.

Top 10 Tips for Saving Money

on Your Weekly Shop

Last week saw the very welcome announcement of free school dinners for infant school children, which will help many families (us included) from next September. But there’s no escaping the fact that feeding our families is becoming more expensive.

As food prices rise, it’s more important than ever for parents to shop and cook savvy in order to provide good, nutritious food. As a biggish family with one income we have implemented several money-saving policies in order to keep our weekly shop affordable. These include:

• Choosing meat and fish on multi-buy offers and freezing it until required.
• Purchasing one bottle of wine instead of two!
• Buying detergents and cleaning products from budget supermarkets such as Aldi.
• Potty training! The sooner we no longer have to buy nappies, the better.
• Using our breadmaker – homemade bread is so much more tasty and cheaper.
• Drinking tap water instead of fruit juice (better for your teeth too).
• Slow-cooking cheaper cuts of meat e.g. pot roast beef for Sunday lunch cooked in stock with a splash of soy sauce and a blob of mustard. This also makes great sandwich fillers for the week ahead.
• Making soup with any leftover veg from the fridge.
• Filling out dishes such as cottage pie and spaghetti Bolognese with lentils, carrots etc. to make the mince go further.
• And saving the best til last – baking! Homemade cakes, biscuits and flapjacks taste so much better than shop-bought and are SO much less expensive.

World’s Biggest Coffee Morning

And on the subject of baking, why not do a good deed this week? Bake a cake for the World’s Biggest Coffee Morning on Friday.

There’s bound to be bake sale near you (I’ll be sneaking off from work to join the one at my son’s school). Check out their website here http://bit.ly/18CFOL8

How about baking this fabulous Lemon Cake from the 2014 Dairy Diary?

It cuts into 16 squares so will make plenty of money for a brilliant cause.

.