Eat Well for Less...Live on MSE

YKay

We consider our weekly shopping reasonably cheap, but we are actually thinking about increasing it. I often question myself when buying the budget version of everything, why is it so cheap? What am I really eating here?

Cancer is increasing as food is being made cheaper, the amount of rubbish that is put in food nowadays is unbelievable.

Therefore i'd like to make a note to those making cut backs - Good on you for trying to save your money, but try to eat natural as much as your budget can stretch you.

Frugal_gem

YKay wrote: »

We consider our weekly shopping reasonably cheap, but we are actually thinking about increasing it. I often question myself when buying the budget version of everything, why is it so cheap? What am I really eating here?

Cancer is increasing as food is being made cheaper, the amount of rubbish that is put in food nowadays is unbelievable.

Therefore i'd like to make a note to those making cut backs - Good on you for trying to save your money, but try to eat natural as much as your budget can stretch you.

Totally! I try and have a balance, I'm not the healthiest person in the world but I enjoy veggies, nuts, pulses, beans etc. Tonight's dinner is stir fry with cashew nuts and seeds, tomorrow's is quinoa and tofu salad but Saturday is our summer family BBQ (maybe not given the torrential rain here at the moment!), which will be full of treats and alcohol! For me, it's about enjoying the food I eat whilst trying to be healthy and frugal.

ScotinLondon

Our freezer go to meal is veggie mixed bean quesadillas. I make a batch of them and they are cooked on a low heat on the hob.

Can't go wrong with aldi...their food is good. We like their version of tortilla chips, not as salty as Doritos. But each to their own.

I would love yellow sticks shopping but my local morries closes at 10pm....Am hardly ever out that late unless I was delayed at work.

Brown lentil Dahl is one of the easiest meals to make, espresso if you have a pressure cooker. Takes no time at all.

I agree with other posters, 'cooking on a bootstrap' is a good website and the recipes are good. Give it a try, nothing to lose.

We use zoflora, vinegar & soda crystals in our household for most of the cleaning...does the job well.

PasturesNew

ani*fan wrote: »

We take out £250 when we get paid, put it in a jar and spend as we need to, or when we can be bothered to go to a supermarket.

Reduce that by £10/month for the next 6 months... you won't notice it if it's "just £10 less" and you don't put it in the jar to start with.

ani*fan wrote: »

... we buy soya, the expensive one .... I also like nice coffee .... can eat a whole punnet in one sitting ... We like Doritos and sometimes get a large packet every week or two. Sometimes a dip too.

These are probably the "hidden money guzzlers". Overlooked, expensive, used often.


You could try using less quorn - use vegetables instead. Quorn is as expensive as meat - and meat's expensive. I sometimes see people saying "quorn is cheaper than meat", only if you usually buy really pricey meat; it's still pricey.

e.g. instead of using quorn to make a chilli, use vegetables/beans to make a veggie chilli.

suki1964

YKay wrote: »

We consider our weekly shopping reasonably cheap, but we are actually thinking about increasing it. I often question myself when buying the budget version of everything, why is it so cheap? What am I really eating here?

Cancer is increasing as food is being made cheaper, the amount of rubbish that is put in food nowadays is unbelievable.

Therefore i'd like to make a note to those making cut backs - Good on you for trying to save your money, but try to eat natural as much as your budget can stretch you.

Seriously I totally agree with you

Which is why I don't buy cheap food

I buy cheaper cuts. I pad with pulses. I can stretch two good steaks to three people by using my imagination

I buy RAW food and then cook it

When I can I prefer to buy from animals I know. I'm so very lucky that I live in a community where food is shared. I got delivered at least three dozen free ranged sausages, made from the pig we knew as stuffing

Whilst the pig was growing, we sent our ' slops'

I'm lucky and I always admit that

However you can still eat well, cheaply and healthily


There was a great program on BBCR2 today , Was talking about how we have been conned into thinking fat would make you fat, because the so called doctor who published that, had the ear of the government of the day. Now we know sugar is the baddie. Took us 40 years

Even the smallest budget doesn't mean you have to eat rubbish. This board is full of people eating healthily for peanuts

Florence_J

I think this is a great idea and I commend you for seeking help on here.

I would echo what others say, and don't beat yourself up too much. I think £250 for two adults and a pet is reasonable. I live with my OH (No pets yet) and have recently been able to get our shopping budget down to £168 but this is because I am working sporadically at the moment whereas when it was £185 that was because I was working full time. I want to keep to £168 a month for the rest of the year but after the year is up/when i get a full time job (which ever happens last) we will look to increase.

I eat a primarily vegetarian diet though am not a veggie as I do eat fish occasionally (but never meat). My OH has become more adventurous food wise in recent years, but is quite fussy and his favourite foods resemble a 5 year olds diet. He does eat meat but very infrequently due to our budget and the fact I don't eat meat. Luckily he really likes meat replacement products. Unfortunately he hates nearly all beans and pulses so I can't make too many cheap and filling meat free meals.

He does like lentils, and I would again echo what others have said about replacing half or all of the quorn in a meal like a shepards pie/lasagne with lentils. I'll admit in the past I may have used close to a full bag of quorn/quorn type product in a batch of lasagne, now i use around 1/3 of the bag for a huge batch and instead use lentils. I have worked out that my lasagne costs 88p a portion, i'm sure others on here would be shocked at that as they do one much, much cheaper.

We include everything in the 'food' budget-shared toiletries, pain killers, hay fever tablets, cleaning products as well as all food and alcohol. We do drink very little alcohol.

Try not to compare yourself too much to other people. You mention using soy products and you have clear reasons for this which are fine, but this will make your budget different to someone elses, like mine. You may drink more/not at all which would also be a difference, and you have a pet whereas I don't which is why my budget is different.

Also on Eat Well For Less the presenters don't force the families to make changes if they really don't like the change. You have different needs and tastes. I LOVE coffee but am lucky in that I am quite happy with an own brand gold roast. If you love and appreciate what buying a special brand of coffee does to you then you stick to it. Make a saving on a product which isn't as important to you.

I am very happy with supermarket own brand vegetarian products, in fact I am in love with the MrT soy chicken style pieces.

We make some allowances for things which true MSE/OS 'ers would be horrified by. For instance me and my OH buy.....(deep breath).....Microwave Rice!!!!!! We could easily save on that (I would like to save on this but me and my OH disagree) and this is usually the first thing the Eat Well For Less presenters shout about. We also buy a lot of frozen veg as this is what works for us. I love Onions, my OH prefers things without onions, I used to buy fresh onions but wouldn't get a chance to eat them all so would have waste. Buying frozen onions takes care of that.

If you are struggling financially then yes, your food budget is a good thing to look at. If you are saving for something and want to get there quickly, then yes looking at the food budget is a good thing to start with. But if you can afford to spend £250 a month on two adults and a pet, then please don't try to convince yourself that this is an obscene amount as it really isn't. But there have been many good tips on here already and I am sure you will find ways to save. Good luck.

purpleybat

sorry I don't know how to quote yet (must look it up) but I started freezing my runner bean glut this year. I looked up a few sites on line and the newer ones said not to bother blanching first, so ive just chopped them up, bagged them and slung them in the freezer.
I didn't bother freezing them flat/loose, when ive frozen chopped peppers and fruits before ive found a goot bash of the bag is enough to break them up to be able to pour them.
if you eat a lot of chillies, tesclo sell them frozen in huge bags really cheaply. I find chillies easier to chop when only out of the freezer for 30 seconds so even when ive frozen homegrown ones (which only need a windowsill to grow) ive never chopped them first.

freyasmum

ani*fan wrote: »

Thank you so much for all of that. :A

Jumping in before I read the rest of the thread and forget - twinks' hobnobs!! Honestly, try them.

Definitely get yourself down to Aldi, I reckon you will shave at least 30% off your bill without making any major changes. Aldi tills can be a pest, but its a better supermarket because its much smaller! And there aren't whole aisles dedicated to one or two products!

Quorn can be expensive, and dried beans and pulses cheap and nutritious. Do you like beans?I'm imagining some sort of mixed bean chilli, etc? Served with rice, or made into a pasta bake, or, ooh... Stuffed into halved peppers, topped with some cheese and baked for a bit? Yum!

Cooking from scratch costs pennies for some things - for example, pizza crust. Basically flour, salt, sugar, yeast and water. And a little love and attention.

Start up a store cupboard, if you have the room for it - I've even heard of people storing tins, etc under their beds! This will not only help you avoid supermarkets for as long as possible (you're welcome ), but will also allow you to buy your preferred food when it's at its cheapest - we went to our local farm shop and tins of chopped tomatoes were four for a pound. I got a dozen tins! Well go through them quite quickly, but it saves money. Only 72p when compared to Aldi, but the next time I buy a dozen, that's another 72p, which means four tins for 'free' and change left over.

Speaking of the farm shop, ours has veggies that are ridiculously priced - I got the most massive butternut squash that I've seen for 99p. I've seen a recipe for cheesy stuffed and baked squash that I really want to try. We also got a 25kg sack of potatoes for £7.50, this worked out at 10p a kilo cheaper than Aldi essentials potatoes and about 50p a kilo less than the same type in Aldi. I guess that will be far too much for you, just being the two of you, bit they do last for ages, properly stored. Be careful though, because farm shops became quite trendy and buzzwordy and some used this an excuse to bump up the prices further.

We don't have many processed snacks, but when we do, they're invariably purchased in pound land if it's a particular brand that we like and cant get in Aldi.

Set up mysupermarket notifications for the products you purchase most often, buy them when they're cheap.

Frozen veg is absolutely fine, and does cut down on any wastage.

Oh, and be careful adding oats to bulk up, especially quorn mince. Lentils may be the nicer option?

We tend to work on £10 a day for the three of us. This gives us fresh meat, veggies (sometimes frozen, sometimes tinned, depending on the veggie itself), fruits (including berries) and dairy. This will be much too high for some people, but everyone has different prerogatives so don't feel too bad if you feel like you're spending a tonne more than another person - especially an old styler, because they are flipping awesome at making meals out of nothing! I love food - talking about it, experimenting with flavours and cooking it, eating it. We enjoy what we have and don't drink or smoke, so we do spend more than some on food.

Oh my god, ice just previewed that and the length is ridiculous! Sorry!

JIL

I made twinks hobnobs tonight, I halved the recipe and made 16, I think I ate 5 before I realised.
So easy to make, even easier to eat.

ani*fan

Thank you everyone for continuing to reply. You're all a brilliant help. :A

I can easily adapt our chilli and span bol recipes to include no quorn. I love bean chilli. I might keep some quorn for other meals because I love it but eat a lot less. Time for some new recipes, I think.

I'm going to buy own brand soya milk for tea and cereal, and try a small box of powdered milk for coffee to see how I go. Huge saving to be made right there.

The kitty is getting aldi food and let's hope he likes it!

Tins under the bed...LOL!

I'm going to reduce my coffee drinking to 2 in the morning. There is no need for any more and it's expensive.

I'm also concerned about what goes into food lately. Some stories you hear are quite shocking. I'll make sure we don't switch to any rubbish.

We do have an Indian grocer close by. I might duck in and see what they charge for veggies, lentils and things.

No farm shop I'm afraid, we're in the middle of a city and no car for financial and environmental reasons. We both have bikes though.

Yes, jacket potato for dinner, healthy and cheap.

Yes to star drops although this is OH's thing so I'll have to check.

mirry...I'll remember the egg.

Phew, I can't keep up with all this!

Me and OH are doing this because we're trying to pay off debt (see my signature), save to get married next year and also save a deposit for a house. It's ambitious, but it's going ok, we are getting there.

I will stop beating myself up for not having as low a food bill as other people. It's low enough, even lower would be better, and that's all fine. :cool:

Pay day on Wednesday and the challenge begins! Bring it on!