£72.00 and a bit of change

Good morning everyone, hope we are bright and breezy today. Well you may remember I said that I had only got £72.00 to feed a family of 5 and a cat on for a week, and that I would post how I got on with the shopping, well here it is.

Asda £ 6.76, Lidl £40.32, Netto £3.60, Farmfoods £ 5.00 and Aldi £11.09

Total spent £66.77.

Now here is what I bought followed by my weeks menus for the use of food. Hope its not a boreing post, I just thought it may help with people like myself struggling in the money department.


Asda:
Pork joint £3.92
2pt skimmed milk 86p
Egg noodles £1.00
Stir fry veg 98p
Total £6.76

Aldi
Cat food £3.88
carrots 79p
5kg potatoes £1.79
tuna chunks in brine x 2 £1.38
garlic sausage .39
polish sliced meats 89p
grapes 49
necterines 49
eggs 99p
Total £11.09

Netto
20 bottles of diet lemonade £3.60

Total £3.60

Farmfoods
12 pints of the one milk £3.00
500g cheese £2.00

Total £5.00

Lidl
Peach and passion fruit yogurt x 2 £3.18
utterley butterly x 4 £2.36
anchor butter £1.00
2 x chickens £5.78
4 x baked beans £1.16
tin french beans 59p
3 x chopped tomatoes £1.08
500g lean mince £2.49
8 chicken thighs £2.49
jar sweet and sour sauce 69p
lasagne sheets 96p
lemon juice 35p
2 x bags onions 68p
white cabbage 49p
celery 65p
family pack of fresh tomatoes £1.48
chorizo salami £1.24
mixed peppers 69p
bananas £1.19
Apples £1.92
4 x red peppers £2.36
2 x cucumbers 68p
2 x spring onions 58p
mushrooms 99p
galia melon 69p
new potatoes 49p
garlic basket 69p
sweet pickle 79p
basmati rice £1.59
pasta 99p
Total £40.32

Freebies from my garden at the moment are lettuce, courgettes and raddish, so a very small saving on the food bill there.

Breakfast for everyone for the weeks is cereal and milk or fruit.

Lunch for o/h is a tuna nicose salad which will last him for 3 days and then he will have a chicken and pasta salad for 2 days to take to work with fruit.
Kids will have garlic sausage/polish meat slices/eggs with salad and onion and potato soup which I made yesturday for the week, and I will be having chicken salad and soup for lunches. Kids will have yogurts or fruit for afters. So that leaves the main meals which are

Vegetable lasagne which we had last night.
Wednesday - chicken noodle stir fry (1 of the roast chicken but will cook both to use other 1 in salads etc)
Thursday - cottage pie with vegetables (mince)
Friday - Jackets with cheese and beans
Saturday - spanish chicken (chicken and rice with peppers etc in it and salad using the chicken thighs)
Sunday - roast pork and vegetables (pork joint)


Will be using the left over money to buy reduced bread from the co-op round the corner from me during the rest of the week.

Hope I haven't waffled on to long with this and hope someone finds it of help.

Next week I have to buy household stuff so the menu will be a lot leaner.

hugs Carolyne xxxx

Good on you, it is tough at the moment & I know I am trying to stick to a strict budget, the only problem where I live is the choice, we have 2 Tesco's, one very big Sainsburys & a tiny Aldi so trying to buy cheaper stuff here is more difficult, I tend to plan meals so that the leftovers can be used for the lunches the next day, I posted a recipe a while back for a syn free cannelloni, this could be something you could try too, it will make enough for 5 of you easily, if you send me a personal message I can email you the recipe. It is one good thing about SW that you can eat quite cheaply when you shop around and because you can eat as much as you want you can fill yourself up more than the other diets.
Good luck anyway

Not boring sweetie - useful and makes me feel a little bit ashamed actually. Me and the OH are worried about money atm (2 mortgages thanks to a fallen through sale on my old place) but we only have us two, plus pets to worry about. I spend £60 ish a week on me and OH alone (we do a lot of red days) and so now, after this, I will count my blessings and stop moaning.

What a star - well done you. xxxx

Very well done!

I average 30-40 pound for 2 adults and an 8 year old per week.

I save by making my own bread for the other 2 (I've cut it out of my diet as I have so many other things to eat I don't really miss it!) We use economy brands where we can and have found them to be just as good if not better than top brands. If I don't need fresh veg for some meals I bulk the freezer out with frozen veg for the rest of the days.

What a fantastic post!!! I dont think you can waffle too much, especially given these times.
Its interesting to see what you have managed to come up with!!

Thank you Hun!!

xx

Brilliant post - just shows what you can do with some good planning and shopping around.
I spend way way too much on food (not even gonna say how much!) and I know I could rein it in a little.

Not a boring post at all, inspirational and educational too!

Well done carolyne. xxx

Great post Charlotte thank you and very informative, well done, X

Wow! That's impressive... like Jaylou I spend WAAAAYYYYY too much for the 2 of us (adults)
I know I could cut it down, but recently I haven't had time to do it, because of shopping around etc.

That reminds me, I must go in to aldi at some point soon... almost out of fruit!

I am trying to cut down too on my shopping bill. My bank statements just show a long list of supermarkets going every 2-3 days and spending £30-40 a time. Not good!! I will be pinching some of your ideas!

its not boring its a fab post - im going on my hollies soon so to save money im doing an online order instead of eating out all the time. Youve given me some great ideas. Thanks and it will help keep me on track.

Awe, thank you for your lovely comments and support. Glad to be of help and I'm looking forward to next week challenge as got all the cleaning stuffs etc to buy out of the budget too. Have a good week and hope you save a few quid here and there. xx

Great post but what dish are you using the cat food in? lol

Not a boring post at all, very informative in fact, will definately be using some of those ideas as we really need to cut back a lot on food shopping, thank-you for posting.

Thanks very much for this. It wasn't at all boring, its really helpful at the moment for me to see other peoples ideas as we are really struggling with food bills at the moment. When you haven't got much to spend on food its easy to end up buying the same things again and again just when you know they are cheaper.
I have now picked up a few new ideas from you.
Thanks very much x