food shopping

We rarely go out to eat as we both love to cook, but we do spend a fair bit! I do a weekly list now as to start with we just bought what we fancied and wasted loads. We are obsessed with nice meat but try and get it from the discount section if possible! We eat a lot of beef fillet from there :-) we shop at tesco but mostly because its less than 2mins down the road. I reckon we now spend about £300 a month but that's everything, toiletries, alcohol (H can get through a fair bit!) cleaning products etc.

I shop in Aldi and only pop to Tesco to get bits I can't get in Aldi. We spend around £75 a week for the five of us but I probably spend about £20 topping up on milk, bread and other extras over the course of a week.

To be honest, we couldn't afford to shop in the larger supermarkets regularly and I find the quality in Aldi is much better than you would think.

We alternate between asda and sainsburys and usually spend about £60 a week. We don't need to top up a lot but I go to Holland & Barrett or a local health food shop for soy cheese, bacon, sausages, etc and probably spend another £5-10 a week there. I'm sure we could get it down if we cooked more and we are trying, but neither of us were ever taught to cook so we do find it difficult!

For my husband and I and our cat we spend between £200 - £250, I get my shopping delivered from Asda for £1, if I had to go to asda myself it's a 40 mile trip since we live in the countryside. We like the local farm shop, maybe once a month I buy a steak pie from there but that's it x

We use Ocado because I'm lazy and it's convenient. Spend about £80 roughly every 10 days or so, although that's household goods as well as food. We also get a veg box delivered weekly which is about £14. We could spend a lot less, but for the moment the convenience is worth it.

Never heard of a veg box delivery. are they good? any recommendations of where I could try?

Waitrose, as its next door to my office. I tend to shop every day £10-30 depending on what I feel like making for dinner and what we've already got in from previous days. Its so close there's no point in doing a 'big shop'. I love to cook and try and not make the same thing twice in a month - instead I see how I feel on the day. Its still very hard not to waste things, but a roast chicken once a month (it was guinea fowl last week!) allows you to use up the rubbery carrots and suspect celery in a stock.

If we had a butcher and fishmonger closer than Greenwich I'd 100% use them instead.

There's going to be a twice reduced steak and ale stew on the menu this week at some point, other meals include, green tea prawns with rice, parmesan, chiilli & lime spag with salad for starter, crispy tilapia on braised lettuce with bacon and at some point the chinese dumplings I've been promising since the lunar new year.

We do a weekly shop at morrisons spending anywhere between £50-£100.

It's the only supermarket I don't mind buying everything from. Veg lasts and the meat is good quality.

We rarely top up during the week but will probably eat out or get a takeaway at least once a week. We are definitely getting lazier!

I've got a really yummy sounding vegan chick pea dumpling recipe bookmarked on my work computer. It was in the Grauniad, not sure if it was a Yoram Ottolenghi recipe. R. expressed a severe dislike for chickpeas but I think he'd actually like these if I didn't tell him what it was first.

I'm not veggie or vegan in the slightest, but I do go for the nicest organic free range meat & sustainable fish available - its also no bad thing to not eat half a cow every day.

We do most of ours online at whichever supermarket has the best offers (usually asda or tesco) and spend £40 every 5 days(includes household supplies and nappies) but i work in morrisons so do top up shops there as well

We tend to shop in Sainsburys and M&S as they're next door to each other. We no longer do a "big shop". I go to the shops every couple of days and probably spend about £30 a time. That's before we've bought the cat food and my supplements.

We spend a small fortune- probably about £100 for three of us? Every 9 days or so, from Ocado. We also eat out once a week. That's everything though, we literally never go to a supermarket if we can help it, although OH pops to the shop by about day 7 for fresh bits and bobs.

We are ridiculously time poor so spend an awful lot on ready prepared foods- not junk, I mean things like chopped fruit and veg, meat with veg in foil dishes you just shove in the oven etc. I know we could spend a lot less if we had time but we don't!

We used to be quite cheap with our food shop, but ate out about twice a week, and takeaway on top of that. Since our little one arrived 10wks ago we don't really eat out for dinner much, and when we do it's in cheaper places than before, so most of our meals are homemade. We've saved so much money due to this that our food shopping is a combination on Gousto boxes and M&S, so our quality of food has definitely gone up. I estimate we are about £300 a month for both of us for all food, including lunches for work.

We tried it because we got a voucher for a free one. We stuck with it because it encourages us to use more different sorts of veg and try new things - otherwise we just get stuck in a rut with staples and too many ready meals. For £14.50 a week we get 5 sorts of veg, including potatoes, plus three types of fruit. It's enough for the two of us but if you were veggie/just really liked loads of veg you'd probably need more.

I'm sure it's not financially efficient, though we don't have any super-cheap markets/grocers near us, but it's made us a bit more creative with cooking.

Wow BekkiJane, that is some serious budgeting going on there. 19 quid per person per week in total.

We are nowhere near that. I don't keep a close eye on our shopping - as long as there's money in the joint account we can still afford to eat! Our typical pattern is that I'll do a 'big shop' once every 3 weeks and spend around $250 (125 pounds) including household goods and that's for the 2 of us. We'll top up in between with fresh fruit and veggies, probably spending around another $100 (50 quid) over the three weeks.

Doing the maths and rough currency conversions it looks like we spend round about 60 quid a week for the two of us to eat. However, that goes down in the summer when we can grow more of our own veggies and it includes very little meat as we rear home-kill beef and lamb. We also don't have to buy fish as we have a couple of friends who go fishing regularly and often catch more than they can eat.

For the 3 of us for everything we spend about 40-50 a week. We shop in Aldi. I cook most days, and we never go out to eat. May get a takeaway now and again.

Ooo that has reminded me... I need to freeze my raspberries...

We get Ocado to deliver. Then we buy extras and things we forgot as we need them from Morrison's at the end of our road and Aldi if l am near one. We spend about ninety odd pounds a week for 2 adults but this includes toiletries, my lunches which l take to work etc. Mr Erin gets his lunch paid for at work. Some of the 2 cats stuff is included in that, the rest we buy in bulk from a pet food shop online when l get paid

Wish I could get my dinner paid for lol

which online store do you use for pet food?

That's quite good - guess you live in a city or somewhere like that? I think it's probably a little more expensive than in a shop but good quality food is important :-)

Aldi. We spend between 40 and 50 now and that includes nappies.

We used to spend about £40 a week in Sainsbury's with the occasional top up midweek but since OH started shift work we both just buys bits and pieces as and when we need as we rarely eat together now, only on his days off. I prefer Sainsburys to other supermarkets simply because I know our local one really well and I hate going elsewhere! I don't know why but I really don't like Tesco. Aldi is great but our one gets so busy I don't bother unless I'm after cheaop booze!

Me and my OH try to spend £150 a month too. We use to go to Aldi but always found that when we go to the shop we spend wayyy more than we should. So we have started shopping online and this really helps us manage what we spend. we also avoid spending unnecessarily on things we don't need ?

Morrisons is my fave. If I get a choice I go there but if I'm in a rush I go to asda as it's out most local supermarket, I bloody hate it in there though it always looks dirty and scummy when I go like they never wash the floors.

Prob spend about £50 a week doing a weekly shop for the two of us although it can differ depending on what bulk items we've bought like dishwasher tablets, washing powder, alcohol.

I use zooplus.co.uk. They are very competitive, they often have special offers on and free deivery if you spend over £29.

I think we spend about £30 - £40 a week on groceries, mainly at Tesco. I have shopped at Morrisons and Asda before but our local is now Tesco so that gets our trade. A new Lidl has recently opened near my parents and must say it is brilliant so pop in there when up North.

I would have to agree. They do some great deals apparently but l don't like Asda. When l was at university l bought some chicken from there, it absolutely hummed and was clearly off despite being a few days before the use by date.

It's odd I have sort of three morrisons within a 20 minute drive and we both really dislike them they seem really horrible lighting the bread isn't ever great and milk goes off before it gets home lol maybe it's regional differences in how they are ran

We do most of ours online now, with the odd little top up at our local small Tesco or asda. we find we spend so much less doing it online; we write a list and stick to it, that way you can't be tempted by the things that the stores have on offer to tempt you and we don't end up buying a load a crap we don't actually need! We tend to switch between the big four ( Tesco/asda/morrisons/sainsburys) usually dependant on who has emailed me a discount offer to use, which, if you haven't shopped with them in a while, they usually do! when we first started using sainsburys, we got £20 off our first shop, then had a £5 off for the next 8 weeks I think!

We get a delivery every week from Ocado, which tends to cost around £60. That includes toiletries/cleaning stuff, and usually a bottle of wine. I always write a meal plan and then a shopping list, and I try to keep costs down, but we both love good food which makes it really hard! I might nip to little Tesco up the road once or twice a milk to top up on milk, bread and whatever else.

Easily 500 a month on the 5 of us. But my kids eat like adults - my 9 year old daughter could easily demolish the same amount of food as me. And she is like a lat!