Stopping the backsliding… a family of four no longer living beyond their means

Bluegreen143

The food police isn’t a thing here, I know from talking to other parents that some of their peers take chocolate, biscuits, crisps etc daily. The school encourage a healthy snack or packed lunch but the choice is left to us. I have myself sent the odd bag of crisps and leftover birthday cake in upon the very rare occasion. Just nuts which aren’t allowed. Luckily my own kids don’t have any allergies and aren’t terribly picky.

Bluegreen143

Right, lots of change today! The storm and red weather warning mean I’m changing my weekend plans and will only be away one night - so travelling early Sat and home by late afternoon Sun. This will help my diet if nothing else as one less meal away from home! Doesn’t really impact the budget though.

School is even closed tomorrow! 

Got two slimming world recipe books cheap on eBay and they arrived today so I’ve been enjoying flipping through them.

I have bought two food flasks, two lunch bags and a few food storage tubs. All together this was about £50 but they will all be well used. 

Monkey was so excited about starting packed lunches that he didn’t even want to wait for his flask to arrive so he’s off to school today with:

- tuna & sweetcorn pasta
- a big tub of chopped apple/melon/satsuma (some will be for morning snack)
- a small tub of chopped carrot/red pepper
- and a tub of Greek yoghurt with maple syrup added.



He seemed very happy with this as he was helping me put it together anyway. Bambi may be a harder sell as she has been regaling me with tales of all the packaged bits - breakfast bars, crisps, yoghurt pouches, fruit roll ups, biscuits etc - that apparently all her friends take 😂. 

I had made enough tuna pasta to be his packed lunch tomorrow which is handy, there is plenty so means they can both have that for lunch at home and I don’t need to worry about that while working. Or if Bambi would prefer, there is leftover chicken soup too.

Trying to get back into embracing batch prepping and leftovers a bit better so I’ll try and report how I’m doing on here! I’d like to provide packed lunches without increasing the food budget because we have definitely got plenty of fat still in the grocery budget. Just need better habits I think.

fionaandphil

Stay safe blugreen, hope you and the family are all safely tucked up at home

BalanceBy50

Just delurking to say that pack up looks lovely. My son (9) does sometimes bring food home as they keep it in a warm classroom & he doesn’t like it if it’s gone ‘sweaty’ his words 😂 also he doesn’t always eat it as he says he hasn’t enough time so will leave the healthier bits! Not sure if anyone has mentioned pastry pinwheels or home made sausages as an alternative too. 

We never have leftovers in our house (12 & 9yr old boys with huge appetites like their dad!) but I always portion a tubful up for my husband to have for his lunch next day whilst dishing up so I must automatically cook for 5 people 😂. I work in a school & the amount of waste is unbelievable & quite sad. Children must be starving at the end of the day. My son rarely has school dinners as they make them sit in choice order at his school and most of his friends have pack ups and as he wants to sit with them he also has pack ups. I have adopted the mentality that it’s solely my job to ensure my boys have adequate f&v in their diet ‘cos they certainly don’t get it at school! 

Your diary is very inspirational & thought provoking. Please can I have your hummus recipe. I love the stuff but can’t make it for toffee, also can’t take it into work as we now have a chickpea allergy in school! So allergies do change in school. Back to de-lurking now 😁 x

dawnybabes

When my DS took lunches in I’d batch make jelly, rice pudding, fruit pots, veg pots on a Sunday for the week and just grabbed one each day.  We also did wraps/sandwiches that I froze - tuna, ham and cheese etc that we grabbed and it kept his lunchbox cool,  I also poured out fresh orange juice into little reusable cartons. 

Bluegreen143

Thanks everyone! 

BalanceBy50 you are too kind!! I think the recipe I originally started with was a BBC good food one, but I kind of eyeball it all now rather than measure. But my tips for excellent hummus are: season well (biggest mistake people IMO make is not salting it much), whizz for longer than you think and add water to thin it to the right consistency. Lumpy hummus is disappointing.

Just batch mafe thermos lunchbox fillings ☺️. Did 6 tubs of Mexican salsa beef rice (which is still to have sweetcorn added so there will be more veg in there) and 5 tubs of penne bolognaise. That’s more than needed for next week, but for variety I will likely send them with sandwiches/wraps a couple of days and keep some of the cooked freezer tubs for the following week.



I also had the revelation that if my freezer is full of tubs of tasty lunch sized portions they can also serve as an emergency lunch for ME too. So it will mean never having to visit the office van again if I’ve not got time to make lunch the night before (not that I’ve used the van since starting Slimming World anyway). 

We are having roast chicken tonight so that’s in the oven now. Shopping couldn’t be delivered until tomorrow night but luckily I have enough in to make soup for tomorrow’s dinner - will just need to pop into a shop and grab some crusty bread. And packed lunches are sorted with all the freezer portions and I had enough carrot/cucumber and apple/melon/grapes to chop into tubs for tomorrow. 

Floss

If you have a dehydrator or air fryer, you could make fruit leathers for your children. So Bambi could have her fruit roll-ups!

fionaandphil

Super impressive lunches, busy day 😀

Bluegreen143

Afternoon all!

Just been looking at YNAB - we are obviously approaching the end of the month.

The two main categories I am keeping an eye on (because they are both variable) are our Family Wants and Grocery categories.

At the start of the month I allocated £250 into our Family pot, and I think I popped around £60 into a category labelled Misc, which I later combined with the Family Wants pot. So I should have had around £310. And I was hoping to cut this to under £300 in future months (in fact at one point I was considering making it £275).

However.... we actually spent £405 this month 🫢. So considerably over budget. Breakdown as follows:

Gifts - a whopping £180*
Outings - £53.75 (cinema trip and swimming entry)
Pocket money - £35
Kids' bedding - £28
Packed lunch thermoses/lunchbags/food tubs - £63.67
Bulk order 5 boxes printer paper & whiteboard markers - £26.45
Misc/unidentified - £17.74

*We do have a lot of family birthdays in Jan/Feb, including my MIL, and the kids have been invited to tons of birthday parties too just now. 

Onto Groceries - budget of £650 and miraculously we are bang on track, having spent £575, with £75 left in the pot - we have a shopping of around £70 being delivered on Friday so it'll all be spent in the end.

So some success and some failure this first month.

I have managed to pull the overspend from other pots, so thankfully our savings goals are all intact and where they are meant to be. It would have been demoralising to dip into those the very first month of trying to prioritise them!

Food

Packed lunches are so far a big success - the kids took baked beans with cheese on top in their flasks today, with wholemeal pittas, carrot/cucumber sticks, and a big tub of fruit each. So a nice, cheap but healthy, option. 

For dinner today we had chorizo/pepper/green bean pasta with feta on top and I have a tub left for my own lunch tomorrow. Monkey was after it for his own lunch but as there was only one portion left I've nabbed it for myself and he can take in some of the Mexican salsa beef rice from the freezer. Bambi has requested the bolognaise from the freezer which is fine.

Planned dinner for tomorrow is hummus & falafel wraps with salad, and I bought an extra pack of falafel so hopefully the kids can have falafel & hummus wraps for lunch on Friday too. And then we have our shopping coming Friday afternoon which is good, as we are just about out of such essential staples as onions!

KajiKita

So the bedding is a one off? I would be tempted to count that as a household / DIY spend if I were defining that. The thermoses, lunch boxes etc are also one offs. And the printer paper will last a while! 😉

The large number birthdays in January is a tough one coming straight after Christmas. Is there any way of building up the January pot in the last three months of the previous year, so October, November, December this year? (I’m not sure if YNAB works like that though.)

Well done on the packed lunches. Sounds like the littlies are really engaged with it 😊❤️

KK