learnt from this site it's the value of batch cooking

leandygandy

JenniO wrote: »

re: meat for hubby's pizza. Sometimes I cook a beef burger (frozen) and shred into pieces as a 'beef' topping. You can get frozen burgers quite cheap.

You may also consider tea towels instead of kitchen roll for the mess ups? Cuts down on disposables and they'll just wash with some 'white' clothes. I've never really thought about that but will give it a go, ta

at one point we used to mix catsan litter with some tesco basics cat litter. it stretches the pricey stuff a bit further. We have tried this before but the cats seem to 'know' and the flat tends to smell too. We've just learnt to bulk buy when it's on offer.

washing powder instead of tablets would probably work out cheaper if this is made of the same 'stuff' as the tablets.This is one of the things we have been meaning to check out. [/QUOTE]

Thanks - I've added my comments to your post