Help me spend less on food?

Wraithlady

The OP already uses 'the German retailers'  and tops up elsewhere, so the problem is not that.

C_J

Lots of good advice (as always) on here. 

I budget £55 per week for two of us, two cats and a very large dog. That covers everything and we are all meat eaters. I have brought that weekly budget down from around £70 in gradual steps over the past couple of years, and have been really pleased that, with all the shopping complete for March, I am still around £30 under budget this month. 

The one tip which has really helped me is to stretch meals - usually whatever roast I have made on a Sunday will morph into the basic component of several other meals during the week, and I plan around that. The downside is that we might have the same meal for a couple of consecutive nights, but Mister CJ doesn't seem to mind that. Foe example all this week we have pretty much lived off the large chicken I roasted for last Sunday's lunch - after the roast dinner (bulked out with lots of veg and some Yorkshire pudding), I stripped the carcass to make stock which was turned into a large pan of veg soup for this week's lunches. I then used half the chicken meat to make a pie with diced leeks and potatoes in a cream sauce (home made pastry is cheap) which was so large it fed us for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The remaining chicken was chopped up and went into a big wok full of chicken fried rice with diced courgette, mushroom, red pepper, spring onion etc, a handful of frozen sweetcorn and some shredded omelette. I find frying the veg in a drizzle of sesame oil gives this dish a lovely smooth nutty flavour.  We had that on Thursday and Friday.

So it was a very economical week. I used to get around the issue of repeating meals by freezing portions to use at a later date but that's not always suitable and I also have a habit (despite keeping a list of what goes into the freezers) of forgetting about things and letting them stay there until their labels fall off and I have no idea what's what - so we put up with repetitive fresh meals instead.

This Sunday we're having roast pork, and the follow on use-up meals from that will be pork, chilli and black bean tacos, and Jamaican jerk pork and pineapple rice.

I menu plan for a month at a time, but with the flexibility to tweak it around as necessary.  My other tip is that when buying mince, I buy a large pack of it and divide it into smaller portions and freeze those. That way I can make a 1kg pack easily stretch into small economical portions - we eat less meat now than we used to, and I almost always bulk out the dishes I cook with vegetables and/or pulses.

villagelife

The easiest way I have found is to use less meat. Far more easily done if cook stews, pies, stir frys etc rather than a portion of meat and veg.  When both sons were living here a chicken stir get made with a large chicken breast and lots of veg was fine and no one complained about the lack of chicken. 
Also have some vegetarian meals. The amount of these can be increased when you have a few recipes you both like.
Having leftovers for lunch also helps with reducing a food bill. 

Wraithlady

On a similar vein, I use the smallish (170g) steaks - one of those, cut into thin strips with (usually) mushrooms, broccolli, carrots and whatever else needs using up , stir fried with ginger, garlic and chilli sauce and served with rice, does two of us very nicely and we have never felt hungry afterwards.

maman

Just to add to C-J 's comments : I often freeze LO meat from Sunday roast. This gets round eating samey meals all week. You can still do the ' rubber chicken ' or beef or whatever but not all in one week. I sometimes freeze LO gravy as well so that can make another roast with frozen meat slices. Obviously you need freezer space. I'd prioritise having a good freezer, whenever possible, as that saves so much waste and allows for taking advantage of YS buys. 

xlorna_janex

Hi there, my partner and I shop in Aldi’s once a week, 1-3 trips to Tesco per month for a couple of branded items. Butcher for meat and eggs. 

We spend £25 per week. What we do:
- Meal planning essential
- Plan meals on what you already have
- Keep learning new recipes to mix things up
- Everything from scratch
- 3 veggie days a week
- Batch cook and freeze
- Eat the same dinner 2-3 times in one week 
- Same lunch 2-3 times a week (my OH has the same breakfast and lunch Mon-Fri) 
- We don’t drink 
- We don’t eat out much or get take aways, if we do it’s from a different budget
Hope this helps!  

Owleyes00

Thanks everybody for the detailed advice!

I think reading your comments and reflecting on our spending we are maybe having meals that are too “fancy” during the week (I don’t think lockdown has helped here) with too many different ingredients. The £65 average includes household bits but not alcohol as I don’t really drink so my partner buys booze out of “his” spending money at the weekend.


We do sometimes get a takeaway on top though!!

Also reading what you have suggested I think I am not thinking economically about what we eat. Although I do meal plan I don’t ever think about dividing meat up between meals and I never batch cook unless I have made a lasagna or a shepherd’s pie or something like that.

Anyway the last couple of weeks the shop has been less than £60 each time and more in the around £50 ball park. Tomorrow’s click and collect is £43 including the £4.99 collection fee (which I know I could save on but I have actually found I spend less shopping this way as there are no impulse buys).

I will come and join you on the other thread.

thanks again!!