Grocery shopping experts - how little do you spend

Olliebeak

Also good for stretching a stew is to use those packs of 'soup and broth mix' (mixture of split peas, lentils, pearl barley etc) - quite cheap from ASDA, Tesco etc. I use them all the time in my 'Scouse' as well as adding dumplings to the SC!

Ham shanks are good value as well. I managed to get two of them for £2.50. One to use straightaway and one for the freezer. I bring to the boil in pan of water and then pour the water away (in case its very salty) but you can just pour away half of it to keep the flavour!

The shank then goes into the slow cooker on low for over night - and at the same time I pre-soak the soup and broth mix. In the morning, I remove the shank from the SC and remove the fatty skin entirely and take half of the ham stock out of the slow cooker to cool down and put into the fridge (for soup the next day). The soaked soup and broth mix (drained and rinsed) goes into the SC with the stock that's left in there, along with a chopped onion, 3 or 4 sliced carrots, a leek, some cut up potatoes, any other veggies lurking around (parsnips, swede, couple of outside cabbage leaves finely chopped) some of the meat from the cooked shank (keep some back for sandwiches!), dried mixed herbs and a couple of vegetable stock cubes. Let it 'do it's thing' all day and about an hour before serving, make some dumplings and allow to swell up to fill the top of the SC. I call this meal 'shank stew'!

That amount should feed you all quite well with some left over for the next day or for freezing for future use.

With the remaining stock (it will be like partly set jelly in the fridge!) you can make soup. Pre-soak some split green and yellow peas, chop a couple of onions, a leek and throw all in together with some herbs if you want. When it's cooked you've got a lovely pan of pea soup that can be served chunky or blitzed with a 'hand whizzer' and eaten with some crusty bread!

BusyGirl

originally posted by robpw2

2. aldi great place to buy things like bread and cheese (thought would not reccommend buying vegetables )

Sorry, I would and often do buy fruit and veg in Aldi especially if they have special offers on. Today I bought a lovely savoy cabbage for 39p, same cabbage cost over 50p in Asda. Just have a look at the different offers each week as I buy some fruit/veg in Aldi and some in Asda. Also Lidl is a great place for fruit/veg as they often sell it for half the price.

lindadykes

I am fortunate now that I have the luxury of being able to afford a diet of organic foods, but this wasn't always the case and at the lowest point I lived on benefits as a single parent with three girls under 7.

One thing I found really useful was an idea from one of the old shirley Goode books to base a weeks meals around one main protein item, e.g chicken one week, bacon another, mince another.

I often had bacon weeks as I would buy those big packs of bacon pieces. As an example - One pack of pieces costing around £1 would form the basis of a split pea and vegetable soup, a bacon and veg rissotto, a bacon and leek/onion suet roly poly. a pasta dish, pancakes filled with bacon and sweetcorn with the smallest pieces being cooked in the oven till crispy and mixed with boiled egg and mayo as a sandwich filling.

I remember a ken Lo chinese cookbook called Cheap Chow that put forward the theory of "expanding savouriness" essentially bulking out expensive meat with other savoury features and seving a small amount of highly savouy food with a large amount of filler such as rice. I often tried to base meals around this thoery.

If I used mince I never used more than 8oz for four of us, bulking it out with "fillers" such as a small amount of porridge oats or tapioca or rice stirred in at the beginning of the recipe, providing you only use a little of the filler it expands, takes on the taste of the mince and is undetectable in the finished dish. I also bulked out expensive meat with veg - again mince can be bulked with grated carrots.

A toad in the hole can be made with fewer suasages per person if you slice the sausages, the remainder will make a second meal again sliced in either a flan or a sausage cassorole -once again use lots of cheaper veg.

I can well remember my mum coming to my house as I was preparing dinner for my then husband and the three girls and looking at the one lonely pork chop I had, asked where the rest of the meat was - when I said that was it she said I couldn't possible feed 5 on one pork chop, i proceded to demonstrate Ken Lo's thory by slicing the meat off the chop wafer thin, stir frying it with lots of cheap shreaded veg and some value noodles, and seasoning well with soy sauce - Chow Mein for 5 with one pork chop!

thriftlady_2

A brilliant recip for making one sausage per person into a meal is this one.

taplady

I just wanted to thank you all for some great ideas, I'm trying to lower my food budget and you've inspired me!:T

oldMcDonald

£60 a month is very low, I can't imagine trying to do that.

I can get down to £30 - £40 pound a week for 2 adults, 5 kids age 4 to 12 and two dogs, but it isn't easy. In the summer we were spending £30 a week, but price rises means that we are now aiming for £35.

To start with, we are veggies / vegans, which means that we don't have to pay out for meat.

All meals are cooked from scratch, kids cannot be fussy - and neither can we!

Fruit and veg make up a huge bulk of our food shopping. In the summer we grow a large amount of this in our allotment (wich costs us £33 per year, we try to cut costs on this by saving our own seed as much as possible), and growing as much as possible in our (very small) garden in pots. This is supplented with foraging stuff such as nettles, wild garlic, berries, sea kale etc. In the winter we mainly get fruit and veg from gsfruits.co.uk (£19 for a HUGE box, delivered), allotment and foraged items we have frozen (we still have some nettles, blackberries etc in the freezer now)

There is a tub in the freezer that all veg offcuts are dropped into which gives us a meal of 'free' veg soup once every 2 weeks.

We make all our own wine from hedgerow fruits and flowers (we have just started some gorse flower wine, so you can make wine almost all year round), you can get several bottles of wine for little more than the cost of a bag of sugar.

Soap and 'smellies' are always the top asked for item for Christmas and birthdays, so we rarely have to buy these. Cleaning items are vinigar / lemon juice / bi-carb; washing powder for the washing machine is cheap soap grated, a little added to the wash with some vinigar for fabric softener - for very dirty items some washing soda is added.

Our protien is mainly pulses, sometimes TVP, bought in bulk from SUMA. This works out very cheap - I put a pound by a week for this and we buy 3x a year. I also put 50p - £1 by a week to buy sugar and fruit during the pick your own season and the September / October foraging season in order to make masses of jam and wine.

The dogs eat a mix of Smart Price dry dog food, table scraps and fresh meat I buy for silly prices at the yellow stickered part of the supermarket.

Our children love foraging and will try anything - they find it exciting to pick and eat 'wild' food and to help grow stuff at the allotment.

The shopping budget can be dropped quite low if you have a mix of time, energy, non-fussy children / partners / pets, but it can be hard work. I really don't think you could drop to £60 a month, though.

oldMcDonald

Sassamac wrote: »

Just to buy nappies, BOGOF wipes and tampons is £20 per month so two thirds of that is non-negotiable.

Sorry, not read whole thread yet (will do tonight!), so this has probably been mentioned already.

Nappies - reusables work out much cheaper. Ask on Freecycle to see if anyone has any. I used the old fashioned square towelling ones rather than shaped ones as they dry easier ( we have no tumble drier), they saved us loads. Don't worry about getting 2nd hand ones. You can steralise them if you are worried. i really fought using these as they seemed yukky, but after a couple of bum changes I got the hang of it.

Tampons - get a mooncup. One of the best things I ever bought. Once you have made the original £15 - £20 investement you will never need to buy a tampon again.

Wipes - when money was really tight I cut up a load of second hand towels and used these with some water on instead. Soak and wash them with the napppies.

kittynortheast

What a great thread, good luck with your challenge, I am also trying to cut my grocery bill per month and will be watching with interest. I found a tip in the Tesco healthy living booklet which I am going to try, it suggested (more for health reasons) to replace half your mince with lentils for sheperds pie I like my good farm mince so to use only half will be great, the other half I'm going to make a pizza pie - home made pizza base mix with toms onions and mince made into a pizza pie (I seem to remember pine nuts somewhere too). I also buy some of my fruit and veg from Aldi, bag of pears 79p, sweetheart cabbages half the price of the main supermarkets, small apples for kids for school are under a £ per bag, last the week and good quality (I'm very fussy as well!)

OOh I always buy the value/basics bacon, it's usually very tasty but because the slices aren't uniform end of joints etc.. and by the taste of it it's the good quality stuff.

dont_want_to_be_in_debt

We have bought a bread maker- this saves huge amounts of money only 30p a loaf and the same for 2 pizza bases. The bread is healthier and much more filling- kids love it hot for breakfast and as snack instead of crisps and chocolate.

Yategirl

HM pizza is cheap - I agree with the comments about that. You can make a bread base (by hand or in the BM) or I sometimes make a base which doesn't have yeast (just oil, flour and water). Then either reduce a tin of tomatoes (chop the tomatoes, add either fresh garlic and chopped onion or herbs OR get some dried garlic and onion powder - just need a sprinkling and the jars last for ages!). Spread that over the base and then add whatever toppings you like! You don't need to add meat if money is tight, a basic margarita (cheese and tomato) is fine, add veg (peppers/mushrooms/sweetcorn/peas etc if you can spare a bit, add meat if you have any left from a roast or get a chorizo from Lidl (£1.89 for a huge sausage) and slice thinly - just enough to give flavour.