Food for a family of 5 on £50 a week!

My last challenge of the month linked to food has been a weekly food shop costing no more than £50 for all of our meals.  If this works then it will become a regular saving that I make.

The challenge started on Wednesday 22nd February, lasting for 7 days.  The reason for starting in the middle of the week is that this is the day we receive our organic box of vegetables.  So that is our starting point and our first £14.65 spent for the week.  I will blog again on this topic later on in the week, but for now we have managed with the vegetable delivery plus buying 4 pints of milk (£1.49) and a bottle of soy sauce, essential for our vegetable fried rice dinner last night!  Tonight was pizza for the children from the freezer and home made vegetable crumble for the grown ups.  Lunches are homemade sandwiches and homemade bread for breakfast - so those meals are not too difficult.

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Sunday evening, and there is £18.00 still left in the kitty for the next two days.  Really pleased this challenge has worked and has not actually been too difficult.  I thought I would have to plan a whole week's worth of meals but actually it was fine, partly because we had stores of food - e.g. tins etc, and having our veg box as the starting point gives us a focus for the main ingredients of our meals.  I think that not eating meat also helps a lot as I imagine that is a large percentage of the weekly food shop for many.

So I plan to keep this going, but imagine it will get a bit more challenging as the weeks go by and our dry food runs out - but I've found this week very encouraging and will keep you posted.

Bye for now.

The good life...

Daisy

Bluebird and Snowy

Continuing on the theme of food this month, I thought I would blog about my aspirations to be self-sufficient!  I know this is not entirely possible, but we try our best.  What we are really lacking is a cow or goat for milk!

We are lucky that we have a long garden and so are able to have our own vegetable patch and also 5 hens.  We have had hens for a couple of years now and love it.  They are funny characters and the eggs are delicious.  We started with hybrid hens - saving 3 of them from the commercial farm nearby with 11,000 other hens - but we are now branching into rare breeds.  This is a steep learning curve: the white Leghorn hen called Snowy has been the victim of bullying by the red hens and has had to go to a friend's house for some respite with other friendly bantams!  As a result of the stress in our hen house, none of the hens have been laying, so our solution is to re-home our red hens and then expand our brood of rare breeds.  Will keep you posted!  So despite our recent hiccup, we have generally had 3 eggs a day for most of the year which means lots of eggs for breakfast, tortillas and pancakes as well as plenty of baking!

At this time of year, our veg patch looks a bit sorry for itself, but Spring seems to be creeping in now and so we will have to start planning our greenhouse crops and generally filling the beds with yummy crops to grow.  We manage with all our own veg for a couple of months over the summer, which is a start and also do well with fruit ranging from apples and pears to raspberries and grapes.  My next aim is to try and have some veg growing all year round.  I tried some winter salad this time but forgot to keep watering it!  Whoops!  It is just about surviving still.

We make our own bread - and know many people who have converted to making their own too.  It is so easy and absolutely delicious!  I used to make it from scratch and knead it etc, but a couple of years ago we moved with the times and bought a Panasonic bread maker with which we make pizza bases, rolls and regular loaves of white and brown bread.  There is something very satisfying about making your own and it saves a lot of money!

My other plans, I think will have to wait until we have a bigger garden one day.  I do have plans for keeping bees and would love a rare breed sheep or two, although I can see that for milk a goat or cow may be more sensible. We will have to see!

A week without shop bought coffee and lunch!

Since Wednesday 8th Feb, I am having a week of not buying any food.  This does not include the weekly shop but is aimed saving on buying snacks and lunch for work.  So how have I done so far?

Day 1:
Working from home today which makes things easier.  Lunch was a home-made sandwich and yoghurt from my fridge.  Later in the afternoon, I managed to stop myself buying a packet of Monster Munch crisps while buying colour hair sprays for my sons' "crazy hair day" at school.
Dinner was not so successful.  It was one of those days when my husband was eating with colleagues from work after a conference, so I should have eaten with the children.  I just really didn't fancy eating pizza and garlic bread from the freezer, so ended up asking Chris to buy me a Pot-Noodle when he came home.  Whoops!  Better luck on day 2...
Day 2:
Armed with everything to take to work today to sustain me, this was a successful day.  I bought a pint of milk from the newsagents close to my work, which I see as a necessity and a weekly ritual for me.  It means that I can then make tea and coffee in my office without having to go down to the cafe and spend loads of money on drinks!
A brie and salad sandwich, a cereal bar, a kiwi and a water bottle filled up at home kept me going until I came home for my supper.
Day 3:
Another day working from home, which meant that I could make myself another brie sandwich for my lunch and drink tea and coffee to my heart's content.  At least today, I didn't have any reason to leave the house and so there was no temptation to buy snacks!
Day 4 & 5:
The weekends I find are easier as the children are at home and we cook wholesome meals for all of us and always have fruit and a stash of kiddie snacks for the children.  The problem I find is mainly at work, either through not making my lunch at home or just generally buying snacks to keep me going.  So, I will have to watch myself next week; but generally it has gone well and is not proving too difficult.  This way I could save myself up to £15 on work lunches and snacks and generally feel healthier!
Day 6:
Half-term week starts today, so the last couple of days of this mini-experiment may be trickier.  We started this holiday relaxing at home: the boys playing with lego and my daughter pottering about.  We had lunch at home, so that part was easy but the plan for the afternoon included meeting some friends in a cafe - oh no!  Somehow, I managed not to spend any money on myself, luckily.  After our craft session with all the children, we headed to the cafe and the children all had drinks and a cookie and my lovely friend (unaware of my experiment this week) bought me a cup of tea!
Day 7: 
This has been a difficult week, I find applying the rules of only buying for necessity to food extremely hard as I enjoy food and am sociable so do spend a fair amount of time having coffee out and sometimes meals.  I found today that I had to break the rules as yet again I was meeting different friends to catch up over half-term, but I didn't buy food for myself, just a strawberry and banana smoothie.  What I have found myself doing, is that if I do have to spend money out this week on food, for myself I have gone for a healthy drink and not snacked on cookies etc but of course treated my children - so not a bad habit to get into!

To conclude, I will carry on meeting friends for coffee and lunch as it makes me happy, but buying lunch and snacks for work are not necessary, so I will be getting up earlier on those days to make a pack lunch to sustain me.

A very interesting week for me!

Valentine's day on a shoestring

My husband sometimes spends a lot of money on me to express his love which is lovely and always appreciated but the most vivid memories of how he shows that he loves me is when he makes me a card, buys me my favourite chocolate bar, or a bag of apples when I was feeling poorly!  Another way to my heart is making me one of my favourite meals that he cooks: Sayur Lemak (an Indonesian noodle dish) or fennel & courgette lasagne that he has worked really hard on and is absolutely delicious - so in other words romance can be achieved without spending much money.

This year for Valentines, I am going to cook a candle-lit meal for us both after the children are tucked up in bed.  This has been a tradition for us since having children.  Sometimes, we buy luxury ready meals but seeing as that would not be in the spirit of living on a shoestring although it is food, I will make a culinary delight this year - ha!  I hope it is a delight anyway!  Netmums website is great for food ideas and so is the BBC Good Food website.  I am also a fan of Nigella Lawson who has a knack of making meals that you would generally associate with eating out but can be achieved at home.

The menu will be:
Starter:
Potato cakes topped with smoked salmon and dill
Main course:
Tofu stir fry with vegetables
Dessert:
Vanilla apples with sweetheart croutes

All actually very easy and quick to prepare but hopefully appreciated as all home-made!

I have bought him a card and some socks as they are counted as gifts and I reckon the socks are needed so would qualify in any case!  In addition to making a romantic meal for tonight I made him ginger bread heart cookies as my home-made gift.

I will let you know if it is all a success!

Happy Valentines Day.

How to save money on food - varying lifestyles

So February is going to be the month of considering the subject of food.  What are necessities, how far do I go and how can I save on food?  Where do I start?  There is so much advice out there - in books, newspapers, t.v. documentaries etc.

One style of living that has caught my attention lately is that of the "freegans".  These are people who live for free or as close as possible to that.  This can mean free accommodation, not using electricity or any kind of power that needs to be paid for, and free food.  From what I have discovered so far, this is a movement of people rebelling against the materialistic lifestyle in the West today and make their views known by living without spending money as much as possible.

But the main part of freeganism seems to relate to obtaining food for free.  From what I understand, Freegans could buy food if they wish - these people are not homeless, but feel strongly that so much food is wasted and that one way to prove this is to live solely off food that is thrown out - especially from restaurants and supermarkets.  So perhaps I should become a freegan for a year!  I don't think I am quite ready to go that far, but I would like to be as self-sufficient as possible.  I do admire the Freegans but I can't see how it fits in with working regular hours and looking after 3 children.  I am busy enough as it is - when would I have time to scour the bins!  I imagine, this is work to be done late at night or early morning when restaurants and shops are clearing food that is out of date or simply unwanted but actually perfectly good to eat!

At the other end of the spectrum are people that get carried away with supermarket shopping and could quite easily make savings without much effort (in my opinion!)  I saw a documentary series the other week called "super scrimpers" - very apt for the times.  One family featured on the episode I saw spent £200 a week for a family of five.  We are a family of five too and spend about half of that and I think we could save more on food.  This family were set a challenge of making a whole week of main meals from £50 - they did manage it but I got the feeling, although they may continue to save on their originally spending figures, they found it hard and would be spending at least a little bit more the next week!

We have a box of organic fruit and veg every week and change the type of box depending on our needs that week.  This comes from local farms as far as possible and where that is not possible, produce is shipped from abroad - rather than flown which cuts down on the energy used to bring the food to our door.  The rest of our food mainly comes from a supermarket delivery once every two weeks and is then supplemented as we go along when needed, eg. for milk etc. We don't eat meat and we do care about where our food comes from, and so as far as possible get food in season, and buy organic and free range produce.  So I will spend the next few weeks experimenting on how we can reduce our spending on food within those parameters.  This week, I will not buy any snacks and will prepare all my meals at home - so packed lunch for tomorrow. After a special post on Valentines Day coming soon, I will have a week of making a week of main meals on £50 and keep you posted of my efforts.

Bye for now.