Friday, 6 August 2010

Feeding a family of four on £50

Zooarchaeologist (being a mummy) did a great post recently about shaving £200 off her monthly budget and I commented that I had got our weekly food shopping bill down to £50 for the four of us and she asked to see our Menu Plan, so I thought I would post one for you all to see, with prices too.  I do a weekly shop at Aldi and if anything else is needed it tends to be the co-op in the village.

Now I do have a good store cupboard and freezer with staples like gravy, frozen stock), herbs, spices, flour etc in.

Sunday

Lunch - mince (£1.99) and onions with veg from the garden and new potatoes from the garden too
Dinner - Poached eggs (99p or six for the butcher or friend) on muffins (60p)

Monday

Lunch - Scrambled egg on toast (99p for the eggs and 99p for a loaf of bread)
Dinner - Bolognese made with left over mince pasta (99p a bag) and pasata (59p) with added herbs and any veg left over from Sunday dinner (pureed).  Garlic bread (home made)

Tuesday

Lunch - Beans and Sausage on Toast (59p)
Dinner - Curry with home made naan bread
 
Wednesday

Sausage rolls form the bakers (4 for 99p)
Sausage casserole with Potatoes from the FIL

Thursday

Lunch - Scrambled Eggs with cheese and ham 
Jacket Potatoes with Cheese and Beans or leftover curry

Friday
 
Sandwiches (cheese and ham or egg)
Fish and Chips with peas from the garden

Saturday

Hot Dogs and rolls with potato wedges (from the garden)
Home Made pizza (ham, salami, pasattatta, mozzarella and onion), garlic bread

Shopping list

Mince (1.99)
Breaded Ham (99p)
Mozzarella (2 x 49p)
Salami (99p)
Sausages (99p)
Bread (99p)
Hot dog rolls (55p)
Bratwursts (99p)
potato (69p)
Apples (1.25)
Banana (1.01)
Natural yogurt (49p)
Flour (33p)
Oven chips (99p)
Frozen battered Cod (1.99)
Passata  (49p)
Gouda (1.15)
Onions (69p)
High Juice (99p)
Jelly mix (20p)
Coffee (2.59  a month)
Paracetamol (2 x 19p)
Spreadable butter (1.79)
Marg for baking (50p)
Pull ups (3.59 once a month)
12 eggs (1.98)
Milk Iceland £1 for 4 pints we use at least 16 pints = £4)
Porridge (99p)
Choco Hoops (1.15)
Teabags (2.10 very 4 weeks)
Salad Stuff (currently 39p for tomatoes, lettuce and onions from ;Mar £1.20)
lemonade (40p)
Yogurt (2 x 80p)
Chicken pieces (1.99)
Hot Chocolate (99p)

I DONT buy cakes or biscuits, but I do buy the ingredients to make them and have baking powder, raisins etc in the cupboard board all the time.  I buy one loaf a week and then make all the rest (lidl do a really good inexpensive bread flour and I buy in bulk when passing).
 
I also make sure I have Ice cream and cone in  and when we hear the ice cream van  we make our own.  Sprinkles on top to make special or if they are really lucky then we might have a flake.

The garden is a huge source of produce for me, the peas are just coming to pod and the beans will be ready in the next few weeks. The spinach and chard is all cut and come again. We have tomatoes and onions, which we turned in to pasta sauce last year.

I always check the Internet to find out who has what offers on and shop around to ensure I get the best deal.  I will buy cheese and freeze it.

So how much do you spend on your weekly shop and how do you keep the bills down in the current climate?



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Posted by Jen Walshaw at 14:54
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MTJAM · 764 weeks ago

We average £100 a week on food for the five of us (two adults, a three year old and two year old twins) plus a nanny who has two meals here Monday to Friday. I'd love to reduce it but I do find it difficult - we all enjoy food and I'm very particular about things. We only have meat once or twice a week now because I only buy organic chicken and good quality lean mince. So we eat lots of pasta and we've found some fantastic veggie dishes. I find we spend a lot of money on fruit. All five (six) of us eat three or four pieces of fruit a day, so that is a big bulk of our shop. I notice you haven't included that - do you grow a lot of your own?
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nova · 764 weeks ago

I live in the middle of nowhere and we get hammered on prices....and my teenage sons don't stop eating. Plus one has coeliac disease which adds to the bills as well. I will try and work out how we can cut back....I'm so impressed at how you've got your food bill down. Thanks for sharing with us. x
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blissfulmum 21p · 764 weeks ago

Wow I'm so impressed with your vegetable growing. I've just about managed some tomatoes on the patio and herbs this year but will definitely start my own patch once the rain holds off long enough to get out in the garden! A brilliant idea to have the cones & ice cream ready when the ice cream van passes - I think I will start doing that! We spend about £100 a week for our family of 4 (including a takeaway for me & my husband plus nappies & formula) so we probably should get a bit better with our shopping!
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MTJAM · 764 weeks ago

I think it's really hard to get a balance. I could stop buying mango, pineapple, melon and so on, and stick to apples and pears which are cheaper. But the children love it, it's good for us and so I continue to spend money on them. I am very impressed with your veg harvest and hopefully we will get some late beans and other bits and pieces (the chickens destroyed the first attempt at veg for this year!) I think we must also eat MORE than you guys - there's no way that list would last us the week!
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Joanne Kilby · 764 weeks ago

A fab post.
We are a family of 5, 2 adults, a 6 year old girl, 4 year old girl and a 2 year old boy. I used to spend £100+ at Sainsbury's a week until I changed to Aldi and have been amazed at what I can get! I am down to about £50-60 a week, which includes washing powder and softner. I still have to buy my nappies at the Morrisons, but I tend to get them on offer too.
I'm sure I could get that down too if I was to make a food planner for the week. I also have a local Co-op next door, and I used to go in all the time for little bits and bobs, but soon stopped that when we added up all of the grocery payments via our statements!!! Added to the "savings" I was making at Aldi was back up to £100!
I wish I had the space to grow fruit and veg, but we don't. Maybe I'll try a few grow bags next year of the things we enjoy most - and as it is Aldi really do have some great buys on fruit and veg.
I so didn't know you could freeze cheese! Thanks!
Joanne, London
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suzie sroka · 764 weeks ago

Hello, I love any type of saving money and getting the most out of what we have available.

Thank you so much for your kindness to me over Archie, it really helps a great deal. Thank you! Susie xxx
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Angela · 764 weeks ago

There are four of us and I have managed to reduce from £70 per week down to £50 ish but we always run out of bread, milk and fruit so end up back at the shop. I am working on it, it's having the ideas for variety sometimes.
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mrs yappyd og · 764 weeks ago

You do so well Mrs Mad. We shop around different supermarkets for the offers i.e. chicken at asda and bulk buy for the month so we only buy weekly on fruit, veg, milk and bread. It gets harder though when you have teenages as they are growing and constantly hungry - we also find we have a lot of kids in the house so use Lidl noodles (curry or chicken flavour at 19p per packet) which make a tasty snack for a couple of kids. We have a bread maker, and make our pizza base in it which is yummy but giving up our allotment means vegetables are limited - you must work hard in your garden to keep it coming. I don't think you could do any more than you are Mrs Mad and I take a leaf from your book. xxx
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Michelle · 764 weeks ago

I try and cut our food bill down as much as I can and make all our biscuits, most of our bread and pasta as well as yoghurt. We grow some stuff in grow bags in our small backyard and forage for berries, apples and cherries on the common near us. A friend has chooks so I swap baking & veges for eggs. It is amazing how you can make things stretch when you have to and also get the kids used to generic brands instead of more expensive ones. My girls view crisps as a treat as we usually don't buy them, we make our own popcorn instead. I can't wait for your frugal food posts, great blog with loads of fab info and tips. :o))
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zooarchaeologis · 764 weeks ago

I am in awe and will be attempting to replicate some of this in a few weeks time. I need to get properly planning in our garden we seem to end up with gluts of vegetables and then nothing. Thanks for doing this, its actually very useful :)
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Abby · 764 weeks ago

You eat a lot of eggs!
For me it is all in the meal planning, getting caught out because its late & we've not thought about what we are eating is when we end up spending on convienience food or a takeaway which blows the budget. There are 5 of us and we spend about £100 a week. My 10yo eats the same if not more than me & my husband! He is VERY active and works up a huge appetite! Over the holiday we save money by always taking our own drinks & some fruit to the park & then coming back for lunch or taking a picnic so we dont have to buy food out.
We also eat a lot of vegetable based dishes such a pasta, rataouille, casserole cooked in the slow cooker etc, these can be re-hashed as chilli or served with rice, pasta or potato for variety. They can also all be fozen to save any waste.
We dont grow any vegetables ourselves but now we have moved & have a garden we plan to try. My Dad has an allotment & we have had courgettes & LOADS of cherries. (they got 35kg off their tree!)
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Abby · 764 weeks ago

When I was looking at our budget one of the biggest things was if the kids & I have sweets after school. 50p x4 = £2.00, this would soon add up if we had them often, so we don't do it anymore and the kids dont bother asking now. I am always interested to hear other peoples ideas and making our own bread sounds like something I'd really like to try.

(sorry, my comment was too long!)
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Kate P · 764 weeks ago

We have found times a little hard recently and I too have been shopping on £50 a week... sometimes a bit less... for a family of 2 adults and 2 children. It IS possible, but as you say, it involves a lot of cooking and baking from scratch. We make our own bread, cakes and biscuits cos it is so much cheaper and I stick firmly to a menu plan to make everything stretch as far as possible. Funnily enough, I find it quite satisfying to spend on budget!
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redtedart 49p · 764 weeks ago

You are lucky you get so much out of the garden... we tend to get "Token" food from our garden and it is more for "fun" and play... and enough for lots of Green Tomatoe Chutney... Well done you :-)

Thanks for the Lidl Breadflour tip - didnt know they had any and we make all our own bread too. Will stock up there!

We have frozen blueberries & raspberries which are great for baking or pouring over heated on icecream. Luckily my two love steamed apples for pudding (both <3yrs), so that is an inexpensive fruit. Buy the rest of the fruit seasonal. Now is a good time to Blackberry picking too! We live in an urban environment and there are plenty!!!

I can't say exactly how much goes on food, as I have a pot "for everything", like petrol, incidentals, cleaning products etc.

Thanks for the post and ahem, "food for thought".

Maggy
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phyllgerry 4p · 764 weeks ago

But you cheating by taking food from garden and not adding it in the cost, just like the cooking programmes where the cost of ingrediants is £5 yet they use £20 of free extra's off the shelf. Re-do list with market value of peas and potatoes etc to get true cost. Plus things used in cuboard needs to be divided down from orignal cost and the few pence added to cost when added to a meal or meals for that week.
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Emily O · 764 weeks ago

Really interesting post, you're very organised. We spend between £80 - £120 a week on groceries, that includes household things and as I've got two children in nappies that adds a lot of expense. Formula milk is pricey too. This amount includes cat food as well. If it were just our food alone I estimate we spend £55 - £95 for a family of five. All our shopping is at Waitrose which is not the cheapest supermarket but I go for their 'budget' range. We have a veg patch too. It's definitely an idea to try and shave off some of the money we spend. Being organised about meals is a good way to save I think.
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Marylin · 764 weeks ago

I think we spend between 60-85 per week. It has been less recently as we had been pretty skint for a while, but now we're back to "normal" it's gone up a bit. Nice to not live off beans on toast all the time! ;)
We've just dabbled for the first time this year with growing our own veggies. The only thing that took off was the salad leaves though. Next year we're planning to grow as much as we can of our own veg!
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Michelle Twin Mum · 764 weeks ago

Every time I see your menu planning posts Jen I am in awe. I really must try harder to shop better. I dream of having lots of time to cook, oh well. Maybe one day. Mich x
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rachaellucasbooks 27p · 764 weeks ago

Ooh, this is interesting given that we've just decided to stop our once-a-month delivery from Tesco, and try living more week to week. What we've done till now is a big shop of all the essentials (tomatoes, kidney beans, cereal, cleaning stuff) and then picked up fruit and veg inbetween. But I want to start menu planning, because I want to get our costs down. Saying that we don't buy any branded food, a huge amount is tesco value, and we don't really buy ready made food (apart from pizza, and that's laziness and needs to stop).

I find other people's shopping really interesting (think maybe I need to get out more!) - there are whole aisles in the supermarket that we don't seem to use! Mind you, my children are growing up like I did, thinking that bought cake and biscuits are exotic treats because everything is home made.
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The Coffee Lady · 764 weeks ago

I love Lidl and Aldi. But I have to be careful not to buy weird things like cycling computers and camping chairs etc because they are so cheap, and won't be there another day.

The wine is great. I've cut our budget massively by buying Lidl wine.
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fionaerlandsen 6p · 764 weeks ago

Your post is amazing, and well done you with your menu planning. I have 5 kids half the year and then my own 3 the rest of the year. Lanzarote is very expensive for food. The prices that you see in your list, would simply be impossible to replicate. Food is probably one of the most expensive things in Lanzarote to buy because 80% of it has to be imported and because there is one import company whose monopolised everything. Our prices are in some cases twice as high as our neighbouring canary islands. They have only just given permission to Lidl's to open. They had sat on a supermarket waiting for permission for 5 years...No internet shopping either. I try and buy from the local market, I cook everything from scratch. Bread flour is expensive here, although I do make my own bread mixed in with buying bread. Breakfast cereals even own brand are nothing less than around €2.50 a small packet. I am going to try and do the same pricing see how much I end up at. Wine is cheaper... Drinkable wine, fizzy stuff for summer €2.50 a bottle!
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Alice · 764 weeks ago

This makes v interesting reading, I really want to cut down on how much I spend on food. For two adults and a newborn we spend about 160 a week at asda, plus 30 at our Sainsbury's local. Which equals 280, ouch!!.
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luschka 25p · 763 weeks ago

It's the veggies that get us - we can spend up to about £20 just on veg. But I'd say our normal spend is about £60 - £70 a week for two of us!
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Solveig · 761 weeks ago

This is very inspiring -- particularly all the veg you get from your garden. I feel I spend a fortune on food and I don't think I always get good use out of everything I buy.

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