advice to cut down on food budget?

kerri_gt

MovingForwards wrote: »

Coconut milk is occasionally on offer, make sure you check the 'world foods' section in Asda.

Do check some of these cheaper coconut milks out for actual coconut content though, you'd be surprised how much it can vary and some are mostly other 'stuff' in them. The Aldi and Lidl coconut milks are reasonably priced I find, and have a decent coconut content (or last time I checked)

gettingtheresometime

B&m have tins of coconut milk for 50p.

I bought some plastic containers from poundstretcher for £1.99 & use them for batch cooking - curry, chilli & spag Bol and they give a good portion for 2 people.

Fire_Fox

Block creamed coconut, unsweetened dessicated coconut or coconut milk powder (World Foods aisle of the supermarket or an Asian/ Middle Eastern grocers) all work out cheaper than tinned coconut milk. The first two include the beneficial fibre, whereas the milk does not.

Please consider the UK official healthy eating guidelines when reducing your grocery spend: MSE advice is sometimes out of step with this. Sounds like you are doing really well in certain areas - especially fruit and veg - so it would be a shame to lose that.

Limit refined/ processed/ white wheat products and potatoes without their skins. Experts say 'most' of our grains and other starches should be whole.

You might cut down on muscle meat - chicken, beef - portion size and/ or frequency. Dairy products and fish supply nutrients essential for health that are in few other foods, so experts have set daily and weekly targets for each. Not so for muscle meat.

Instead of the late shift junk meals/ your lunches you might have eggs (boiled, omelette, scrambled, poached), or batch cook then freeze individual portions of bolognese, stew/ casserole, curry, chilli con carne, soup ....

Fruit is a step towards "at least five a day". Not in the same category as salty/ fatty/ sugary/ processed snacks (crisps, cakes, biscuits, crackers, snack bars, instant pasta, instant noodles).

Reasonably priced, nutrient dense wholefoods include: frozen vegetables, frozen berry mixes, root vegetables, canned beans and lentils, dried beans and lentils, brown rice, porridge oats, canned oily fish, frozen fish fillets, whole eggs, organ meats such as liver, certain nuts and seeds.

HTH!

grunnie

Do you shop once a month or once a week.i find if i can make an extra meal each week i shop every 8 days instead of 7 and that means every 8 weeks i have a weeks housekeeping that i can save. This gets saved for Christmas a holiday or a new washing machine fund. My cat 🐱 favourite food is the dry stuff from Sainsbury's their own brand in a green bag!

suki1964

I must be out of step here because I do not consider a roast chicken dinner to be expensive at all and its often on our menu

A medium chicken is around the £3 mark and in this house can make up to 9 meals

Roast dinner
Chicken curry or a pie

and if I can be bothered a pot of soup

£200 a month isn't a huge amount for a grocery shop, not nowadays, esp with cat food included

May I just say that curry doesn't need coconut milk ? I make a lot of different curries and Indian curry tends to you yogurt or cream if anything and tbh unless Im making something like tika masala or a korma, the cream/yoghurt gets left out. Thai curry does use coconut milk so I keep the block stuff in the fridge for the rare occasion and only pick it up when on offer

Im also not a fruit eater, Mr S will take it or leave it and actually prefers tinned fruit with a scoop of ice cream. My only fruit is frozen berries that I tip into my yoghurt to take to work for breakfast. What fruit we do buy would be bananas , apples and satsumas really - the cheaper fruits that will last a while

How much of your budget is cleaning? Theres so many products out there that people are pressed into buying, most are not required. I buy powder persil - 40 washes for £4 ( does about 60 washes) fairy, Bleach, Flash all purpose, and whatever kitchen/bathroom spray is on offer. Loo roll is 16 rolls for under £4, box of tissues are the lidl simply range and are bought about 3 times a year. Kitchen towel is whatever is on special. Dishwasher tablets are the bog standard ones which I halve so I only buy those around twice a year

Toiletries are another area where money can be saved, I was paying £5 for my preferred deodorant for example, till one week I wasn't going to Tesco so picked up a 59p roll on, and it works just as well ( as long as I remember to dry it ) lol

Lots of other little things I do to make the grocery spend stretch - lentils in the Bolognese, enough to make two extra portions, chickpeas or potatoes or mushrooms in with chicken thighs when making curry. Buying thighs bone and skin on and filleting them myself ( theres about £3 a kilo to be saved there for very little time once you get the hang of it), buying frozen raw fish, fish pie mix for example is nearly half the price of fresh, always looking in the YS section but only buying proper bargains, not a pile of cakes or ready meals just because theres a few pennies off, more like a whole leg of lamb at less then half price then get it home, fillet it and cut into smaller joints. Buying cooking bacon instead of best bacon for dishes such as quiches, carbonara , bacon butties even

My lunches for work are left overs usually or a tin of sardines or beans on toast. Mr S doesnt have more then a kettle at his work so his is a flask of soup in the winter ( HM veg ) and a sandwich or two or a salad box in the summer ( potato, rice or pasta salad for example with left over chicken, gammon, sausages mixed through) We do have some weird concoctions for lunch at times but its usually healthier and more filling then the sandwich and packet of crisps. Some of the staff where I work will take a bowl of porridge for lunch, and why not? its cheap, filling and good for you

MandM90

Some thoughts (which you may already be doing)

Bolognese: Could you half the meat and bulk out with lentils and grated carrot - good for you and much cheaper. Some OSers report their families not noticing. You could then make double for much less than half the cost, and freeze half for late shift night (and cook off the spaghetti which takes about the same time or less as a frozen pizza!)

Late shift night: What about beans on toast, or chucking something in the slow cooker before you go?

Fruit: What sort do you buy for snacks? May be stating the obvious but big bags of apples and in season fruit are usually cheapest, for anything else look at frozen or tinned. Do you like walking? If so, now is the time to start gathering blackberries for the freezer! If you haven't already, rhubarb and raspberries grow like weeds in a garden and are delicious (and expensive to buy!)

As others say for curries we don't always do coconut based ones. Lentil and (frozen) spinach curry is very very cheap and dhal doesn't need coconut. If we do use coconut we ge the creamed coconut block. They're about 70p a block and half is enough for a pot of curry. I think the powder is even cheaper but watch out as the ingredients can be full of nasties.

Do you make the chips yourself from scratch? Another cheap swap might be to have something else other than your fillet of fish every other week. Perhaps fishcakes made up of tinned fish, herbs, potato and peas, or what about a spanish omelette.

Check out frugal eating blogs like thrifty lesley for loads more ideas.

Good luck!

[Deleted User]

I know that you want to cut down on your food budget, but I think that £200.00 a month is pretty good for two adults, especially as it seems to include pet supplies and your work lunches. There's some good advice on this thread already, but all I wanted to say was don't cut back too far and keep healthy eating in mind. Maybe consider if there are other areas of your budget that you could cut back on instead.

dreaming

I started to think last year that my food bills seemed to have crept up - just me and 1 cat usually plus 2-3 meals for visitors per month. I started to check through my receipts and keep a tally of what was actually spent of human food, cat food, toiletries, cleaning products, other items (yes I admit I can be a bit obsessive). I realised that I had gotten into the habit of picking up a magazine or paperback, bits of stationery for the grandchildren, or a plant or two for the garden, and it was these items that had pushed up the supermarket bills. I didn't mind the amounts I had spent on those things but it had made it look as if I was spending vast amounts on food. I have now adjusted my spreadsheet to take these different things into account and my "food" bill has substantially decreased and I could see that my book/magazine habit was becoming a bit out of hand - especially as I belong to the library. Speaking to others about this many agreed that it was all too easy to add these "extras" in without much thought.
Looking at your meal plan it isn't clear if you use up the leftovers. For example you have roast dinner, then the next day chicken and noodles. So was the roast chicken, then you used leftover meat for the next day? Plus you could then use some of the meat for sandwiches before using the carcass for soup/stock. When I have visitors to cook for I will often "plan" to have leftovers - either to use in the next couple of days or to freeze. I could still do with cutting down my food spending (and eating!) a bit but it can be difficult to change one's mindset and I don't even have anyone else to consider. Good luck.

Blackbeard_of_Perranporth

You're lucky! if we don't get our current feline lodger decent food beginning with W, he brings his own home!


No seriously if yous spending about £50 a weak on food, that is probably around £10 more than BoP and the current BoPsie! Try buying fresh and not packed foods! Our daily is all from fresh, salads and stir fry. Apart from the Saturday breakfeast of snorkers and best back!

PipneyJane

Fire_Fox wrote: »

Block creamed coconut, unsweetened dessicated coconut or coconut milk powder (World Foods aisle of the supermarket or an Asian/ Middle Eastern grocers) all work out cheaper than tinned coconut milk. The first two include the beneficial fibre, whereas the milk does not.

Please consider the UK official healthy eating guidelines when reducing your grocery spend: MSE advice is sometimes out of step with this. Sounds like you are doing really well in certain areas - especially fruit and veg - so it would be a shame to lose that.

Limit refined/ processed/ white wheat products and potatoes without their skins. Experts say 'most' of our grains and other starches should be whole.

You might cut down on muscle meat - chicken, beef - portion size and/ or frequency. Dairy products and fish supply nutrients essential for health that are in few other foods, so experts have set daily and weekly targets for each. Not so for muscle meat.

Instead of the late shift junk meals/ your lunches you might have eggs (boiled, omelette, scrambled, poached), or batch cook then freeze individual portions of bolognese, stew/ casserole, curry, chilli con carne, soup ....

Fruit is a step towards "at least five a day". Not in the same category as salty/ fatty/ sugary/ processed snacks (crisps, cakes, biscuits, crackers, snack bars, instant pasta, instant noodles).

Reasonably priced, nutrient dense wholefoods include: frozen vegetables, frozen berry mixes, root vegetables, canned beans and lentils, dried beans and lentils, brown rice, porridge oats, canned oily fish, frozen fish fillets, whole eggs, organ meats such as liver, certain nuts and seeds.

HTH!

Excellent advice re cheap, nutritious food.

You took the words right out of my mouth re Creamed Coconut and it keeps for ever in the fridge. I just hack off a lump and add it to the recipe along with a suitable quantity of water. (Not very scientific but nobody has complained.)

- Pip