Only £70 to live on for next week, help!!!

chewy62

Hope you lovely people might be able to help me. Due to my lack of will power I have overspent this last week so now only have £70 to live on for the next week, 8 days altogether.
Luckily, this doesn't include cub subs, swimming lessons or school dinners and I do have a fair bit of food in the house.
This is for 2 adults my 3 sons and a doogie!
tried making my own bread the other day, not a great success!;)
Any advice would be gratefully received!:o

merlin68

Sainsburies feed your family for £50 a week meal planner. On their website. By going to Aldi's I can get it down to about £40.

mandi

Raid the back of your freezer . It's surprising how much is in there .

TBH £70.00 for 8 days is huge amount to live on in true money saving style ..


I'm sure Pink Winged will be along soon with a link

CFC

Look through here for cheap recipes and make a meal planner. This is essential. Then go to the shops and buy the ingredients. You have plenty to go through the week with even if you don't have stuff in the freezer.

squeaky

For a bet you can live off the contents of your store cupboard, fridge and freezer for a week and need only a minimal spend (if you have to spend anything at all).

Have a browse through the link below and you'll get the idea

Store cupboard challenge

And this thread is good:- How to survive on what’s in the store cupboard (plus a little money)


Plus a whole bunch of related threads:- store copboard threads here on Old Style MoneySaving

poppy-glos

i was thinking of you today when i was cooking lunch, we had hm pizza for lunch. how is your cooking?

i used 500g tesco value plain flour, and mixed in 7g dried yeast, 7g salt, 7g white granulated sugar, mixed together, then mixed in 30g (easier to weigh but about 2 tablespoons) veg oil and 325ml warm water. mix all together either by hand (or i used kneed attachment on kenwood chef.
knead for ten minutes, leave to stand for an hour, then knock back and knead for ten minutes, divide into four baking tray sized bits of dough, or six or 8 smaller pizzas. then precook the base in the oven at 200 for 10 minutes. (precooking gives a crisper base, can go soggy if cooked all together on first baking)

For the topping i used 250g (two balls of ) mozzerella,, about 60 cheddar grated, some tomatoe sauce (onion, tomatoe, oil, salt, sugar cooked down until thick), 100g grated chedder, one onion (fried off in some oil first), and one orange pepper chopped up.

i went on mysupermarket and priced the meal if buying the ingredients, as you need to buy in the sugar/salt/yeast/oil etc it would come to £9.10 on the first time (and cheaper to buy grated mixed mozzeralla and cheddar than buying individually), but the actual cost is £4.95 if costed by what you have used. The next time you'd already have the flour/salt/oil/yeast/sugar and possibly left over base tomotoe sauce, so it would cost either 3.87 if you had saved enough leftover tom sauce in the freezer and £4.64 if you needed to make the tomatoe base again.

hope this helps either yourselves or someone else

poppy x

Flee_2

What have you got in your cupboards, fridge and freezer? If you tell us what you have then maybe we can give you some recipe ideas.

adelight

If you follow all the usual OS tips of home cooking, buying a brand down, bulking out meals and batch cooking, £70 is plenty. In fact, seeing as you've got quite a bit in already, why not make it a challenge? Instead of "oh no i've only got £70 for a week!" think "i wonder how long i can make £70 last" and aim for two weeks!!
Follow the GC thread and search for threads as they are loads similar to this one.

http://www.deliaonline.com/recipes/type-of-dish/bread/quick-and-easy-wholemeal-loaf.html is fool proof! Follow the ingredients perfectly, but then section into about six equal portions and dollop these spaced out on metal trays. Cover each tray with a loose carrier bag and put in the oven on ~40C for 30 minutes to rise(or airing cupboard for 45 if you have a gas oven). Take them out, heat the oven to max, remove the carrier bags and put the bread back in. After 20 mins check them, if tapping the bottom sounds hollow then they're ready.
This way they rise outwards a lot more (quite a wet dough, it WILL stick to your fingers a bit) and each one can be cut in half like a burger bun. They end up the perfect size for a hearty sandwich this way and you don't have the annoying dried out edges like on a loaf.

poodledoodledoo

I've just done a whole fortnight's shop for the six of us using only recipes from this thread-
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/36443
and pudding recipes from here (allowing for a pudding every day )-
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/3436961

Total cost £138 that was including cleaning products, toiletries etc and extra 'luxuries' (cheap box of wine, multipacks of crisps, biscuits etc), delivery
:j

chewy62

Thanks everyone for your help, its great to have support! I like the way you say to be positive adelight, makes sense1
I actually made pizzas for the first time last week poppy-glos and was very impressed with them, if I say so myself!Thanks for all the tips, have done an inventory of freezer, its just fussy childrens appetites thats the problem!

lil_me

Chewy62 there is nothing like testing times to make little people rethink their fussiness. Get them involved with the recipes cooking and planning meals always helps their interest. 4 years ago I'd have said the same with my 2 autistic sons but they are getting much better. I like to challenge them and say ok we have this and this find a recipe with me and we hunt online or in cook books. Good luck I'm sure you'll be fine I spend around that including lunch boxes