Where does it go?

Seanymph

we have tried - Hugh FW did his recent series, and we had a meat free curry a couple of times. ED doesn't mind, SS eats anything but YD doesn't like most veg.

If they all liked the same things it would be easier!

DundeeDoll

oh seanymph your house sounds like mine. We now only have one at home (other two are at uni hence us having to live on one income while the other supports them lol) but our DS doesn't like 'mushy food' (ie one pot which OH and I lerv) nor spuds so I am quite happy to do him his own. He does like bowls of cereal and cheese sarnies so he fills up on those. Then his weekly menu goes... pizza, sausage and chips (which he buys on the way home from band), spicy pork rice, pasta and chicken, beef and noodles, butcher's sausages and pasta or steak pie, either chicken or cut up hotdogs and pasta. he likes his pasta bald (yeuch) and usually gets two of: brocolli, carrots, peas, sweetcorn, green beans, cucumber. He would happily have 8 sausages every night - just like his grandad! but i kinda feel I need to give him variety lol. cereal is usually a snack rather than breakfast. oh and he drinks milk BY THE COW-FULL!!!

DundeeDoll

for his meat fix we buy whatever's on offer at Lidl, freeze them flat in old bread bags (then shake them down once frozen). This way his meat is well under £1 a portion but is all locally sourced. The beef I boil for 45 mins as that makes steak that would be a bit chewy fried nice and tender. Then I keep the 'water' for next day's soup If the pork is a pork chop I do the same with the left over bone, chopping up the pork to fry. That day we have 'mush' with rice so only cooking one pot of rice. I tell you since I joined the how much food did you throw away this month nothing is wasted!!! Next plan is to make my cooking more economical - us having breaded haddock one of his pizza days, jackets finished off the oven the other day, making scones while the oven's hot etc

BitterAndTwisted

If your gang like butternut squash and sweet potatoes and you have them roasted and mashed I'd try mixing the squash with carrots and the sweet potato with normal ones. I suspect you're right the food budget is the thing that's causing some of the problem. £250!

I'm of the view that the mug who does the planning, the shopping and the cooking is the same mug who gets to decide what's for dinner and how much of it. A kind of benign dictatorship, if you like. To death with snacks and fizzy drinks!

Six sausages? Cut it down to five and then four later. it's OK to be greedy if you're doing an active job but some of those calories need to be carbs and fats and not just pure proteins. It's not a good load on the liver in any case.

Did anyone notice that in @asa they have TEN KILOS of spuds for three quid at the moment? If I had a family I'd have bought some.

PipneyJane

Another approach to a spending diary you might consider, mine. I run two records using the accounting pages in my Filofax. I call them Money to Live Off and Bank. Both use the multi-column accounting pages.

Bank

(This would easily transfer into a spreadsheet and ties in with what most of the others have suggested.)

At the start of each month, I write down my bank account balance, add my salary and any interest earned to it, then deduct ALL known spending from the total (including savings, credit card payments and budget items like housekeeping money, petrol accrual, etc). Even though the cash hasn't left my bank account yet, this money has already been spent so I can't count it in my remaining bank balance. I call that my "real bank balance".

The paper I use has a couple of spare columns at the side, so I use them for accruals. For instance, I have one called "petrol accrual". At the start of the month, I'll deduct £200 from my bank account total and enter that in the petrol accrual column. Then, every time I buy petrol, I deduct it from the total in the petrol accrual column, instead of the bank account total. If I buy more petrol in a month than I have in the accrual, I have to work out a way to get that money from elsewhere (say, from my cash accrual).

I have another accrual that I call "cash", which I run in a similar way, except that I do my deductions whenever I take cash out of the bank or use my debit card. The amount accrued is the same as my monthly allowance. This also gets raided whenever any unexpected spending occurs, say when my mobile phone bill is higher than expected.

On a spreadsheet, you could run accruals for clothing, vet bills, dentist bills, glasses and optometry visits, etc. (I have separate accounts at ING for those, so don't bother.)

It is fairly easy to reconcile my bank account. Whatever my bank says is my account balance will be the total of my real bank balance, less those items which haven't been deducted yet and all my accruals added together.

Money to Live Off

This is my allowance and is a true spending diary. Each month, I start a clean sheet of paper off with, say, £150. Then when I spend any money that wasn't budgeted for elsewhere, I write down the date, what I purchased and deduct the amount from the running total. This includes items purchased via credit card, since I will have to pay for them eventually.

Having a decreasing running balance is a great way to keep me from frittering my money away. There's nothing like realising if I purchase X that'll leave me with only £25 to get me through to the end of the month in 3 weeks time, to make me put X back on the shelf.:eek:

Hope this helps.

Any

Sorry, I disagree, I don't think that you can give male 2 saussages and be done with it.
I am size 8 female and I eat 3 and I would not expect my OH to also eat just 3 as he is bit bigger then me.
Toad in a hole is an option for filing up, but then I reckon I wouldn't be size 8. Empty carbs.
So I personally would give male and teenage boys 4 saussages. Though depends on the size, I am talking normal supermarket/butchers saussages, not the strange shapes and sizes you get in delicatessen:-))

BUT I would perhaps tell them to pee off if they think they are getting saussages for a tenner!!

For butternut squash and sweet potatoes you need to either go to local cheap market, or to Lidl/Aldi or similar to take it down. I would also throw in normal potato or two, just to bulk it up a bit.

If you find the grocery will be the killer, then perhaps it will be time to also break down the groceries and start meal planning. You might find that the bulk is meat and find that buying in bulk on offer and getting extra freezer from freecycle will be an option (I buy a lot of things on special offers and some things at Costco and then freeze them).
You might also find that snacks and fizz are killer. Given choice my OH will eat whole 6 pack of crisps in 2 days, so I keep them hidden when bought in bulk on offer and supply them into cupboards in bits (sad one has to do this I know, but since OH stopped smoking nothing is sacred in our house anymore!! Including my gifted chocolates!!). I found the only other way I get some junk food is when I buy myself stuff he hates, like Bounty bars, then I don't have to race him who will eat it first:-))

I remember when we were little everything was bought in multiples of 3 (3 children) and we were told once is gone is gone, until next shopping trip so we would know that the cupboard is not bottomless supply. That is why I personally don't understand how my OH can not realise that he had 5 packets of crisps while I had one and demand (In a nice way, he is not a monster:-)) new shopping trip or buy more. And I find that that if you just supply on demand the spend on these things get out of hand.

PipneyJane

Seanymph wrote: »

Nope - OH doesn't like baked potatoes, YD and SS won't eat brown pasta or rice. And I make my own bread.

I make a fair few soups - but then they like spicy butternut squash or sweet potatoe (always the expensive option!).

But I suspect that once my diary is done for the month it will be groceries that will be the culprit.

Hmmm... I have a couple of butternut squash soup recipes in my repertoire. I either use a whole small squash or half a large one (the rest probably went into a curry). Sometimes, when they're sold per unit instead of by weight, it can be cheaper to buy the largest you can find, prep the whole lot for soup and then put half in the freezer. (I'd zap it for a minute or two in the microwave, covered with cling film and a tablespoon of water in the bottom of the container. Once cool, transfer to a bread bag/freezer bag/container and squish down to make a cake before freezing. Saves on space.)

If your family like really thick soup, you could add red split lentils or carrot to the recipe and cut down on the quantity of squash. Or, alternatively, try making your spicy soup recipe but using just carrots or just lentils instead of the squash.

Seanymph

Any your house sounds like mine!

All four take packed lunch, so I have a box of crisps in the garage, and buy small bars of kit kat or rocky or whatever is on offer. But SS seems to have a habit of eating them secretly (by the amount of wrappers I find in his room/bag/coat pockets ......... so we run out by about wednesday when we shoudln't (I may have a bit of a habit myself).

It's worrying though how much money we seem to go through with nothing at all to show for it. I feel embarrassed really when I look at the five day diary - and don't want to show it to OH at all. I suppose that's a good thing though - perhaps I'll be cutting down already.

Any

Seanymph wrote: »

Any your house sounds like mine!

All four take packed lunch, so I have a box of crisps in the garage, and buy small bars of kit kat or rocky or whatever is on offer. But SS seems to have a habit of eating them secretly (by the amount of wrappers I find in his room/bag/coat pockets ......... so we run out by about wednesday when we shoudln't (I may have a bit of a habit myself).

It's worrying though how much money we seem to go through with nothing at all to show for it. I feel embarrassed really when I look at the five day diary - and don't want to show it to OH at all. I suppose that's a good thing though - perhaps I'll be cutting down already.

As long as I prepare my OH's fruit he will eat anything, but if you think fruit bowl is where he looks when he gets munchies you are mistaken:rotfl: It is a male trait I think. Though SS is better, but that is because he goes to a gym and likes to make his own fruit shakes.
I don't prepare OH's fruit very often, sometimes I do when I feel like it, other times I just nagg him to eat some. He is good on veg with his dinner though, so if you count that in I bet your 5 a day is not too bad. That is fruit&veg, not just fruit.

It is not good if SS eats half a houshold supply secretly and I understand that you don't want the rest of them to suffer so you just buy more, but perhaps that needs nipping in the bud.

Seanymph

Oh we are completely passed budding. Believe it or not I found a rotten cucumber in his drawer the other day where he'd taken it to his room to make sandwiches at night!

I work on not making food an issue - life has enough of those anyway - it's just that they will all always go for the more expensive stuff first. (I guess that's just normal huh?).