Advice on new food budget

Penguin8410

Hoping you lovely people can help a bit with my food budget 😊 due to a new overall budget out food budget has been reduced from £200-£160 a month. I need to provide breakfast for myself, oh and 2 daughters, Lunch and dinner every day for me and oh, lunch and dinner 3 times a week for 2 children and lunch and dinner twice a week for 4 children due to childcare arrangements. I already do the big bolognaises which I make into spag Bol, chilli and shepherds pie, rubber chicken which I can turn into about 3 meals, but just wondering whether there are any other tips on making the budget stretch further. Also snacks for the kids are a bit of a problem as my nephew who's 4 has started eating like a teenager! Childrens ages are 4, 2x 2 years and a baby who is just being weaned so would just
Like to include her as she will be eating what they eat soon enough! Any advice will be more than welcome as the budget will be worst case £32 a week. Many thanks x

BakerBoy

Last week I bought 2 ox cheeks from a butcher for £5.50. I cooked them with onions, carrots, celery, 250g butter beans (from dried) a bottle of stout and some water. Got 8 grown up portions for £8. Could have done it without the stout!

I also bought a ham hock for £3 from a farm shop which I'll cook with haricot beans. I expect to get 4-6 portions out of that.

happydays89

I think the only way is yellow sticker shopping,hit the shops in the evening when they do the final reductions,our local Tesco. Do it around 7pm,everything down to 10p,we fill the freezer and manage to keep our food bill very low.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

BoP Country Pies!


Mince, about a pound! Then 4 decent carrots and a 3 pound bag of tatties (£5 to £6). Makes two decent meals for Sunday! One for the now, on for the ice box of the freezer!

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

happydays89 wrote: »

I think the only way is yellow sticker shopping,hit the shops in the evening when they do the final reductions,our local Tesco. Do it around 7pm,everything down to 10p,we fill the freezer and manage to keep our food bill very low.

No no no no no no no! If you have a waitrose, their normal value stuff far far far far superior. And just buy enough for be week. Only buy fresh fruit and veg.noranges and pancakes are on tea a week. Egg salad another. Then left over salad, with tinned fish.

But at all cost,mod not slump for the emporium, especially T carp foods. Boycott the emporiums.

robin58

I would also look into the following things.

Buy basics from Aldi and Lidl. A lot cheaper for the same products,

Look at the products you buy. Downbrand what you can. Could you buy a cheaper brand but not tell the difference. This can save you lots.

Also look at the Grocery Challenge forum at the top of this section. Very good recipes and advice on how the make things go further.

And if you are lucky to be in the right place at the right time for yellow sticker basic stuff like vegetables, buy them up and prepare them for the freezer.

good_advice

I would say look to see what you have in the fridge/freezer/ cupboards first and then write a list and menu plan.
look out for any coupons.
Look at savvy buys on My Supermarket web page.

Good luck.

Piggywiggy

Where do you shop? Do you usually buy brand names? If so try the value ranges. Buy potatoes in a 25kg bag for around £6-7 can't go wrong with a jacket potato and cheese in my house! If you have time bake something for the lunch boxes.

Penguin8410

Thanks for the responses. I normally shop in tesco and do buy as much basic products as I can as most of them I can't tell the difference. There is a lidl in the next town so really need to start going there. I did once and bought some fruit including a punnet of grapes which I got halfway down and from there down was covered in mould so put me off a bit! The nearest also is miles away so just not worth the petrol in my opinion! I'm just jotting down a list of cheapest products of what we buy on a week to week basis and see how much they add up to and will go from there. I'm already an avid yellow sticker shopper and our local village coop are great for this, got 3 packs of kievs the other day for less than £1.50. I have gone back to making meus from what we have in the fridge and have done this weeks already and now have a bunch of vouchers in my handbag to start using! Thanks for all the tips, glad I'm on the right track at least!!

flipper_72

Try some of the recipes from a girl called Jack, my kids love the chickpea and apricot curry, and the gigantes plaki served with rice, they are meat free, I use tinned pulses but dried are even cheaper, I make much larger portions than she suggests and freeze the rest for another quick meal.
Another fave of my kids is basically cooked rice, kidney beans, tinned tomatoes, some cajun spices and mozzarella cheese all mixed together. Again a cheap easy meal, not freezable though.
YS processed foods may make a cheapish meal but otherwise steering away from processed food will be cheaper.
Snacks - crackers, bread sticks, rice cakes, chopped up fruit and veg, occasional biscuit.
Hopefully as you say you are on the right route, these may help with some new ideas.