How long `til you NEED to go shopping??

temba

I just wanted to share this:

A couple of months ago, I emptied all my kitchen cupboards and threw away everything out of date. Then I counted all the tins (hundreds of them..) and categorised them(I know, I have no life). Then I wrote a list. It listed absolutely everything left in my cupboards (3 bottles of white wine vinegar, 8 tins of baked beans, 8 tins of chickpeas etc etc). It think I had about 80 tins in my cupboard, and I live on my own and nearly always cook from fresh!!

Then I took my list into work, and after everyone had had a really good laugh at the strange and bizarre things I kept in stock in my cupboard, they all gave me their suggestions for meals using what was in my cupboard.

I have used most of the tins up, plus I hardly had to go shopping for weeks. All I needed really was some pasta (had lots in stock), potatoes and onions to make nice meals out of the tins, sauces and jars of things in my cupboards

Apart from anything else, it was really nice to declutter my kitchen

SunderlandBlackCat

About 2½ weeks give or take a day.

Had to replace my slow cooker at the weekend so I've been breaking the new one in & freezing 2 or 3 portions of everything.

immoral_angeluk

3 days is when we normally run out of milk/bread. 'Proper' food shops every 3 weeks or so.

natlie

Hi my cupboards are all full, but OH is fussy and doesn't believe in meal planning as he feels it restricts him lol we could easily last 2 weeks on what we have, I have loads of lentils and beans and pasta and my freezer is always full and my veg drawer could keep us in soup and we have about 5 different cereals
Nat

seven-day-weekend

We have enough frozen and tinned but I would need to top up with fresh veg and bread.

If we just lived on the tinned we could probably last about three weeks. Have enough milk.

arthur_dent_2

Months on tinned and freezer although we would be thoroughly fed up in the end. Bread and Milk, fruit and veg, no more than 4 days maximum. Saying that if you had the ingrediants to make your own bread and bought in long life milk, I could probably go on for 6 weeks or more.

pollyanna24

Almost a month. My Tesco shop came last night. I've mealplanned for the whole of February, but there are a few things I don't want the pickers to pick for me, like lumps of meat, so there's a couple of roasts I have to go to the shop for.

I make my own bread, so only have to go to the shop for milk, ham and pate when it runs out.

redrabbit29

I had an idea yesterday, well more of a decision. To withdraw cash at the beginning of the month and use that only for food. Whether it's bread, milk, or £50 worth of food. I don't know about you guys, but I find that I know how much I spend on "the big shop" but, all the little ones are the one's I lose track off.

Like th e £10 shops to get milk, bread, eggs, etc...

OneSpike

redrabbit29 wrote:

I had an idea yesterday, well more of a decision. To withdraw cash at the beginning of the month and use that only for food.

We had the same idea but it doesn't really work for us as sometimes DH will pick up odd things we need when he's out collecting a child from this or that, and sometimes I use Tesco online, which requires debit card payment.

My cupboards are full of lentils, pulses, pasta etc, which we could live off but which would be dull as ditchwater without something on them. I realised at one point I was buying to keep the cupboards full, so now I pay far more attention to what we actually have and try not to let silly stockpiles build up. When we had something daft like £12 for two weeks for a family of five, I was amazed to see how long it took something to finally run out - I buy too far in advance of something running out so I'm curbing that. I also make sure that I use those odd portions of this and that that I bung in the freezer. Every so often I have a personal 'back of the cupboard' challenge, hoik out whatever's worked its way to the back and use it or tip it in the compost and don't replace it. I have to say we could keep the village in nuts and dried fruit through most of a nuclear winter

alyth

I've just done a massive clear-out of my kitchen yesterday, actually, as I'm between contracts and getting a new kitchen installed in a weeks' time! During the week we eat M&S meals as we're both out at work, and at the weekend we cook properly. I threw a black bag out of food that I didn't even realise I had, like herbs out of date, chilli sauces, that type of thing. We don't eat tinned food or pasta so I don't have things like that, and I must admit my meal planning involves going round Markies, but I was amazed at what I found, worse still is the fact we've only been in the house 2 months so the packers must have moved all this stuff! I'm having a total purge of everything in this house (new start!) and have decided to shop on a weekly basis so avoid any wastage. What I am doing this week though is cooking and freezing as I have time, just stuff like curries/spag bol, but then I realised that we don't eat pasta it'll be spag bol sauce with veggies!