Did you learn nothing from the article? Don’t buy the book, use the internet for free receipies and the money you save by not buying the book will feed your family for a day or more!

Going to the mothers today with a sad face and a bag of washing. Cost for Saturday stew, Sunday roast and clean jox for the week…………. answer: hang 2 curtain poles and be told to meet a nice mot!

Encourage your kids to eat loads when visiting or sleeping over at other peoples houses. :)

We’ve been saying this for years too. I would add though, from my experience, local green grocers/butchers are just as competitive as Tesco, if not better.

Hmmmn..getting peckish. Now where is the caviar and champagne?

Very good. I’ll buy that book.

I hear ya on being wrecked after work and not feeling up to much ( I’ve three kids and a husband ) but I reckon the key is double portions so if I’m making say, lasagne or chilli I make twice the amount and freeze one half. We also got an allotment recently and while there was an initial outlay on seeds, raised beds etc it’s now giving us a great return. We go up with the kids bring a few buckets and spades for em and a beer or two for ourselves…it’s very chilled and a great thing to do with the god forbids! I’d love to know how anyone does shopping for a family five on 100€? Formula and nappies cost me 30 bucks alone a week!

One recession tip is definitely grow your own fresh herbs and just snip as you need because they end up being very costly especially when you might not get to use a whole pack. I grew parsley, chives and basil on my window sill and they have given me a constant supply this year. Out in the garden I have chocolate mint and ginger mint , lemon thyme and common thyme, rosemary, dill and fennel, the hardier stuff, plus I was growing sald leaves until the weather wrecked them, but thy were saving me packets before that, I would spend a lot of money on bags of salad. Also buy frozen veg like peas cauliflower and broccoli, they taste grand, last longer and you will end up using every bit of them. and freeze bags of fresh spinach. The latter so easy to use then, straight from freezer, crush the leaves and then open the bag an sprinkle straight into a sauce to enrich it. I always mix it in with black eye beans and homemade tomato garlic sauce, yum!

Muffins and chocolate chips for breakfast? Cabbage soup for lunch? No thanks.. My tip, shop in the German supermarkets.. 25 – 30 % cheaper…

If you have a garden, grow your own vegetables, great pastime, and taste much better than industrially produced

Honestly €140 a week grocery bill for a family of 4 is a lot. My budget is €100 for a family of 5, which includes a baby in nappies, our bin tags & misc items that come up during the week.
Meal planning is essential
Use cuts of meat that can be reused over more than 1 meal for example a whole chicken.
Eat less meat. We need far less protein than society would lead us to believe.
Grow your own fruit & veg.
Reduce your portion size.
Make your own treats.
Do a regular store cupboard stocktake.
Buy fresh ingredients locally.
Visit the yellow stickers in the discount aisles. Freeze or cook food that is on its last date.
Barter your services.
Sell your home grown surplus at the local farmers market.
Always eat a full meal before going shopping.
Never shop when tired or stressed.
Set a budget, stick to it by withdrawing your available cash outside the store then only using cash to buy purchases.
Bring your own shopping bags!
I’m on the phone so will post a recipe later. I’ve masses of them!

Home economics should be a mandatory subject at school . Alot of people simply do not know how to cook so go for expensive ready meals or takeaway .

Sounds good. Better to grow your own vegetables.

This article has been especially sponsored by Ulster Bank….for all those customers who didn’t get this weeks wages :)

I spend over 30 quid per week on milk alone for my family of 5, maybe it’s time I bought a cow.

Very much a chicken and egg diet, with some fries in between….Need to budget for doctors bills too!

Good book by the sounds of it. I wonder will Adam Clayton’s housekeeper release her version of how to live on the cheap ?

Chinese food is extremely economical, quick and healthy. You need to visit a Chinese supermarket though for cheap rice, noodles, spices and sauces. After that it’s fresh Irish vegetables, fish and meat all the way.

I like to keep a good stock of tinned tomatoes in my kitchen as well as a good array of herbs and spices (which you can gather relatively inexpensive by pickin one or two up with your shopping each week). This allows me to jazz up any leftovers very cheaply. Also on the last few days before I do a big shop, I’ll try to make a simple stir fry or pasta dish out of any spare veg I’ve left over. It cuts down on any waste and it’s a healthier and cheaper alternative than getting a take away when there’s “nothing” in the fridge! :)

Three-day chicken – day 1 roast chicken; day 2 make chicken stock (bones, 2 onions, 3 carrots, 1 bay leaf (bay plant costs €3 in Avoca), snips of various herbs, 3/4 fill pot with water, simmer for 2 hours) – make lentil soup (chopped peeled onions, carrots, celery handful of lentils, bay leaf all simmered in butter, dose in a load of stock, cook till carrots are soft, add big handful of chopped parsley & cook 5 minutes more, take out bay leaf & then whizz or eat with veggies whole); day 3 risotto (simmer chopped onion, celery, courgette in olive oil while separately thawing frozen shellfish mix by cooking in butter; add handful of arborio or carnarolli rice to veggie mix and fry till covered and glossy; add hot chicken stock and stir; stir every now and again, keeping adding in more chicken stock until rice is soft, not chewy; now add liquor from shellfish mix and cook till risotto is the texture you like – soupy or more solid; last, add cooked shellfish and stir in, sprinkle with chopped parsley and serve.

Buy mince beef. Make large pot basic mince , onions , garlic , two tins tomatoes and a squirt of tomatoe puree. Monday : one third serve with pasta . Tuesday use a second third : add chili powder and some dried kidney beans you soaked overnight. Serve with rice =chili con Carne: Wednesday. Add frozen peas and Orr fresh carrots and brown with bisto or similar. Make a pot of mashed spuds. Layer up to make a shepherds pie. Three days of different mince dinner all from the same basic sauce. Cheap and healthy.

Always do your list, plan your meals and do your shop a week in advance.

The best money saving tip is learn how to make meals from scratch.

Buy cheap cuts like chicken thighs, actually the most flavoursome part of the bird.

But a gammon or a fillet of ham and use this for the sandwiches, much nicer and far cheaper than the packets.

Learn how to make a good tomato based sauce and with dried pasta you can feed four people for less than ?2.

Tesco/Aldi/Lidl are okay, but hit the Asia Market or similar asian supermarkets and places like factory shops for meat first.

But mostly, learn to cook stuff from scratch. Everything else follows on from there. And the number of kids who graduate from secondary school without even being able to cook a bowl of ramen noodles or make a bowl of porridge properly is ridiculous.

The meals sound lovely. Might be buying that book.

I am with you Caitriona … €140 for food for a family of four does seem high. We stick to €80 per week for a family of six (and sometimes seven if Mum stays for dinner). The key is growing and rearing as much of your own food as possible. While I think those menu ideas are great and seem well thought out, they do not seem to factor in leftovers a t all which means there is a lot of waste going on …

When buying fresh ginger – peel it and then wrap in tinfoil and freeze. You cannthen grate it really easily into any dish. You can also freeze yr fresh herbs in a little water in an ice cube tray – really handy and they keep their flavour. nnI also spend a few hours on a Saturday about once a month and cook up large pot of chilli and a load of soups. I freeze them in portions so they r there for Friday nights and lunches. A bag of oven chips in the freezer too – they’re much cheaper than takeaways and go great with yr chilli. nBulk up meals like bolognese and curries with cheap healthy veggies like celery and carrots and use beans and pulses instead of meat sometimes – much cheaper and v healthy.

By the way, if you’re sowing beans and have a mouse problem, soak them in diesel for a couple of days before you put them in the ground. (The beans, not the mice.)

Buy your meat in bulk from a farmer, I buy half a lamb once in a while.

I was told by a doctor that some people say they eat a lot of meat and actually only eat meat twice or three times a week. Just note, that’s not a lot of meat, that’s practically vegetarianism.

i look through the special offer leaflets for the shops around me, plan my menus for the week, and write a detailed list of what i want…then i send my partner in to do the shopping, as i tend to see things i want as opposed to need..also i never ever buy frozen chips…a 10 kg bag of spuds is about 5 euros…you can make roasties, fried and baked chips
We tend to plan suppers that will last 2 or 3 nights and can be frozen
with 2 kids in nappies and still have a bottle of formula a night my weekly bill comes in at arund 75-90 euros a week

One thing I’ve found here locally (in Canada, not sure if it’s the same in Ireland), so to avoid buying meats and produce at the major chain retail grocery stores unless they’re on a very good sale price. Instead, try to find local produce or meat/butcher shops, often you’ll noticed a price difference as they don’t have as high of an operating cost (smaller store, less staff, no “shareholders” hunger to continuously feed profits to, etc, etc).

I find that I can get the same amount for 50-65% of what I’d pay for the same products buying them at the brand name grocers.

Once you find the spots where you can shop for your essentials at a more cost effective price, then you can sit back, and “cherry pick” through the other retailers to see where you get the best deals on weekly sales for other items that you need.

Between that, and being observant of what you buy, how much it costs, is there other non-sale items that might actually be a better buy than the enticing “sale” price hovering in front of you (for instance, a store here had Cherios 525g on sale for 4.99$ CDN. where if you looked 20 feet down the isle, they had the 1kg package for 7.99$. You get twice as much for only 3$.

That and having some semblance of self control for impulse buying. It’s ok to get that piece of cake, or such on occasion, just have some discretion so that you’re not buying twice as much as what you actually needed. That and leave the young kids at home, I’ve learned that one first hand and rarely do I take my 4 year old son grocery shopping with me. If you don’t have the wee little tykes constantly barraging you with “I want this!”, or “I want that!”, you wind up shaving off a lot of that impulse buying in addition to what you do yourself.

Cheap and delicious…
Sausages wit stir fried garlic and pasta wit a can of chopped tomatoes.
Stir fried liver with onions, chilli beans and rice.

Yeah no bother after 7 or 8 pm from work on my last legs with 2 children screaming would love to spend my last evening hours cultivating own veg in an invisible garden which I don’t have :-) Reality? Takeway or something frozen in microwave most often…however we try to cook whenever possible.

Very meat based menus – some fish at least twice a week would bring more variety there !

Suggests lots of fried unhealthy foods,does cheap equate to unhealthy foods?i don’t think it has to..

If someone needs advise on how to keep a budget while shopping for groceries then it’s my opinion that they’ve already lost the game of living!

There’s a more straightforward way, stop eating meat!