Last night, I checked out the BBC’s latest offering on the subject: Economy Gastronomy.

The point of the show is to learn how to decrease your food bill and eat better at the same time. Last night, the show’s presenters took on a family of five who have been spending nearly £400 a week on food. That’s an INSANE amount of money. And to make it worse, they pretty much ate the same two recipes all the time. And bought around 50 pre-made desserts every week. Madness.

Obviously, these people needed the help. The advice they got focused on the age-old ‘make a grocery list and stick to it’. And while some people may need to be told this, I can’t actually imagine NOT shopping with a grocery list, so dedicating a good third of an hour on emphasizing the importance of planning a menu and buying what you need for it seems like time ill-spent.

However, I guess a lot of people must shop without a list if this tip keeps popping up. My mother has never gone to the store without a list, nor have I. Even if it’s a short list in my head (milk, butter, toilet paper), it still exists. I just don’t understand how it’s possible to walk into a grocery store for a big weekly shop with no menu planned and no list of what you need and come out with something that’s going to get you through the next 7 days properly. I can hold a lot in my head at once, but planning a week of meals as I go down the aisles just isn’t going to happen.

The other big tips were also old standards: making one big roast or meat-based meal at the beginning of the week that generated enough leftovers for another two meals, making your own desserts, packing your own lunch, using less popular cheap cuts of meat, buying produce in season. These are all things that I stand behind 100%. These are also all things that I already do.

I’m not trying to be all ‘I’m awesome because I knew that already’ here. If anything, I’m trying to give my mom props for showing me the glory of lists and thrift. But I really want some advice I haven’t heard before. I think this show was great, and I think it will show a lot of people what they’re missing while keeping some of their money from flying out of their wallets on their weekly food-buying excursions. But I want to save more money too.

I do my best, but food is our luxury. We (especially I) really like food. GOOD food. We spend around £35-40 a week on food for the two of us. It’s not bad, but I’m sure we can spend less, even if I don’t mind it being a slightly bigger expense than it probably needs to be. However, I will not buy crap.  I like knowing where my meat came from, and I like knowing those animals had a good life, so I go to a good butcher. I like knowing where my veg comes from, so I get it delivered from a local farm (which is actually far cheaper than buying organic, or even non-organic, at the grocery store. It also supports local business and provides a crap-ton of potatoes, which go pretty far in terms of creating meals).

I like knowing what I put in my body is quality. But I also like spending less money. These things can go hand in hand quite well, but I’m sure there are some things I’m overlooking, and I want a show or an article that gives me a tip that makes me go, ‘Hey! I never thought of that!’