Need help with frugal meal ideas

MrsSippi

I monthly shop (with a top up every week of fruit, veg etc - normally £12-15) and have a budget of £260p/m (inc. weekly shops). This is for 2 adults and one 3 year old and I have found I've saved quite a bit since swopping from weekly shopping. This covers EVERYTHING for us inc toiletries, all meals (i.e. we prepare our own packed lunches etc, daughter needs a hot lunch and a cold tea for the 3 days of the week she attends nursery). However I shop at Aldi for 80% of what we need and go to Asda for the remaining 20% - mainly things we can't get at Aldi (their toiletries range is very limited and they don't sell night time pull ups which daughter still wears) or things that are just better there - i.e. they have a much wider range of stuff for dh lunches - inc. pasties etc. DH has a manual job and a typical lunch for him would be: either 1 round of sandwiches with pastie/sausage roll etc or 2 rounds of sandwiches, 2 pieces of fruit, crisps, cereal bar, choc bar and yoghurt. I am also quite lucky that with meal planning etc I have been consistently able to get our overall spend down to about £200 p/m.

We have just booked a holiday to Euro Disney next March and although we can afford it I am keen to save what I can as we won't have much put by for spending money (and I am expecting it to be quite expensive - esp with a then 4 year old!).

I would really love any suggestions for meal ideas/meal plans that I can follow for the next few months to help us get our costs down even more. I don't mind how basic/boring they are - the only important thing is that they are healthy enough for a 3 year old.

I do what I can already - rubber chicken, batch cooking mince (bulked up with lentils, grated carrot etc) into spag bol, chilli, cottage pie etc are staples in our house. To such an extent that dh told me last night that he may consider divorcing me if we have spag bol again this month . To be fair he does have a point.

Any suggestions for meals or ideas on how to get costs down further would be massively appreciated.

RAS

This thread has a lot of useful links
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5010839

Butterfly_Brain

Have you thought about making your own pasties? It works out much cheaper and you know what is in them.

Try this it was made by fellow O'sers

http://web.archive.org/web/20130815202750/http://www.cheap-family-recipes.org.uk