Please help us eat well for less!

skintmum2012

Hi your doing better then me I managed to get down to about £200 this month. March for us starts next month and I have already spent £204 of that I do have formula and nappies and a Huge order from approved foods in there which I have used to stock up on things that will carry us through the month. In our family we have Me and Hubby a 5 and 3 year old and my 3 month old baby boy. I would like to get down to £300 this month. I thought I would share what I do though. I use aldi for my fresh fruit and veg and it's way cheaper. I have heard one of the newspapers will have a £5 coupon when you spend £40 on Thursday. I plan to stock up on meat then use the rest of my money to buy fresh throughout the month
Also a girl called jack is fantastic as well as a book she has a website and she has saved me a fortune I now make my own breakfasts from her recipes which has saved me loads.
And batch cooking is fantastic I also work a day ahead of myself so today I made our Breakfast, Lunch and planed our dinner I will do the same tomo for Tuesday then I never get to the point of we have no food and need a takeaway which I am really bad for lol.
For our lunches I get everyone to eat the same thing making it cheaper and we have stuff like tuna and sweetcorn with pasta, Veg pots with homemade hummus, pizzas with pittas, potato salad.
I hope some of that might have helped and I am really looking forward to seeing what others have to say.

[Deleted User]

Plan everything like an operation:)

Plan your weekly menu (I do this on a Sunday morning)

Plan to eat around what you have in stock(I also find this useful ) as it helps to use up the food you have already bought .After all that's why you bought it :)

Most important of all

Plan you shopping ,both time and trips, and plan EXACTLY what you are going to buy and take enough cash with you to just cover it with a couple of pounds left over as leeway

It sounds a bit obvious I know, but without a bit of planning you will be buying almost what the supermarkets want you to buy.They employ experts to help part us from our cash, and the store is laid out for shopper to buy without thinking to clearly almost.
The advent of in-store bakeries for example.Walk past one and the smell of bread cooking is there for a reason, to encourage you to stop and buy.Whats more mouthwatering than the smell of new baked bread:):)

I live alone now as my children are grown up and flown the nest and I was widowed just over 10 years ago.But I can eat fairly well on around £60.00 per month.Sounds small, but it is doable .

I spend about a third on fruit and veg ,have cut back on meat and use lentils etc to bulk out stuff.Every scrap of food bought is cooked and used.I buy stuff I can see will make several meals with, and batch cook. I use both Aldi's,Morrisons and Sainsburys to buy stuff.My freezer is packed full of stuff I have found in the YS area.I have one shelf at the bottom which is mainly fish.I bought a free range chicken from Aldi's and at £3.99 I managed to get 8 meals plus a vat of HM soup from it.
Thats another good thing to make HM soup is so cheap ,quick and easy to make and is a great lunch with (in my case crackers as I don't eat bread anymore) or as a starter for dinner in the evening.I always do as my late Mum did and that is if I have a soup starter I don't need a pudding ,or if I have a pud then no need for a starter.This helps fill you up for very little cost and you main meal doesn't have to be as big.I do eat a lot of veg,and try to get what's in season. Porridge I have always made with water and once in the bowl only have a splash of milk to it.
A jacket spud with either grated cheese or a third of a tin of beans is a filling dinner with either soup to start with or a pud to finish and it won't break the bank.For puddings I am an old-fashioned pud sort of person and enjoy making semolina or rice puds.Once cold, they will keep in the fridge for several days .I also make a jelly up and pour into several old yoghurt pots and top with a bit of custard,far cheaper than buying ready made stuff.A tin of custard powder lasts for ages and I make it up with a small tin of evaporated milk.My slow cooker with make me a 2 pint rice pud overnight for pennies which lasts me several days.I like to cook from scratch and find that if I see something in a supermarket I can almost always replicate it myself for a fraction of the price. Pasta with chopped up bacon and a handful of peas is a nice filling dish.The bacon I buy in Morrisons for 81p for 500gms and is called 'cooking bacon' (though what else you would do with it but cook it I can't imagine):):)Its chopped up ends of bacon and if you search carefully you should find a fairly lean pack.This is great cooked to a crisp in pasta,or bacon sarnies or a quiche (another very cheap meal) I bake my own biscuits and cakes and make quite a bit for my 4 grandsons whom I look after before and after school full time.Really it is all about looking at what you buy and seeing if you can make it cheaper.Get the toddler involved in cooking , little ones love to 'help' my youngest grandson Mikey, is 9 and he can cook lots of things after watching me make stuff over the years I always supervise him near the cooker though and he knows whats allowed and whats not.

What you spend on the shopping must be treated in a way like a business and if you're like me you will not want to waste the assets (hard cash) on stuff you neither need or want.It takes a bit of reorganising but its definitely doable
Good Luck and always ask if you get stuck .we have all been there at some point
Cheers JackieO xxx