Can we talk about groceries please

Buying/cooking for one person is almost impossible in the U.S.  I'm not sure if it's much easier in the U.K., but here, there's just such an emphasis on bulk- and value- and family-sized everything in the supermarkets, that if you're trying to buy smaller quantities, it gets expensive.  And waste is definitely a problem as well.   I probably spend $50-70/wk at the grocery store, and I still end up getting take away at least once a week because cooking for just one person is so difficult for me.

I definitely had the same problem in the US, too.  I had a budget of $35-$40/week on food when I was living there, and would usually end up about $5 over because, in addition to having to buy bigger quantities, I tend to like expensive cheese and foods that I shouldn't buy. 

Often things would go off because I just couldn't eat it fast enough.  I tried to buy less to prevent that, but then I'd wind up having to go to the supermarket mid-week and top up, which ultimately caused me to spend more money per week than if I just stuck to the original method.  I basically just gave up and accepted the fact that some of my food just wasn't going to get finished.

Here I was doing about £15-£20/week for myself, and sometimes about £5 over, before I moved in with BF.  Still had a problem with some food going off, but I had 2 flatmates to help stop that when possible.  The tiny freezer didn't help my cause. 

 For the 2 of us and the kiddo (who is here full-time) we can be anywhere from £30-£50 depending on the week.  We generally try not to go over £40 unless we have to get detergent or cleaner or dog food.

Now you're making me want a salad--autumn style!  Celery would be good in the salad you described, too!

Ooh! Good call! 

Wow. I spend probably $80-$100/wk for just me here in the US. I did find groceries were SO much cheaper over there, though. I'm not a huge planner, but I will plan every other day and leftovers from dinner become lunch the next day. My problem is I can't finish stuff (mainly fresh stuff) before it goes bad. Even salad will go bad after 2 days before I finish it, so I feel like I spend more just to have fresh food. I never go out to eat either. I cook everything here at home (including daily coffee! Not one of the Starbucks folks.)

As a single person living with roommates who almost never cooked I purchased a CSA share in my neighborhood for two summers.  The share was meant for 2-3 people and even as a vegetarian, sometimes I struggled to finish it but by the end of the first summer, I was doing pretty well.  It's a great way to bulk up by a lot the fresh fruit and veggies in your diet and to increase the variety of them.  Not to mention the benefits of local, organic, very very fresh produce.  That being said, I learned A LOT of tricks to get fresh food to last in the fridge.  One of the best things I found was these:

They worked particularly well for leafy greens, keeping them fresh for well over a week, often longer for the heartier greens like kale and chard. 

I haven't had time to reply, so forgive me. I really was wondering about people with kids, taking in things like diapers, juice etc...

But anyway, I do menu planning, I have a repetoire that I follow, and I do peruse the internet and make an organised list, but even when I do that, its a £75-90 shop. I don't shop at the greengrocers too much, because everything seems to go bad so quickly! I do shop at my local organic co-op for some things...but I can't seem to get away with spending mucho dinero!

When I was in the UK it was rare for me to get away with less than £75 a week, Racheeee. I cooked most stuff from scratch and we didn't buy tons of junk. There were a few things we had to have like high-end coffee and a decent hunk of cheddar but we kept the luxuries to a minimum. The problem for me, though, was I refused to buy the really cheap stuff - like frozen mince - bleurgh, or the cheapest quiches (one of the few convenience foods we'd buy).

I don't know. It's always been a mystery to me how some people spend so little. I know there's an old post on here from Mindy where she outlined exactly what she bought and what they ate. At the time she was feeding a family of 5 on significantly less than I was feeding a family of 3 (and that was when Sammy was very little IIRC). I still couldn't figure out how she did it!

Wow! I am feeling like a big spender.  I have a family of 5 (two teens) and I spend £100-120 per week at the grocery store - mostly Tesco and Waitrose because I don't have a car, so must carry it home.  We also have a small fridge (like an RV almost!  How do you cook for a crowd?), so I shop at least every other day.  I do love to cook - pastas, stews, meatloaf, soups, omelets, etc., but we eat out about once per week.  You all are inspiring me to look closer at my spending habits.

I usually shop at Morrison's. I've had the same issue with produce going bad, so I try not to buy anything in packages. Instead I pick out single items - 2 oranges, 4 mushrooms, 2 green peppers, 2 potatoes, 1 aubergine, etc. In the long run, I think it's cheaper than buying a discount bag of something, if you're going to throw away half the bag before you finish it.  For leafy greens I might buy a small amount of pak choi or chicory. There's no point in buying a large, full head of cabbage or lettuce.  

I tried buying the marked down things in M&S. One day I was in there, and there were tomatoes on sale that were visibly mouldy. The following week, I bought some mincemeat, and when I opened it - two days before the use by date - it smelled and was changing colour. Still later, someone mentioned in a conversation that all of the M&S deals consists of old stuff that they want to get rid of.  Since their items that aren't marked down are too expensive for me, I won't be shopping there.

There's a small Co-Op store by our house, so I regularly pop in there later in the evening to see what's been marked down. I got two punnets of strawberries and a big bunch of bananas for a pound and froze them to make smoothies with, which I am enjoying as we speak.  I buy a lot of yellow tag items and just freeze them as soon as I get home and it's never been a problem. Also, it definitely helps to try to make things from scratch. I mean, yesterday I bought a bag of popcorn kernels at Sainsburys for 51p, which will make ten big bowls of popcorn, which is much cheaper than buying bags of ready-to-eat popcorn or microwave popcorn, and it takes no time at all to pop it on the hob. Also, I try a lot of store brand stuff to see if it's any good. Sometimes you find it really isn't much different. I try not to be seduced by special deals, as yesterday at Sainsburys, you could get 2 tubs of Philadelphia cream cheese for £2, but the Sainsbury's own brand was only 80p for each tub, so I got one of those instead of the two on offer. I'll try it and see if it's just as good. If it is, then I will just get that from now on instead of the Philly brand. I do the same with crisps and things. Often the store brand crisps are nearly as good as Walker's for half the price. If I go in for a BOGOF, I always check the expiry date or whether I can freeze the second amount to see if it's worth it.

I've been quite interested in this thread and have a couple of quick questions. 

Do you make lunches and baby food at home or do you buy out or bottles?

In terms of nappies, do you get the name brand ones or the store brand ones? I've read a lot of reviews online in prep for nappy buying and have heard good things about sainsbury's and boots.

Thanks!

Boots runs some really good offers on nappies. They just ended 2 for £14 on the large packs of Pampers Baby-Dry nappies which is the brand we buy, it seemed like it was on offer for a couple of months. Right now Morrisons has the same offer going. Because we're into the larger 5+ size we're limited as to where we can find them and they don't come in the large boxes.

When we were in the smaller sizes we bought the Jumbo & Mega boxes at ASDA & Stocked up when they had their baby events as you could get 2 of those for £15 and that was over 200 nappies.

We tried store brands and found that they just didn't keep DD dry so we had a voucher for a free pack of Pampers and found that they worked for us. So we've stuck with them. Plus I joined their baby club they sent us money of vouchers every couple of months and joining the Boots Parents club also saves you money and you can earn points and I use them to get free baby items that we need when money is tight.

As far as baby food we just made our own and took it with us. I would buy fresh veg, cook it up and puree it, if we were going to have stews or soups I would not season them until I pulled off a couple portions for DD to puree and then freeze for later use. I found some very small tupperware containers that work perfectly. We only purchased baby food in jars when we travelled.

There are lots of ways to save money...I think DH & I perfected the 'baby on a budget' and the only thing we ever purchased new was her pushchair and I still managed to get over £50 off the listed price!

Boots runs some really good offers on nappies. They just ended 2 for £14 on the large packs of Pampers Baby-Dry nappies which is the brand we buy, it seemed like it was on offer for a couple of months.

Yeah, the Boots offers run on 4-week 'periods', but sometimes they will carry over to the next period or two... so the minimum time the offer will run for is 4 weeks, but it could end up staying on for 2 or 3 months .

I feel your pain Racheeee.  With a family of 5, my weekly spend is about 120/week.  Some weeks are much more than that.  I try to get all the housekeeping things (tp, cleaning products, nappies etc) just once a month, so my biggest shop is the first week I get paid.  I've recently started using Tesco nappies, they work as well as Pampers for us, and cost much less.  I spend an absolute fortune on fresh fruit and veg, I buy good coffee as even though more expensive than the cheap brands, it's so much cheaper than going to SB's or the like and it's one of my last vices.  Things like that are non negotialble for me, which doesn't help, but what are you going to do?  I do buy things like cheese in bulk when they are on special, go with a list to make meals for a week, but I just can't see less than £100/week despite only eating meat a couple times a week.

Wow! I am feeling like a big spender.

Me too!     We only have one kid, and for the three of us we're spending about £100 a week from Ocado, and on top of that we usually have to nick down to the corner store for juice or milk once or twice a week. But I thought we were doing pretty well--I plan out all of our meals, little is wasted, etc.

Regarding kid stuff: my daughter's older, so we don't need to buy diapers, but she does have a high demand for yogurt, string cheese, and so on that gets packed in her lunch. Those little convenience fun foods really add up. Plus we buy a lot of good meat and wine, so there's that, too.

Oh well. Maybe I should start finding a way to cut down the grocery bill!

I didn't factor in diapers into the grocery budget since I tend to get those at Boots (on the 2-for deals that others have previously mentioned)

One thing I have learned to do is look for the marked-down items, especially if it's for something I'm going to be cooking that day. In the past I've gotten fresh veggies for side dishes and stews for around 40p. And they're perfect good as long as I'm not planning on keeping it around too long. Store brands here are much better than in the States (at least I think so) so I buy just about everything "generic."

We also have the complication of no car + small fridge, so we tend to shop more often during the week, instead of the one big bi-weekly shop we used to in the States, but even at that it's only about £10 per trip.

We're a family of four, with a baby that's got hollow limbs too.  I spend between £30-60 per week.  It just depends on what we're needing, as we've got two bambino's in nappies etc.  I make all dinners and we hardly eat out.  I've been knocking down cost by buying store's own brand, and and only buying fruit and veg that's on offer, and making meals around them.  I don't really plan out meals, unless there's something in particular that I'm wanting to make.  Also, I tend to buy en masse if something I know that kiddies / DH will eat and freeze for later (or if something's on offer).  That helps to cut down on our meat costs, as I just pull it out of the freezer as and when. 

Just to note, we only have a small fridge / freezer, which seems to be too small for our growing family.  The freezer has four segments which I've designated to different items:  top segment to pizza / tortillas & bread, second segment to frozen veg and chips, third segment to meat and meat products and bottom segment (I took the drawer out to fit more food), for ice cream / desserts and any surplus from above (which mainly seems to be baby meals that I've made & frozen).  Because of my frozen veg drawer I tend to buy big bags of peas / sweetcorn instead of buying tins and just reheating what I need if a recipe requires it.  Much cheaper to buy a 99p 1kg bag of corn, instead of 40p for a 350g tin.   

However, one thing that can increase our bill is that I tend to stock up on home essentials when they're on offer (which annoys DH, but works in my favour).  So, if I know I'm going to run out of laundry detergent or washing up liquid in a week or two (sometimes longer), and it's on a good offer - I'll buy it now...  I know it ups our bill for the week, but evens itself out in the long run.

I tend to rotate my shops between Sainsbury's, Tesco's & Aldi (they're right next to each other by us) or Morrison's depending on key products and offers.