10 Top Tips To Make Your Weekly Food Shop Last

For any student or household on a weekly food budget, it’s always important to make your food last. Here are 10 Top Tips To Make Your Weekly Food Shop Last!

1. Shop Smart

For every household, the key to making food last is shopping smart. Buy ready meals and pre-portioned food is going to benefit you. The key to making any shop survive the week is to buy food that you can portion and divide yourself. For example, pasta or potatoes, any fresh veg or fruit.

2. Portion Sizes

Portion control will be the game changer for your weekly shop. For this, you need to think realistically for your personal intake. Portioning your foods will help you stretch your weekly shop, make sure you don’t have any waste or leftovers.

3. Snacking

The enemy for any weekly food shop. Here’s where you may fail, but here’s where we can prepare you. Snacking on purposeful snacks you’ve bought is ok, but snacking on meals will slice off days of food from your weekly shop. Be careful of what you snack on and how much.

4. Freezer Frenzy

Freeze! Freeze! Freeze! If you think something’s going to go out of date, freeze! Any leftovers that can make another meal, freeze! You’d be surprised at how quickly you can fill up your freezer which fresh meals on standby. The freezer will become your saving grace when making your weekly food shop last.

5. Get Creative

Jazz up the kitchen with your creative culinary skills! Think outside the box when spicing up your meals. Making dishes such a Bolognese can be frozen and saved for a later date. If you have random items left by your last day, see how you can make something tasty! Make it into a game.

6. Plan Ahead

For most people, this is a tricky or next to impossible task, however, it will stand you in good stead for the weekly food shop. Find an evening where you can food prep for the days ahead. It doesn’t take long and can be quite fun. By doing this you aren’t only saving food for the week but money and time.

7. Learn Some Basic Recipes

Learning some easy and quick recipes are good to have up your sleeve when thinking about your weekly food shop. Basic recipes tend to be ones with minimal effort, ingredients and can whip up within minutes. These basic recipes will be fantastic for food preparation and even better for your food budget.

8. Canned Goods

The knight in shining armor! Canned foods stretch a long way in the world of food saving. With any canned foods, you can add and mix and bulk up any dishes. A key item in my weekly shopping basket is canned mixed beans. They are super cheap, tasty and full of goodness, plus bulk up any meal.

9. Shop With A Plan

No weekly shopping trip is successful without a plan. So, think carefully about the meals you need to make for the week, make sure you have enough vegetable and meat (or meat alternative) options to cover all your meals. Again, think in bulk, think of dishes such as lasagne or chili con-carne that can be portioned and frozen for a later date.

10. Be Strict But Enjoy

Food is meant to be an enjoyable experience, so when thinking of making your weekly food shop last, don’t think of it as a chore. Be fun, loose and creative with the dishes you are thinking of making. The more you enjoy what you’ve thought of, the more you’ll make the process a habit. Be strict but enjoy.