Food & Dining Grocery Shopping

Whoo, very pricey pasta.

Hopefully the research being undertaken into hookworms for the control of Celiac disease and gluten intolerance bears fruit.

Doesn't help your situation at the moment though.

 

My other issue is my wife feels cheated by the hand she has been dealt with regards to food. Gluten and Dairy intolerant plus she wanted to be Vegetarian but eventually thankfully settled on Pescatarian.

So she obviously has a very different outlook than me with regards to saving money on food. It’s pretty hard for me who literally can eat anything to say to her “No you eat the $2.50 gluten free pasta that tastes like cardboard”.
And I know the response to that is don’t eat pasta but what do you do when you love it.

 

It does suck but I guess you use the $9 pasta just for her and it should be doable once a week in a budget.

The meal planning will certainly help and if you put up a goal of saving $1000 towards a holiday then I think you could achieve that in 3mths. It will also save on food wastage as you don't buy stuff and then at the end of the week realise it's not so good anymore.

So your week might look something like

Sunday: vegetarian curry (coconut cream based or not) and rice *grilled chicken on the side for you if you like
Monday: left over veg curry for lunch. Dinner Pad Thai with prawns and veggies
Tuesday: left over Pad Thai for lunch. Dinner grilled fish and salad
Wednesday: buy lunch at work. Dinner pasta - vegetarian or pescetarian for wifey, bolognaise for you (make up 2kg and freeze into single serve portions)
Thursday: left over pasta for lunch. Dinner mexican - burrito bowls with grilled fish
Friday: left overs or by lunch. Buy dinner/take away
Saturday: cook a 1-2 meals in a large quantity like chili con carne, bolognaise, soup to help on nights you don't feel like cooking and if you want something red meat with a veg meal.

 

A $9 packet of pasta each week is not going to make any difference to your costs. I would let her enjoy it, but as suggested , add more beans and rice rather than having several packs of pasta per week. Can she eat rice?

 

We spend no more then $150 a week on groceries, 2 people, 2 dogs. Online ordering is the key so you don't get temped to buy **** you don't need. I eat cheap, Chicken thigh, beans, pasta. Meal prepping helps too

 

We have gone to aldi and love it. We must be saving 100 pw!
Less aisles, less product choice, less crap!
I think we are doing approx 150-200 pw 2 A, 4 k

I've recently started dabbling in more vegan meals and cooked up 9.8 litres of vegan dahl
More rice and beans. Quick go to meal is brown rice and a tin of beans and soy sauce. More about filing up, than a tastey meal every time.
Its a great cheap lunch too with less bread.

 

Wow. This brings things into perspective! Good thread by the way. I only buy for myself & would spend $350-$400 a week. My partner would be $200+ So around $500-$600 a week easy not including takeaway, Grilled or Gomez would be a $30-40 hit for us both.

However We eat well & clean majority of the time. No dairy, all almond/coconut milk for example at $3/1L (1 every day) oats, 500g blueberries every day, salmon, prawns, scallops, sweet potato, greens, all bottled water etc, all adds up when you consider each is just about $40 a week per item - the bread I buy is $8 a loaf alone.

Might look at how I can reign this back now.

 

If you’ve got allergies, I can understand being dairy free, but why all bottled water?

 

I needed this post for some sanity! Haha
Yeah the alternatives are a real killer.
Most products are a minimum 3 times the cost.

Normal Milk $1, Almond Milk $3
Normal bread 1-2$, GF Bread $7
Normal Pasta 1-2$, Good GF pasta $7-9
Normal Cheese $3, Lactose Free $6

And so on and so on.
When you consider these costs for weekly staple foods then your looking at a minimum $100 increase on your weekly shop.

The one hope I do have is how much more common this is becoming and the now increasing competition which will naturally begin to drive down prices.
Now when we go our local supermarket GF bread has an entire half a rack with about 10 different brands. The funny thing is so many times I have been and it’s all sold out.

I have also noticed Almond Milk coffee becoming common place. When my wife started to switch it was very hard to get an almond milk coffee unless you were in Brunswick or Fitzroy. Now days you could literally go a truck stop cafe in a factory area and they would have almond milk.

 

After thinking about it, I mean I could shave $$ off but health and well being is very important to me so I really don’t mind spending on a good clean diet

Doesn’t help eating 5-6x a day either.

Joynz bottled water is mostly due to my job, I spend a lot of time on the road in the car and drink mostly Soda water at around 4-5L a day. $0.85 per bottle about $4 a day in water.

 

The other point and this is in NO WAY having a go at anyone but different people simply have a different outlook on what “clean eating” is.

I have spoken to so many people who tell me they have a good healthy diet but when I probe it’s actually not what I would consider to be the case.

They eat a lot of white rice, non Greek yoghurts, “fat free” snacks, large 3 meals .etc
It’s not that it’s a bad diet, it’s better than a lot of others but it isn’t my definition of healthy eating.

Just like my diet isn’t compared to some of my other friends who are ripped and sitting at 9% body fat.

 

Absolutely correct. Sorry I should’ve clarified as well, I wasn’t meaning others are bad either. I see nothing wrong with most foods, it all comes down to energy output. All the science is overwhelmingly points to calorie in vs calorie out, from a body composition point of view only, if your body requires 2500cal, and you give it 2800 (whatever the food, could be 5x Big Macs a day or the healthiest of foods) you will put on weight. And vice versa being in a deficit, I’ve done this experiment on myself for 15yrs haha

I just find I can fit a lot more food in & feel a lot better/clear headed eating as clean as possible mon-Friday - Then on weekends i have what ever I want. And depends on your goals & lifestyle as well of course, I fight so have to keep my weight under control and not be lathergic or I get my head smacked in haha

 

Your diet sounds amazing - would you care to adopt a 44yo child?

With the soda water you should probably invest in a Sodastream. I love soda water but even the Coles brand is like 75c and even though the bottles go in the recycling bin it seems they might be being recycled. So the sodastream is like $100 and then buy some extra bottles so you save some money and the environment.

 

I have a soda stream and love it but I’m not sure it saved any money given the cost of soda water in the supermarket versus the cost of the gas bottles?
Definitely better for the environment though

 

It’s a great idea actually. I’ll certainly look into it, it’s just me being lazy by buying bottles.

I’ve been feeding the neighbours kids all my bottles to recycle for fundraising, they collect from the entire street - I’m told they dumped 3000 bottles last week @ 0.10c each. $300 for a 12yr old is pretty good haha