Dreaded food shop family of 6 🤦‍♀️

onlywayisup2011

Hey! 

We are a family of 6, we have 4 boys that seam to never be full!

So our monthly food bill is coming out around £950 per month and it just isn’t feasible anymore! 

We normally shop at Aldi for the majority of our food but go to farmfoods and home bargains for the bits we can’t get in Aldi. I go weekly and spend about £200 then we spend about £30 per week on bread and milk and top up stuff.

My boys are 10,9,4&2 but they have large appetites. We cook as mush homemade meals meat and veg as we can and the kids love their fruit!!! 

Just wondering where people shop, where do you find is the best value and how much you spend roughly per month! 

Seriously I must be doing something wrong 😂🤦‍♀️

Hit me with your ideas!

Emmia

It might help if you pop up the contents of a typical weekly food shop...

otb666

frozen fruit is cheaper than fresh.  I discovered this after spending a fortune with fruit and veg man on market and switched to frozen and a farm shop.  Tinned is cheaper and frozen fish is good value.  When they have a meal do not provide a drink until after eaton as they will soon get hungry again as filled up on drink.  My mum used to give us soup as a starter so we did not eat so much main.  When we were growing up ( family of 9 ) my mum always had a sack of spuds and we had spuds with everything.  Hope this gives you ideas.  I am now only family of three and we can spend 200 in aldi so you have been doing very well in my opinion and deserve pat on the back.

onlywayisup2011

Emmia said:

It might help if you pop up the contents of a typical weekly food shop...

This week for example 
Monday - pasta bake and garlic bread
Tuesday - gammon egg and chips 
Wednesday - jacket potatoes cheese & beans or tuna 
Thursday - Midweek dinner - chicken, veg and potatoes 
Friday - takeaway pizza and chicken nuggets wedges 
Saturday Chilli and rice 
sunday - beef dinner 

Thats this week and most weeks are similar pasta dish, rice dish, 1/2 meetfree days.

On a Saturday we do a fry up, bacon sausage eggs beans toast.

Packed lunches for all 4 kids 

I do buy a mixture of fruit such as apples, oranges, bananas, strawberries and grapes.

They snack on, cucumber, crackers and soft cheese, yoghurts, crisps, biscuits, hard boiled eggs.

breakfast is usually cereal and/or toast and fruit

Katiehound

This lady had a looong thread which might be worth trawling through as she had recipes etc

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6414174/im-back-trying-to-spend-less-on-food/p1

I 'stole' her carrot cake recipe- really easy to make & cheap

my suggestion would be make more mince based type meals- cottage pie, bolognese, chilli etc because you can bulk out the meat with cheap tins of different beans as well as chopped carrots, celery  etc.

Fill up hollow legs with a plate full of the cheapest veg to go with the main dish. Whatever is in season- or freeze when on offer

Avoid expensive cereal & make overnight oats

Look out Jamie Oliver's £1 budget meals- there were great ideas- probably no longer for £1 per portion but still a bargain
You can watch for free:
https://www.channel4.com/programmes/jamies-1-wonders

I know there are lots of frugal ides on this board but you need to burrow!!

there are couple of take to work lunches threads which might help too.

Make you own pizzas- Jamie showed you  how- don't know if it was the series above, or another but should be easy to find. he also made naan breads etc
get the boys cooking- not only a life skill but a bit of fun

Buy bog standard plain yoghurts & add your own fruit. Even make your own yoghurt

Katiehound

if you go to June 2024  Grocery Challenge   thread on this board & scroll down there is a recipe thread (contained there)
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/710445/recipe-collection-thread-recipe-board/p1

 & a cheap recipe thread 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/24966107#Comment_24966107
 Sadly not all the recipes have a title (it would be useful!) but I am sure there are loads of ideas there, you just need a few hours to trawl through!.

Starting from scratch is the cheap way to go without doubt.

prices waaay out of date, but look here:
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/816965/show-jamie-how-to-cook-on-a-budget-champagne-contest

Floss

I would suggest buying a bread maker (Fb marketplace is your friend here!) and having a fresh leaf with your evening meal. Your sons can then fill up with "loaf of the day". I found this really helpful during the 11 to18 years, my boys loved it, it saved me a fortune, and they also began eating "lumpy bread" (granary) as a result 😉

-taff

Wraps are easy to make [ same weight of sr flour, and greek yoghurt [ not tried with noral yoghurt so can't give a weight but I do 50g of flour pp and obviously 50g of yoghurt - it looks like it will never come together but it will when you knead just enough to bring it together no need to go crazy] and chuck in some oregano or chilli or garlic or something, flour and roll out thinly , they will go a lot thinner than you expect 20cm ish, dry fry, put in tea towel to keep warm unless you have a warmer thing] I usually put spicy chicken in mine and then fill with whatever you have, fried onions and peppers for fajita type, bit of yoghurt instead of sour cream, bit of grated cheese, or salad stuff, or refried beans [ make you own easy verion, smash up either tins of borlotti or buy dried pinto beans and cook - if you buy them dry, you dont have to soak them, just put them in a pan and cook with some onion and celery and oregano to flavour]. You can make these into enchiladas by cooking an onion and a tin of tomatoes to make the sauce.

I'd add in more lentils/beans/oats to things to bulk them out with mince, or breadcrumbs for meatballs, pasta sauces are easy to make, even an onion and a tin of tomatoes will make you a nice one. Or do as the italians do, so a first course of pasta, like tagliatelle with a plain tomato sauce, followed by whatever meat you cooked in the tomato sauce, and veg.

Potatoes in any form are good, you can use as a salad too, or just with oil, vinegar and parsely and garlic chopped. Same with any veg, add oil and vinegar, instant salad addition.[red wine, white wine or cider, not malt or distilled though]

Overnight oats as mentioned, or just plain porridge for breakfast, cheaper than cereal, drizzle of honey or golden syrup, very nice.

PipneyJane

Please join us on the June Grocery Challenge.  There are challenge members who have large families, who may be able to help with recipe ideas, etc.  @Katiehound has already supplied the link.  

My thoughts are all about food quality.  What are the boys drinking?  Which breakfast cereals do they eat?  Do they reach for fruit when they’re snacking or do they eat the entire biscuit tin first?  The reason I’m asking these questions is because what makes you feel full for longer is fibre, fat and protein, whereas high sugar foods may initially fill you up but an hour later, you’ll be hungry again.  (Fruit juice is lovely but it gives the same sugar rush as full-sugar cola, while most of the nutritional values quoted on the side of the box of a well known brand of cornflakes come from the milk added by the eater.)

Personally, I wouldn’t buy biscuits or crisps, because I was the kid who’d eat the entire packet in one sitting.    I’d swap in overnight oats or porridge for the breakfast cereal.  For dinners, I’d have fewer meat-and-two-veg meals, and instead make more stews, which I’d pad out with veg and pulses, and serve on rice or bulgar wheat or baked potatoes.  (A curry is just a spiced up stew, after all.)   The only drinks I’d have in the house would be squash, tea, coffee and milk.

HTH

- Pip

goldfinches

Floss said:

I would suggest buying a bread maker (Fb marketplace is your friend here!) and having a fresh leaf with your evening meal. Your sons can then fill up with "loaf of the day". I found this really helpful during the 11 to18 years, my boys loved it, it saved me a fortune, and they also began eating "lumpy bread" (granary) as a result 😉

I second this suggestion, I'm the eldest of four (two girls and two boys) and our father learned to bake bread during my first year and then for every meal after that we ate home-made rolls or slices of his loaf. He used to vary it between white and brown with all sorts of other ingredients added for extra flavour and baked every day so that breakfast was always hot rolls or a fresh loaf and, with hindsight, I can see how far that went in filling in my brothers hollow legs. 

Lots of people on the grocery challenge thread make chicken or mince go a lot further with things like lentils and beans so it would be worth your having a look through the recipes at the beginning there as well as reading along to see how others are managing and whether you can pick up any useful tips.

The other thing I'd say is that to cover 6 people £950 isn't a great deal nowadays. I'm budgeting £5 per day for one vegetarian adult so I'd expect the monthly food bill for 6 omnivores to be around the £900 mark and maybe more as not everyone likes the same things so you're not far off.

thriftwizard

I'll third the breadmaker - veteran Mum of 5 here, 3 boys & 2 girls. (Eldest now 35, youngest nearly 29 but still under our roof... as teenagers, all 3 boys had hollow legs and so did all their friends!) Our first Panasonic paid for itself in months, especially making pizza dough, as well as treats like after-school chocolate bread & overnight "French" loaves for breakfasts. It lasted 15 years; the second did 14 and has been replaced by a Freegle'd one where the poor donor had sadly developed diabetes. (Breadmakers do appear often in our local groups or FB marketplace, but they're rarely Pannies.) Also seconding the mince suggestion, but my favourite moneysaving "trick" is the large Sunday roast, which is expensive up front, but will reappear 2-3 times during the week, as a "leftovers" curry, stew or casserole, then as a stir-fry, omelette filling or pizza topping. There may even be sandwiches... What looks expensive as one meal works out much cheaper per person over three.

Traybakes are your friend for after-school snacks and lunchboxes; all mine loved flapjack, not to mention brownies,  blondies & muffins - which can all be made with much less sugar than most recipes suggest, and are still delicious. 

I always wondered, when ours were growing up, whether an ice-cream maker - one that actually does the freezing, rather than one you have to keep in your freezer - would be a sensible investment, but I don't have a lot of space for gadgets in our kitchen, which doubles up as a dining room. Plus we couldn't afford one & they didn't make enough for 7 (plus passing friends) back then. But they do now, and the cost has effectively halved. And a couple of years ago I found an old one in a charity shop, and it's marvellous - a brilliant way to use up gluts of homegrown or cheap fruit etc. at the same time as providing really good, nutritious & delicious food. Cheaper than the good stuff, too.

It may go very much against the grain, but I will also recommend "doing the math" as Amy Dacyzyn's Tightwad Gazette often says; for us, childcare costs would have been prohibitive before the kids were all at secondary school, although I'd had a good job beforehand, so it worked out better for one of us - me, as it happened - to stay at home, as luckily our mortgage costs & bills were just about manageable. (We went without a second car, foreign holidays, new clothes etc. but I don't think the kids would say they'd missed out terribly.) This freed me up to shop carefully & (learn to) cook well and when once I accompanied a divorcing friend to her lawyers & they asked how much I spent on food per month (for comparison to what her ex was offering - she had 4 kids) they simply refused to believe it could be done for so little! I still spend well below the national average, and started my own little part-time business so I could stay "free" to shop & cook as economically as possible, given assorted dietary restraints. Sadly though I'm well aware that few people would have the stay-home option today, but it might be worth actually working that out for yourselves.