Thanks for all your replies ladies, looks like our grocery bill is pretty average - could be lower, could be higher.

At the moment I don't have a slow cooker (we have so little storage space in our kitchen) so I'm waiting for the new kitchen to go in. But once that happens, I'll be able to buy cheaper cuts of meat. I do splurge a bit on meat and am a sucker for pork loin and lamb loin. Having said that, I got it from the market last week - 2kg of lean mince for $9, 800g of lamb loin for $14 (I think) and 1kg of good quality cubed steak for $9 so I think that was pretty good. Oh, and we got 16 big prawns for $7.50 which went into a risotto.

But I was quite pleased last week that I wasted hardly anything. Leftover meat and a rocket, chickpea, roast pumpkin and capscium salad went into making some wraps which I froze. So the leftovers gave us four lunches! I also made chicken and lentil soup from a leftover roast chicken. And I found a veggie stew in the freezer which I made into veggie pastries which was dinner last night with some spare.

So I think that's going to be my mission at the moment - to do my menu planning around things that can be recycled into wraps/sandwiches for lunches.

Off to make a beef and bean casserole now and the leftovers can be frozen for dinner later in the week. So we should get two dinners out of the $9 cubed beef.

Would love to hear more stories on how you avoid wastage.