Budgeting and food shopping

Apart from my posts on family issues my most clicked on posts are about budgeting. They are also the ones I get asked about the most.
http://itsthelittlethingss.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/how-we-made-ends-meet.htmlhttp://itsthelittlethingss.blogspot.com.au/2012/07/changes-we-made.html
Since making big changes it has been nice to relax a little more now but I'm still budget conscious. I don't when or if I will be able to get back to work so I'm very aware that we are on a fixed income.
One of the easiest things in a budget to cut is food shopping. Several friends have asked me how I cut back so much and even now I'm surprised. I wish I had one of my receipts to make it easier.
For budgeting I did all my shopping in one place. No going to the butcher or the markets etc. Have one amount in mind and spend it all in one place. It stops you spending a little bit more here or there and it means you aren't guessing how much you are spending.
For 2 adults and 2 kids I spent around $150 a fortnight on food. Nappies for Miss L weren't included but pull ups were and formula wasn't needed.
With the $150 I had to make sure J and A had fruit for school/kindy. I started buying the 1kg pre packaged apples. The little Fuji or granny smith apples are much smaller so better suited to kids. It meant less waste and also a good size to take to school.
I bought lunchbox or juicer bananas. They are smaller and often prepackaged but I found them to be sweeter. The kids still love those now and they are a few dollars cheaper.
Everything I could switch to home brand I did. I used a lot less Glad Wrap by putting lunches directly into lunch boxes or reusable bags. Little things like this really start to add up.

For meats I bought the 3 star mince and if I wanted a stir fry I bought the steak and chopped it up instead of buying the premade mix. We tend to eat a lot of chicken so I bought it from the deli as it is always cheaper there. I didn't buy in bulk as that means you have less for everything else.

For kids snacks this was the biggest change. Muesli bars and premade snacks were our biggest expense. I started making everything from scratch. We were lucky that last year we bought a Thermomix so I had a great help at making things quickly and easily. My favourite was the $5 biscuit recipe:

500g butter or margarine

1 tin condensed milk

1 cup sugar

5 cups self-raising flour

Cream sugar and butter. Add tin of condensed milk and flour. Roll into teaspoon sized balls and flatten then place on greased trays and bake at 180 degrees C until golden brown (approximately 10-15 minutes).

This mix makes over 100 biscuits and has been floating around the net for a while. I make it in one batch and then separate it into sausage roll shapes and freeze it in batches. That means I can pull out one lot of dough and make about 20 biscuits in fresh batches. They also freeze well after cooking. Some of our variations include:
cinnamon and sugar topping
choc chip
peanut butter
jam drops

It is a really nice flavour on it's own too :)

 

            A large glass bowl holds the wet mixture.         Half of the mixture in rolls to freeze.

Choc chips, butterfly shapes and sprinkles where done this time.

 

So when I could I started from scratch and made the kids snacks. Not just biscuits but I switched to using dried fruits and fresh vegetables as their snacks. Cut up celery and carrot in the fridge and use that for lunchboxes. No more Le Snacks or Tiny Teddies. As we go through a lot of bread here with toast and sandwiches we switched to the $1 loaves from Coles. We also switched to the cheaper milk and used that a lot less than we used to.....

 

So for the fortnight I used to try and get an idea of what meals I would cook. The less ingredients the cheaper. I was never the type to meal plan so I would buy the basics and see how it went. Most fortnights we had:

1. home made pizza
2. spaghetti
3. home made hamburgers
4. lasagna
5. risotto
6. sausages and veges
7. pasta and stir through sauce
8. chicken parmigiana
9. pasta salad
10. home made sausage rolls and veges
11. rissoles
12. chicken enchiladas
13. quiche

Just to name a few. If you Google budget recipes there are quiet a few out there. The more basic they are and the fewer the ingredients the cheaper the cost. Also a lot of basic recipes mean you can have left overs for another meal which saves cooking.

 

One of the things I learnt over that time is buying in bulk or buying mulitples doesn't save you as for that week you have less money to spend on other things. Buy for what you need. Empty the pantry first. Literally every fortnight my fridge and freezer would be almsot bare when I was due to go shopping. In the pantry I used every tin in there and made up meals to make the most of them.

 

Although I hated budgeting to the last cent it instilled in me the real value of money and being able to buy what you need. We came close quite a few times to not having enough to buy food etc and I feel for families that do this juggle every pay....