Weekly Menu Plan – Trying To Save Some Money!

We are going on holiday soon and have made the decision to book everything separately and go self catering. It has made the cost of the holiday cheaper, but we will need lots of spending money. We normally go all inclusive, so don’t usually need much spare cash. Consequently we are avidly saving money at the moment. One of our biggest out-goings as a family of six is food! So no more takeaways for the foreseeable future 🙂

Has anyone noticed that the cost of food is increasing massively? Also the cost of petrol is increasing at a fast rate of knots too! I’ve previously written a post on how to save money whilst doing your grocery shop 

14 frugal ways to reduce your weekly grocery bill .

The first recommendation being that you can help to reduce your weekly shop by making a seven day meal plan. I actually wrote this post in March, however I admit to being rubbish at sticking to it!

To be perfectly honest, I haven’t stuck to it whatsoever! The children are all back at school now after half term, so I haven’t any excuse not to get started. I have been mainly doing our food shopping at Lidl, as the local Co op closed a while ago. Lidl is much cheaper than the Co op anyway, but somehow isn’t very inspiring. I don’t find myself being tempted to try new things or be creative when I’m In Lidl, consequently our diet has been quite – dare I say it – boring?!

Our weekly menu usually consists of chicken curry, spaghetti bolognese,  pasta, pizza and chicken burgers. With a few variations along the way. Lunch is packed lunch for the kids and whatever I can rustle up out of the fridge for myself.

As a family we eat far too much meat, so I would like to add a couple of veggie meals into the week. We don’t eat much fish either, this is due to one of my children being severely allergic to fish, he is also severely allergic to nuts too. I’m aiming to include fish into the weekly plan, but substituting it for chicken for my son.

I can’t decide whether to continue using Lidl every couple of days for food, sticking to the plan I’m going to create or do a seven day online shop at one of the bigger supermarkets.
What do you think?

As I want my meal plan to be both healthy and fairly cheap I’m going to buy the new book Eat Well For Less, which is an off-shoot from the recent BBC programme. I’m also going to buy a white board to write my plan on. (links below – if interested :))

I want to try and include as many vegetables as possible. I love vegetables, but the rest of the family is not so keen! We have a fab market in our town on Wednesdays, so will try and stock up on fruit and veg there. It’s a shame I didn’t get on with my plan of growing strawberries this year. It’s a bit late now as strawberry season is upon us!

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