Cutting Your Food Bill

foxgloves

When you have a spare half an hour, go through all your cook books/recipes & make a list of tasty easy recipes which are incedibly cheap to make. Feel secure in the knowledge that you can call.on these to cut your weekly food spend when you need a really tight month.

Meal plan properly......not just a list of meals but a list of meals where you already have most of the ingredients in stock.

Grow some food. We are still eating home grown beans, courgettes, tomatoes, chillies, peppers, potatoes, pears, apples, rocket & basil. We still have sweetcorn, squash & cabbages to come.....all from our garden, no allotment.

Your freezer needs to become your best money saving friend. Don't throw anything away which can be frozen. i.e if carrots are starting to go bendy & are not due to be eaten, prep them, blanch & freeze. In the last month, I have only binned a 5cm piece of cucumber which had gone mouldy.

If you have a good ID book, make the most of foraging..Blackberries, wild plums, sloes, elderberries, rosehips, sorrel, young nettletops, sweet chestnuts, crabapples are often there for the taking.

Batch cook. Freeze it in.portion sizes.

Make the most of cheap cuts of meat. Things like ham hock, beef cheek, beef shin, stewing lamb, etc, are fab done in the slow cooker.

Go for the best 'rubber chicken' (whete you stretch it into loads of meals) you can. There are 2 of us. I can get 4 days of meals from 1 chicken plus soup/stock & occasionally a sandwich too.

Oh & finally (credit to ziggy24/7 from DFW Small Things thread for this one)...check out supermarket world food aisle. Things like big bags of lentils, basmati rice, tinned pulses, tinned tomatoes, spices, etc, are often cheaper there.

And use own label stuff to save £££s. The extra cost of big brands is because you are paying for their expensive advertising campaigns.
These are my main food based savings methods.
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