Cherry takes the reins

Cherryfudge

Sun_Addict said:

Thank you for that tip @Cherryfudge, I didn’t know you could do that. Certainly worth a try as they usually just get thrown away. 

It would work best with the ones that get missed and grow a bit longer, but there's something about the genetic maturity meaning they are ready a bit earlier than starting new ones.

Cherryfudge

I sat up last night (I thought I'd decided that wasn't good for me? Yes, I did, but there's always an excuse)... where was I? Yes, I sat up adding up how much we had spent on food last month.

I know we eat quite well, but the price of food is a shocker. Just for the two of us, it worked out at roughly £15 a day.

We do have our extravagances, which I'd hoped were balanced out by not having much at all in the way of sot drinks or alcohol, and little red meat. DH gets through lots of fruit and I have a coffee habit. Both of us have a sweet tooth, and eat too much chocolate and too many pastries.

I haven't double checked my figures (and adding up late at night may not be reliable), but these are some of the things I found out about our food spending (fish and chips comes under the food budget but eating out or going for a coffee don't as I think of them as 'entertainment'):

We went to the shops for food 69 times in 31 days!
36 transactions were under £1, so the chances are that half that number were to get things lunch items that needed to be fairly fresh (pastries, fruit).
12 transactions were £10 or over - so roughly one in three was a 'proper' shop, complete with a list of a few items. Shops are all in walking distance and I don't drive, so shopping will inevitably be more more visits.
Only three shops cost around £30 - see above.
The grocery spending for May 2023 came to £452.49.
An annual spend based on this would be roughly £5,429.88.

I have no idea how this compares to what others spend, though with that in mind, if I pop a couple of items into the Foodbank, it's just included with the rest of our spending and I don't intend to stop that.

It seems like a crazy amount as we used to budget for £100 a week when the teenagers were at home, and this is just two of us.

I'd be interested to hear what others feel about this.

JGB1955

Cherryfudge said:

I sat up last night (I thought I'd decided that wasn't good for me? Yes, I did, but there's always an excuse)... where was I? Yes, I sat up adding up how much we had spent on food last month.

I know we eat quite well, but the price of food is a shocker. Just for the two of us, it worked out at roughly £15 a day.

We do have our extravagances, which I'd hoped were balanced out by not having much at all in the way of sot drinks or alcohol, and little red meat. DH gets through lots of fruit and I have a coffee habit. Both of us have a sweet tooth, and eat too much chocolate and too many pastries.

I haven't double checked my figures (and adding up late at night may not be reliable), but these are some of the things I found out about our food spending (fish and chips comes under the food budget but eating out or going for a coffee don't as I think of them as 'entertainment'):

We went to the shops for food 69 times in 31 days!
36 transactions were under £1, so the chances are that half that number were to get things lunch items that needed to be fairly fresh (pastries, fruit).
12 transactions were £10 or over - so roughly one in three was a 'proper' shop, complete with a list of a few items. Shops are all in walking distance and I don't drive, so shopping will inevitably be more more visits.
Only three shops cost around £30 - see above.
The grocery spending for May 2023 came to £452.49.
An annual spend based on this would be roughly £5,429.88.

I have no idea how this compares to what others spend, though with that in mind, if I pop a couple of items into the Foodbank, it's just included with the rest of our spending and I don't intend to stop that.

It seems like a crazy amount as we used to budget for £100 a week when the teenagers were at home, and this is just two of us.

I'd be interested to hear what others feel about this.

I'm glad you've asked.  Please feel free to ignore my thoughts.  You get pleasure from finding 'bargains' from supermarkets and/or car boot sales.  None of those are planned, although it seems to be a daily occurrence.

 That's fine .... but.... you seem to have a HUGE stash of food already.  Perhaps think about using that stash then meal planning - maybe £50 per week max?  

I only food shop once a week. I don't visit charity shops or car boot sales.... they're just full of tat that will just add to the tat that's already in my house .... unless they're a jigsaw puzzle for £3 that will then be re-cycled through 2 of my friends before ending up in another charity shop!  

Each to their own!

(Perhaps try living for a week without spending anything other than your weekly shop/)

Cherryfudge

JGB1955 said:

I'm glad you've asked.  Please feel free to ignore my thoughts.  You get pleasure from finding 'bargains' from supermarkets and/or car boot sales.  None of those are planned, although it seems to be a daily occurrence.

 That's fine .... but.... you seem to have a HUGE stash of food already.  Perhaps think about using that stash then meal planning - maybe £50 per week max?  

I only food shop once a week. I don't visit charity shops or car boot sales.... they're just full of tat that will just add to the tat that's already in my house .... unless they're a jigsaw puzzle for £3 that will then be re-cycled through 2 of my friends before ending up in another charity shop!  

Each to their own!

(Perhaps try living for a week without spending anything other than your weekly shop/)

That's an interesting observation - do I have a huge stash of food? Do I not plan? Yesterday I defrosted chicken for two meals and bought mushrooms. I'd bought onions the day before - we use those most days and I make sure to have red wine stock cubes and herbs from the garden - so I will be making chicken chasseur tomorrow, half of which will feed us another day as well.

Yesterday we had fish from the freezer and chips from the chippie (regular treat/habit). Before that we batch-baked potatoes which we had over a couple of meals without having to use the oven twice.

I certainly have a stash - but that's in terms of things that are planned as emergency rations (only basically enough for a few days) and staples such as flour, baking ingredients (an overstock), oats, dried beans (another overstock) and tinned goods. Admittedly the tinned goods really are overstocked because I have tinned beans, tomatoes, tuna... that kind of thing. DH eats his way through tinned fruit so there are rarely more than one or two tins of that. Ditto tuna! Pesto we have several of as I bought some when the prices started to go up - but it's also something we have quite often so it's going steadily down. There are more than enough baking supplies, but I'm not baking again for a few days as we have cake to finish.

The freezer looks most stash-like to me: we have soft fruit from the garden that I eke out over the year - definite stash, but a way of enriching our diet cheaply when fresh fruit is expensive. There are lots of frozen veg too as I keep a stock of peas, sweetcorn, mushrooms and spinach which we use often. I know there are still sprouts and red cabbage in there - ahem! I'm the only one who eats them so perhaps I need to make plans. Proteins vary: at the moment there is bacon, a few sausages and liver. Those we might have every week or two but not a healthy option for regular eating. I think the chicken is down to a couple of pieces now that I've taken a pack out to use tomorrow - that was a bargain buy some while ago so we've been having it from time to time instead of buying fresh. We also had several packets of fish (Iceland 3 boxes for £10) to stop us buying it at the chippie - but there's only one lot left now.

So I guess we have been eating our way through it, but we're close to supermarkets so it's easy to go out in the evening or if I have errands in town, and check for bargains. Hence all my triumphant 'look what I found!' posts! I do hate waste but I won't buy stuff I won't eat. You won't find pork or beef in my shopping, for instance, with the exception of corned beef and sausages.

You observe my car boot buys as impulse buys - some undoubtedly are, but I generally have an idea what I want and look out for it, and leave a lot of things that are pretty but would just be clutter (I've got enough of that!). I've seen a lot of variation between car boot sales so perhaps you've not got a good one locally? I generally put back things like cookery books but they are a real weakness so I still buy occasionally. Clothes - yes, I buy them if I like them enough AND will wear them. Toys for DGD - from time to time. Last year I bought a lot of yarn but I've still got unfinished projects so I've steered clear of that recently. I don't buy food at car boot sales unless people are selling garden surplus, so outside of apple season, that doesn't come into the food budget.

The 'weekly shop' doesn't happen as I'm not a driver and am in easy reach of shops. That could be part of the reason we had so many shopping trips. It would be a waste to order online when I can be at the shop and back in twenty minutes.

It's notable that food spending has been as high as it is in a month when I've gone through some cupboards and used up various things. I think my question is about what people see as a 'normal' amount to spend. The only statistics I could find are a few months out of date.

Cherryfudge

A couple of things I forgot - we have too many dried beans! I batch cook then freeze what I don't need straight away, and add a couple of handfuls to casseroles, but it will take a while to use them all up.

And the pumpkins! I have quite a lot of roast pumpkin still in the freezer! DH doesn't like it so it only gets eaten when I have a lunch that can include it - and it does take up space.

Sun_Addict

I make this a lot but use butternut squash not pumpkin: 
https://www.weightwatchers.com/uk/recipe/spiced-pumpkin-stew/5cf4d81522f9750072f65b71

WelshmansDaughter

This article says £67 for a week for a couple.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/26/uk-benefits-fall-short-of-minimum-living-cost-by-140-a-month-charities-say
Although it is the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and they may not be the most practical of folk.

I think if you did an analysis on here you would find it varies hugely what people spend on food especially as people grow their own/get veg delivery boxes etc. 

If it's something you value then it's worth the money. 

Cherryfudge

I've not done a huge amount today: slept in a bit then helped with the little ones at church. We had fish for lunch - chicken got moved to tomorrow as the fish needed to be used up because I accidentally left it out and didn't want to risk it any longer.

I didn't have much get up and go but decided to make an effort and did eventually get some gardening done. The damson is now smaller, though I tied a fruiting branch down to an accessible level rather than lose the fruit. A few weeds got pulled up and some weigela and holly have been trimmed back. The weigela will need a hard prune once the flowers are finished. It got overgrown last year because there was a nest in it.

I found a speckled wood butterfly in the garden. I don't think I've seen one before, at least not to notice it.

DH is feeling under the weather with some of the symptoms he had on a previous medication, so he won't be taking any more. It was a risk that he discussed with his consultant before starting the course and was assured the drugs were sufficiently dissimilar to be worth a try, but he can't go on feeling like this if it can be avoided.

Nothing spent.

Cherryfudge

Sun_Addict said:

I make this a lot but use butternut squash not pumpkin: 
https://www.weightwatchers.com/uk/recipe/spiced-pumpkin-stew/5cf4d81522f9750072f65b71

That looks like a good hearty recipe, thanks! All stuff I like.

I do have a delicious recipe for roasted pumpkin, too. And I think it can go in cakes, not that I need any more cake at present.

I wonder if my pumpkin seeds will yield enough fruits to try all three?!

Cherryfudge

WelshmansDaughter said:

This article says £67 for a week for a couple.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/society/2023/feb/26/uk-benefits-fall-short-of-minimum-living-cost-by-140-a-month-charities-say
Although it is the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and they may not be the most practical of folk.

I think if you did an analysis on here you would find it varies hugely what people spend on food especially as people grow their own/get veg delivery boxes etc. 

If it's something you value then it's worth the money. 

I know there's a 'basket' of goods the government uses to calculate the cost of living, but it doesn't all apply to me. It probably doesn't all apply to many people, they have to average things out. The article is from February, which is the same as the stats I found. It's obviously a little out of date now as the cost of living is going up so much, but still a good indicator - I think it means we spend a week's money in four and a half days. The recommended level of food expenditure in February comes in at just under a tenner a day.

We had a chat about it and don't feel we are overindulging, as we can afford the things we choose to have. We do cook from scratch most of the time and try to reduce in small ways (like buying supermarket fish instead of takeaway ones), but I'm still shocked at how much we spent. It might be useful if I could remember to keep track of NSDs, but at least I have my spending notebook which is turning into a useful tool.

You're absolutely right about how different households can be on their normal spending. Just looking at what's in people's supermarket trolleys is like looking at lifestyles, isn't it? I was proud of myself the the day when I just had potatoes, onions and bananas!

Oh dear, I really ought to get to bed.