I spend £40 on my months food shop then once a week a few pounds on fresh stuff like fruit and salad, veg I have frozen.  Being skint certainly makes you more aware of what you are spending - sainsburys basics food has never tasted so good !!!

With regards to takeaways and eating out, when I was with my ex we would eat takeaways or in the restaurant at least twice a week.... since splitting with him ive lost over a stone in weight !!  sometimes on the way home from a dog show I contemplate getting a takeaway because I cant be bothered to cook but then I think of what else I could do with that money instead and have a chilli or curry out of the freezer which is left overs from the week ;)

I used to know someone who hadn't grasped the concept of freezing left-overs for another meal. He just used to throw it away! He soon learned ... ;)

LOL :D :D We make soup with any leftovers that we don't know what to do with :) :) Never throw food away - what a waste :D :D

Daisy

I spend £120 a week on three of us and my son doesn't even eat much! I just shop everyday and get what I fancy that day. I don't know how people can do a weekly shop. I can't think what I would want to eat in two days time. Each to there own. 

We don't really plan meals :) We buy whatever is reduced/on offer and eat that or freeze it :) :) Much the cheapest way to go and we also get to eat a great variety :D Don't have time to shop more than once a week :) We eat homemade soup a couple of days a week and salad at least twice a week. Any meat that we eat usually produces stock or leftovers for the soup :)

Daisy

£120 a week? What do you eat - gold and diamonds? I spend about £40 for 2½ adults (son eats here half the week) and we don't go hungry. Mind you, if I had £120 a week I would probably find I spent it! :D If you had to drive 10 miles to the shop you'd soon find how easy it is to shop weekly and freeze! ;) :D

I calculated that my dinner tonight (And I'll get 2 nights out of this) will cost me the total sum of £1.80 not including the electricity to cook it but then as it'll be done in 5 minutes that won't be a lot.

1 bag of fresh stir fry veg, one packet of egg noodles and a jar of Szechuan sauce all bought from the bum slapping supermarket this morning - very healthy, quick to prepare & a lot tastier than the takeaway muck.

>I don't know how people can do a weekly shop

I do a monthly shop

As I said each to there own. I like fresh food. I use the freezer for the dogs food.
I don't think I'm excessive but use mainly Jamie Oliver recipes which require fresh organic food. (I thought most homes owned Jamie's books)
I can't imagine how you would keep fruit, veg & bread for a month but thats your choice.

I do one big shop a month for frozen and canned stuff, I eat mostly frozen veg because being on your own it always goes off before you get round to eating it.  I  pick up salad stuff and fruit weekly from Sainsburys local when I fill up with petrol, I dont have time to shop more often (plus I detest supermarket shopping)

I dont own one of Jamies books, I use mostly weightwatchers recipies but cook all stuff from scratch (no ready meals in this house )

I don't use Jamie Oliver's books either :D :D I do have one (a gift) but I've never even opened it :D :D It is often thought that frozen vegetables are more nutritious than fresh ;) ;) ;)

Daisy

Yes they are Daisy although not always as nice or anything like the variety. 

As soon as fruit and vegetables are harvested they start to deteriorate and lose nutrients. Frozen veg have more nutritional value than 'fresh' ones, which could easily have been picked more than a week ago.

Please don't judge me as I wouldn't judge you. My father died at a young age of various tumours including bowel cancer . The one thing that I will remember from the nightly visits to the hospital was all the posters about eating fresh and healthily. Its something I have taken with me and if means going without other things I will rather do that.

I don't think anyone is judging anyone we are just looking at the different ways we go about our catering arrangements :)

Thanks Isobel

sorry I spelt your name wrong :rolleyes:

Don't worry, nobody's judging anyone - just agreeing that frozen veg are generally actually fresher and healthier than 'fresh' veg, unless of course they're just picked from the garden.

I do always keep a bag of frozen peas for my son as thats the only veg he eats.  

Some veg is better than no veg!  And frozen veg are no good for stir fry as they hold too much water once defrosted.   You need hot oil & high heat for stir fry.

I guess I am in the minority  :-)

The only frozen veg I like is the steamed little bags. I hate all other bagged frozen veg I think it is tasteless.  Just my findings though. I try to buy it fresh, cut and steam it myself if I can. Carrots generally I buy already cut into battons.    I think once you start steaming veg is near impossible to revert back to frozen bags. Perhaps they have more goodness in them but for me they taste pretty poor to me.

We eat takeaways more that most that have commented so far :-D We don't eat them ever more than once a week though but I think being honest and fair we probably do most fridays.

We also spend over £100 per week on shopping no problem, probably a lot more since they opened a M&S food court at the Garage 1 min from my house :-)  I do buy a lot of the dog meat and poultry amoungst that as well though. 

The only frozen veg we normally get is peas :) Hoping to harvest our first crop in a few weeks time , see if I can beat BirdsEye from picking pods to freezer in two hours I managed to do that with the sweetcorn last year :D :D

If the allotment isn't producing then we always buy fresh veg and fruit. We have three freezers full of the girls foods, out frozen veg (mainly courgettes as we over estimated the crops output slightly :rolleyes: ) as we have eaten the rest and left overs frozen. We have decided to have a clear out of all the left over frozen food so it will be a lottery over the next few weeks as we never get round to labelling stuff :rolleyes::rolleyes: We spend over £100 a week as well which does include dogs as well :)

Well after saying I wasnt having a take away for a month I went round to my dad's yesterday and he invited us to theirs to have an indian on them for all the help we've given them recently! Bang goes the diet this week (and Id been so good up to then!)

Now because Ive not paid for it do you think this counts as not managing a take away for a month??? :)

Definately because you didn't pay for it!!!!;-) :-D

lol I think my dad felt sorry for me! :D Mind you I have helped him out quite a bit recently so I deserved it! :D

>But i must say our fridge and pantry is always stocked,no-body whinges that there's nothing to eat

I keep well stocked in food but my kids still say there's nothing to eat but then they mean no junk.

or nothing that suits their fancy at this moment in time! 

Eating out is one of those great pleasure in life...or so we think so!

We don't smoke or regularly go round the bars in town so meals out and bottles of wine are definatley in :D

Spend alot in Asda too but how I really don't know how! Like to eat healthily and well!!

I see eating out as my treat. I have a husband who works incredibly long hours so can't expect him to cook really.( and I mean really long) So I try to cook interesting things in the week that often have to be microwaved late at night for him or alternatively conjure up something quickly if we want to eat together as a family (3 of us at the moment) This can be quite challenging day after day. So our treat most weekends is to try out a country pub with food, maybe on a saturday night. It's a real break but I must say that more often than not I come away thinking I could have made something better myself---but by the next weekend off we go again!

I work in a restaurant and eat there when I work so I love nothing better than a home cooked meal, you get to sick of eating restaurant food all the time.
Mary

I agree you do get sick of restaurant food, although I waste far too much on eating out and takeaways in the UK, when I go abroad, I crave my home cooked foods after 14 nights away as I've had enough going out to eat!

>Lunch usually turns into luntea<

'Luntea'....... Oh Moon thats perfect!! Im going to steal that word! Yes.... those are the best the 'Lunteas' :D

Good topic!

Truth - well, erm, a bit of a weakness of ours I'm afraid :rolleyes:  We eat out usually three times a week at least - sometimes an extra once or so for lunch :D  Take-aways are only about 1 or 2 a month - most of it wasted - a few more times if in a month that we've been travelling a fair bit to shows (not gonna feel like cooking after a 350 mile trip!)

Note to self, look out instruction manual of oven :rolleyes:



:-D Nearly didn't add to this topic, but now I have another guilty party in Teri I can.

Hubby and I  usually meet up twice a week for lunch somewhere, we go out as a family for a meal every other week, the boys have a McDonalds once a week and we have a take away usually on a Saturday. So that's approx 5 a week. (I feel really bad now I've totted that up)

And we still manage to spend approx £150 a week on shopping too have to get some tips from some of you on that!  We do eat a lot of fresh fruit and veg and I do home cook the rest of the week.

I do agree that frozen veg is likely to be fresher, but apart from peas I don't like the taste and I prefer to chop and cook my own, I even grow some of our veg, (so I can get some points back for that :-D )

A binge buddy -  whoo hooo :D

I like to think we're helping the local economy ;)

Yes, We are keeping many people employed. We are such caring people. :-D :rolleyes: :-)

Aha, now someone else has admitted overspend on food I feel I can too.  I limit junk to Danish Pastries (my lot expect them now after dinner) and fizzy drinks but only at the weekend.  I think a lot of my spend is on fruit and veg.  Kids don't eat that much fruit, certainly not enough but OH & I do and I am constantly re-stocking basket with grapefruit, apples, oranges & bananas.  My real weakness is soft fruit but I try to limit them as they are so expensive these days.  Recently I started buying frozen cauli & broccoli because TBH I have found this to be more economical and I am really fussy about freshness.  If we don't eat the fresh veg or salad within a couple of days I go off the idea of eating it altogether.

I don't go overboard on cleaning products as they last me yonks (I don't like using too many chemicals - that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it).  I am not a great cook but do cook most things from scratch (exception is odd jar of Dolmio), cooking is just a bit basic.

Defo need to save money on food :rolleyes:

I have to admit the shopping bill is usually worse when myself and the boys do the shopping, I never look at prices, I just go down the isles, "That looks nice, Oh haven't tried that, Oh that joint of meat/chicken looks the biggest!" The boys chuck a load of mags and comics in the trolly and need to test out new cereals etc. If hubby shops you can bet it is approx £30 cheaper, he loves coming in with the shopping and saying how much cheaper his shop is, and he actually enjoys doing the weekly shop!

I freely admit I am better at cooking and growing food than doing the shopping. But hubby enjoys the game of beat the wifes' shopping bill. :-D

I've asked OH to do shopping for me because I know he would save us money.  Although having said that when we go together I whiz around the shop getting what I think we need and he spend most of the time at the cheese counter and wine section.

Don't buy reading stuff of any description from supermarket and I only buy porridge and muesli on regular basis.

Right! I'm going to start keeping a check on what we actually spend because I don't know.  This is because I go most days which in itself is a problem.