What I've been doing lately

My partner and I are incredibly fortunate and I'm always aware of (and grateful for) this good fortune.  Despite moving to Britain at the very tipping point of the economic crisis, we've not really been hit terribly hard by things. However, we've noticed lately that the household budget has begun to feel a bit strained. We took at look at it (and it's a terrifyingly well organised system of excel spreadsheets and different accounts - thank goodness one of us is good with money. It's not me, by the way) and realised that I had been wildly over-spending on food. Partly this is because food prices have gone up a large amount, but I think it was more that I had let the amount I was meant to spend gradually creep up. The budget might be £70 a week, but one week it ends up being £75, then £78 and then suddenly you've normalised the idea that what you actually spend is £80 and that's ok.

So I decided that I could do a lot better than this. £60 was what the actual budget was meant to be (so when I was spending upwards of £80 each week, that's a lot), and £60 a week is still miles above average in Britain. I figured that since I'm fairly competent in the ktichen, I should be able to feed us on a lot less. So I've set myself the target of spending less than £50 a week on groceries. Technically this is only £10 less than what the budget originally specified, but in reality, it's closer to £30-40 less than what I was actually spending.

It's not actually hard, but it does involve quite a bit more organisation on my part. My self-imposed rules are:
 - groceries have to be ordered online once a week in time for when last week's run out (this is about things like milk and yoghurts which are eaten daily and need to be topped up)
 - I should try to keep it as low as possible, without being unreasonable (because an extra trip to the shops to buy what I forgot/left out-and-actually-needed - is false economy)
 - I need to use what is in the freezer/cupboards already

The last one is quite a bit point actually. I've been doing regular freezer inventories lately because I'm prone to buying things on special or going and buying extras for dinner one night instead of what was planned and buying pasta/rice etc every week whether I need it or not. I think it's some kind of armageddon mentality - come the apocalypse, I need to know that we could survive on tinned tomatoes, pasta and dried lentils for weeks. And we could. (I come by this very honestly...my grandma and mother are both total kitchen hoarders. Grandma's freezer could easily provide for a family of four for about 6 months I would think). So I'm trying to make sure that we really do use things I've frozen (having a list of what's actually in the freezer helps with this a lot), and am making sure that I only buy what we need (or if something is running low, topping up only one thing a week - flour this week, pasta next. Same with cleaning supplies).

I'm not sure whether it will last - but I'd like it to. I'm still cooking good food, no one is going hungry and it hopefully eases money for other things. It's not that we couldn't afford to spend £80 a week on groceries if we really wanted to, but I don't think we really need to. It's wasteful and I don't want to be a wasteful person. Plus it's forcing me to be a bit more creative about how I cook and shop, so that can only be a good thing! Budget recipes plus ideas for vege dishes even meat eaters will like, welcome!

This week's "menu" (total grocery spend £45)
	Dinner	From freezer	From Cupboard	To buy
Sunday	Tomato soup and cheesy herb bread	Cheese, frozen herbs from summer	Tinned tomatoes, flour
Monday	Mystery pie night (ie. Leftovers in pastry)	Half portion of h/m pastry, small portion of cooked lamb mixed with leftover roast vege from last week, small portion of cooked BBQ pork
Tuesday (grocery day)	Szchehuan pork mince with beans	chillis, frozen beans	Jasmine rice, szchehuan peppers	Pork mince
Wednesday	Fish curry w h/m parathas	frozen beans/corn/spinach	coconut milk, curry paste	frozen fish
Thursday	Mac and cheese night	frozen cheddar	flour, milk etc	pasta shapes
Friday	H/M burgers		flour for rolls	beef mince
Saturday	OUT
Sunday	Potato and rosemary soup with foccacia	chicken carcass for stock	flour for foccacia, rosemary from garden
Leftovers/Carried over from this week:	Ideas?
250g pork mince	2x meatballs - 1 swedish and 1 for pasta sauce
250g beef mince
3 pieces of frozen white fish	Fish pie? Another curry?
Lunches
Soup and leftovers for J
Sandwiches from cooked/frozen chicken for A
Yoghurts/fruit etc
H/m chocolate caramel cookies
h/m banana muffins