just moved out... need help

Lisakx

heya! Just moved out of home and am on an extremely tight budget. I need to keep my food shopping bill as low as possible. My mum has kindly put some food in my cupboards to keep me going for a few days :j but I need to plan what I need to get each week, I'm in town so have access to all the main shops, the market etc

I'm thinking of writing a meal plan for the week and working off that, Ive never had to plan my own meals as there was always loads of stuff in the cupboards at home. Have you any suggestions of cheap meals to make? cheap places to buy? the best offers? etc

Will look in the cupboards now to see what I have and will see how far I can stretch it as well :rotfl:

whatatwit

Hi Lisakx, ebeneezer scrooge has posted a similar request above and Pink has kindly put some links on.

You could also post what you have got and will no doubt receive some meal ideas.

angchris

how often do you get your money is the first question, is it better for you to do a weekly or a monthly shop? my oh gets paid monthly so on payday we stock up for the month so that if disaster happens we at least have food to tie us over. what we tend to do is make a huge spag bol in the slow cooker fully padded out well with lentils and grated carrot i split it into 3 portions and have spag bol one day with a 3rd make a huge lasagna with another 3rd and freeze it for another day then with the last 3rd keep it in the fridge and make a chilli out of it for in a couple of days time.
i also buy the biggest chicken i can find (going free range now after hugh f wittingstalls chicken thingy _pale_ ) roast 1 day, stir fry the next and if theres enough meat leftover i make a pie for the freezer and then chicken stock out of the carcass.
any leftovers get eaten the next day or spare portions get put into plastic containers and frozen as easy micro meals for one.
we tend to eat 1 nice cooked meal then the next day we have a really cheap tide you over meal like beans on toast this really keeps the cost down. today for example it has just been me in the house so i made myself porridge with sultanas and honey for brekfast then i skipped lunch cos i had brekky kinda late and wasnt hungry and for my evening meal i made a huge pot of veggie soup from some prepacked veg that was knocked down to 20p with some granary bread that i made in the breadmaker (def worth investing in a breadmaker loaves cost about 35p;) )...todays food cant of cost more than 40 or 50p and i think i have enough soup to last another 5 days :j
cheap places to shop are farm foods,lidl,aldi go to a farm shop and pick up a sack or a 1/2 sack of spuds and eggs etc. check out your local markets for cheap veggies (go at the end of the day) also tesco`s and sainsburys etc tend to have massive reductions on scran at about 7pm always worth popping in to check it out.

Olliebeak

Hello Lisak - you may find some useful ideas on this thread!

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=659091

there's lots of ideas on there from folk who live alone.

Good Luck :beer:

Lisakx

weekly shop is probably best for me. Am reading just about every thread I come across hehe I prob should have read before I posted but got all excited I have a huge 3kg bag of pasta in the cupboard so no doubt I'll be living off that for a good while. I don't tend to eat a lot of meat, infact only time I do really is in fast food places and they are out now. I'm thinking I should get some baking potatos and steal some tuna from my mum's house (only because she has a habit of buying it when its on offer and I think at last count had 20 tins I'm sure she won't miss it )

Maybe if I do my meal plan and post it up here someone can offer ideas on cheapest way? bearing in mind my freezer is big enough for maybe 3 portions if well placed.

thanks everyone and hope I'm not being a pain.

angchris

eating at mums or "borrowing" from her cupboards is def the cheapest :rotfl: a freezer is definately a moneysaving gadget for me so maybe you could give subtle hints for next xmas
not only is eating fast food really bad for you it really is quite expensive when you think about what you are actually getting for your money (although they are delish )
make a list of what you have in your cupboards and post it here and we will see if we can rustle up some nice cheap meals for you

Olliebeak

Lisakx wrote: »

......I'm thinking I should get some baking potatos and steal some tuna from my mum's house (only because she has a habit of buying it when its on offer and I think at last count had 20 tins I'm sure she won't miss it )...........hope I'm not being a pain.

What else are us mums for? I'm sure that none of us would allow our kids to go back home to their 'single life' empty-handed if we knew that their 'cupboard was bare'! Some of us actually shop with that very thought in mind - I know that I do :rotfl: .

And NO you're not being a pain at all. Many of us have been at the stage that you are at - and the best way to learn is to ask!! We can all relate stories of early attempts at housekeeping that we can now laugh about but that seemed disastrous at the time.

My sister is a wonderful cook and used to work as a waitress in a good restaurant before getting married - but she hadn't a cloo about food shopping. Been married for a couple of weeks, she decided to buy some fillet steak (she had seen it on the menu in the restaurant and knew it was the most expensive, and therefore the best, that you could buy) - but she hadn't decided what she was going to do with it. Her husband came home to find that she had made a pan of stew with it! Not a mistake that she ever made again!!

angchris

i am 34 years old, have lived away from home since i was 18 and when we had the floods in the summer my mum emptied her cupboards to give me her food parcel....i came home to find the porch rammed with food we had no leccy for 2 days no running water for 2 weeks but plenty of food. bless her cotton socks even though the supermarkets were still open 24/7. mums always worry that their child is getting enough to eat, my mum tries to kill us by kindness by feeding us till we feel ill from the moment you step through her door untill you leave :rotfl:
now you are trying to stand on your own 2 feet don`t forget to ask your mum about her fav cheap recipes etc it will make her feel happy and useful and that she can still be there to help as i know it can be emotional sometimes because mums get that empty nest feeling.
i forgot to say, instead of buying everything from the supermarket try and make your own its much cheaper i use old choccy tins to store homemade muffins/brownies/traybakes/biscuits its when you start chucking that stuff in your trolly your food bill starts getting expensive.

jcr16

jacket spuds are def a very cheap and filling meal. plus there are so many filling options. u can also once cooked scoop out the middle and mix potato with a variety of ingredinats and then put back inside spud and cook again. make a real change and is yummy. i usually do mince beef and onions mixed in with mine , then grated cheese on top. so it is like a mini cottage pie.

both my mum and i often shop from each other cupbaords if we need something. as u can guarentee if 1 of us has run out of something , the other person has it. and my mum only lives 2 min walk away.

taplady

Olliebeak wrote: »

What else are us mums for? I'm sure that none of us would allow our kids to go back home to their 'single life' empty-handed if we knew that their 'cupboard was bare'! Some of us actually shop with that very thought in mind - I know that I do :rotfl: .

Me too! my DS comes home atweekends and I always send him back with a food parcel, when I'm doing my shopping I always buy some of his favourites. Us Mums cant bear to think of our kids going hungry! It gives me peace of mind to know that he's always got something to eat.;)

trying-very-trying

I would definitely get a small freezer, try freecycle. You might find that your mum will give you little frozen single portion meals, frozen from the left overs of the meals that she makes, by the way this is only good if you liked mum's cooking when you lived there

I always have something in my freezer for 19yo dd, but she always asks what it is, before deciding if she wants it:rotfl: Whenever she comes to visit, I ask if she's staying for dinner, she always asks what it is, so I always say SOUP, she then says no, she won't stay, but she always hangs around long enough to see if it is actually something she does fancy.

I don't think my cooking's that bad, I think it's just that teenage tastebuds are affected by their hormones