General grocery savings tips?

Turning_into_scrooge

Do you have a freezer big enough to freeze the extra bread and milk, yes milk can be frozen its on another thread, to save using the express service? or maybe bake your own bread? We have saved loads by baking bread in a bread machine that i bought ages ago and never really used ive even started baking cakes in it too

Turning_into_scrooge

Curry_Queen wrote:

I regularly go 7-8 hours without a meal, and can often be 16 hours from dinner till I eat the next day. I only usually eat twice a day, sometimes just once

You sound like me curry_queen, Half the time i just cant be bothered to cook if its only me.

elona

If only I had that problem- I seem to be constantly nibbling and hungry - but now try to graze on fruit or fat free yoghurt - or home made soup, made in slow cooker.:o

malolo

krazyk wrote:

I just don't like fruit and veg. I'm sure there is fruit and veg in the foods I eat, but it's down to the way it's presented

Would you be able to eat foods that you'd made if they had hidden vegetables in it or would you not be able to do that as you'd know it was in there?

I'm thinking of home made soups and sauces that you could blitz up so you couldn't see any of the veggies etc.

heather38

hi, some one mentioned brita filters earlier.
we have a built in on in our kitchen and is the best thing we ever got, and it cost us £25 instead of £50 because mfi had a sale on all kitchens half price, i argued that it could only be fitted in the kitchen so we should get it half price and the salesman agreed!! :j
plus the cartridges only need changing twice a year rather than every sixto eight weeks like brita filters. they cost £11 pounds each but we only need two a year so i think it works out cheaper than the brita ones for the equvilent length of time

freda

Some ideas:

Learn to cook, bit by bit. I'd advise starting by learning how to cook spag bol, coz you can use that as a base for cooking lasagne (which you will love when you make it yourself!), shepherds pie, pasta sauce - loads of things. If you do this, you will gradually notice your food bill get less and less as you stop buying the pre-made stuff and start buying fresh.

Hiding vegatables in your food:
Cook carrots with your potatoes and mash up with butter, milk and a little cheese or pepper, whichever suits your tastes.

Try raisens, sultanas etc as a snack?

Learn to make soup (dead easy, fry onion gently till soft, add lots of chopped up veggies, stir for a couple of mins, add water, cook till soft and then blitz) and add things like bacon, ham. croutons, cheese etc to it when you eat it. Make lots all at once and freeze portions.

If you get a bread machine you can make not only bread but pizza bases as well - dead easy to make and you can hide veggies in a pizza too!

Try getting plain yogurt and adding stewed apple / rhubarb / other fruit to it, with a little sugar if you have a sweet tooth.

Letovers for work are great, as someone mentioned. If you have a microwave at work, take in a potato to bake, or a cooking apple cored and with brown sug, raisins and sultanas stuffed down the hole and microwaved till soft, or a tub of last night's lasagne / spag bol / pasta etc.

I think the key to reducing your bill is learning to cook! It is really good fun once you get into it, I never thought I'd like it but it gives you so much control and choice over what you eat I would never go back to ready made food.

Enjoy

Jolaaled

moggins wrote:

Tesco do do flavoured water and it is on the website, Hint of Lemon & Lime, Hint of Apple & Raspberry, Hint of Blackberry & Grape, Hint of Peach, Hint of Elderflower and Lemon.

All 1 litre bottles priced at 51p each and they have them at buy 3 for £1.45 atm.

Actually there are far more flavours and a 1.5 litre size too but I don't have time to type them all out.

I use tap water and a generous sprinkling of Tesco lemon juice ( the bottled type that's in the home baking section). Far cheaper! and great taste!

tiff

I use filtered water and a slice of lemon! Even cheaper

Curry_Queen

I noticed a water filter in Tesco's online grocery for £9.95, but there's no picture with it so have no idea what it's like, so does anyone know anything about it and is it worth buying, considering they're usually twice the price


Edit: Just checked and it's called Brita Family Fill And Pour Water Filter 3lt but I can't find any further info on it.

krazyk

Hi again,

Thanks for your continuing replies:

Turning_into_scrooge,

Freezing milk sounds a good idea. I actually ran out this week and decided to not get any for the moment. So I have been eatting up all my old tins of food in the morning (I only use milk for my breakfast as I don't think tea or coffee).

heather38,

A built in water filter for £25? I've found a filter and tap on the MFI web site for £56, is this what you got? Did you buy this separately? Is it easy to install?

malolo,

Yes if it's hidden I would probably eat it. I find that if I get certain things toegether with something else (like I mentioned before I would eat a burger if it's in a bun but not on it's own) I would eat it. Lasagne is probably another example.

I think what I will have to do it buy a few ready meals and try then until I find what I like then start actually cooking them. It will be a bit expensive at first but should save me money in the end. And as I'm just about to start packing for a move and traveling back and forth to Kent more frequently atm I think testing fast food during this period would be ideal (as I won't have too much spare time) then when I move into my new house get down to some cooking.

I have bought a few cook books (and might get 2 more), for example, Delia Smith's How to Cook set of books. So will get on with reading them after the move.

freda,

Ye, learning to cook spag bol sounds a good idea and will definitely do that. I suppose I could use the base with rice too??

I hate raisens, sultanas, yuck. Any other snack alternatives? Yep I think I could swap the cereal bars for something better.

A few people have mentioned soap and I did have the idea a while ago. But not done anthing about it. I do have a good quality food processor (which was bought when I have a lot os spare time) so will get that out after the move and play around with soaps. Any books or web sites with good soap recipes?

What type os bread machine might I get, how long does this take? How much is it? Sounds interesting, but a few here have said that I should cut out bread altogether from my diet.

Curry_Queen,

I would be interested on info for this too (Brita Family Fill And Pour Water Filter 3lt). I cannot find anything about this on Google nor on the Brita web site, but it sounds something like the kettle water filter from Brita.

K