April 2012 Grocery Challenge

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  • Florenceem
    Florenceem Posts: 7,819
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    Afternoon all,

    Done a good shop today, lots of meat and store cupboard things. Also the bacon and other offers from LIDL were good this week, gonna make mushroom risotto and tomato soup for light suppers. Got home and chucked out some OOD cereal etc that had been lurking a while, so nice and tidy now!

    Spent,

    £46.99 in Morrisons (used the £5 MOC)
    £11.00 in LIDL
    £2.60 in COOP (3 for 1 cheese, sold my mum one tho!:D)

    Total £60.59

    Declaring at £214.07 for April, as pay day Monday, and new month starts then!!! Not bad, as I had dropped the target spend to £200, so money saved on my usual £250.

    May will be £250, just me and 2 kids, as OH not back till June;)!
    Have a great weekend all,

    Sally.
    Chucked out OOD cereal! Couldn't it have gone in krispie type cakes or syrup/treacle tart! Bossy Florenceem here!
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  • Becks81
    Becks81 Posts: 426 Forumite
    Spent £23.07 at Morrisons today, was only going to help my Nan around with her shopping, but managed to pick up a few pieces that have disappeared of Tesco's shelves, namely soda crystals and stardrops. Plus Pepsi Max was on offer at £1 a bottle so I picked up 4 - that should last me the week.

    Have updated my signature, and can still squeeze in that £40 shop at Tesco's if I need to now :D This will then put me in good shape for starting the May challenge, which I have just realised has 1 more day in the month than April so I'm sure this will make a difference somewhere.
  • hex2
    hex2 Posts: 4,736
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    More 28p beans from MrA for me - cheaper than using the dried ones at the moment.

    I bought the madhur jaffrey eastern veg cooking that someone suggested and it is indeed a very good recipe book, very inspiring. Feta pastries and green lentil salad for lunch - we had thirds which rather defeats the point of it being cheaper!
    'If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need' Marcus Tullius Cicero
  • craigywv
    craigywv Posts: 2,342 Forumite
    jumblejack wrote: »
    Thanks for the tip Craig. I was gonna nip in Lidl for the weekend offer of bacon which is a quid a pack. This tip is much better value for me as I usually use bacon in stuff, rather than having the actual rashers anyway.

    Good un:T

    A good deal if you use em is this too:
    East end chick peas 400g can 25p @ Tesco :T

    I love em in a curry or for bulking out stews n casseroles!

    Edit:
    Just seen my total grocery spend am a bit worried that I might go over :eek:
    It is possible really as I have so much in my pantry and freezer but it's the whoopsy spending on fresh items when I buy my milk that tots up the total in a crafty way.
    Need to go again tonight for milk but can't seem to help myself when I see a bargain:o
    :)will get the chickpeas ab love em ty:)
    C.R.A.P.R.O.L.L.Z #7 member N.I splinter-group co-ordinater :p I dont suffer from insanity....I enjoy every minute of it!!.:)
  • I've done well this week with spends so think I'm only going to go about £13.00 over my monthly budget - this is good as the way I was going earlier in the month, it looked like I would bust the budget by much more than that :o.

    This week I've made a real effort to use what we have in - but I've still got lots left in freezer, so next week I'm not doing a 'big shop' but will just buy what we need as we need it, so hopefully next week will be cheap :). I'll post final monthly spend when my week ends on Tues, just in case we have a sudden rush on something and I need to buy stuff.

    Please can you put my May budget down for £320 again, as I'm going for the £80 per week again, in the hope that I will stick within it this month :eek:. Thank you :T.
    Pay debt in 2012 #278 £2347/£5364
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    Grocery Challenge:
    Feb £359/£360 Mar £390/£450 Apr £335/£320
    May £330/£320 Jun £455/£400 Jul £321/£320
    Aug £399/£370 Sep £345/£300 Oct £421/£400 Nov £0/£320
  • Florenceem
    Florenceem Posts: 7,819
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    This recipe is from my making preserves book - 1981.
    We grew the marrow/apples/onions - my notes from that time say - cost to make - 11p a jar. The recipe says - makes 6 -7lbs.

    1.5 kg/3 lb marrow, after peeling and seeding.
    675g/1 1/2 lbs onions.
    2 tablespoons coarse salt.
    1 kg/ 2 lbs apples, after peeling and coring.
    675g/1 1/2 lb brown sugar
    1.75 litres/ 3 pints spiced vinegar.

    Cut marrow into slices, peel + chop onions. Put marrow + onions in a shallow dish, sprinkling with coarse salt; leave 24 hours then strain. Slice apples, put in a pan with marrow + onions and sugar. Cook in half the vinegar until tender and apples are pulpy, stirring (with large wooden spoon) from time to time - I did this in a large jam/preserve pan with lid on.
    Uncover now/add remaining vinegar + simmer until reduced and thickened. Pot up while still hot and cover at once. ( I used to put a jam making wax disc on top of the chutney before I sealed the jar - cut circles out of a wax paper roll.) I saved all my jars - gave them a wash in hot water/dried then sterilised in Microwave before using. My middle Son was mad on Branston pickle - this chutney is much nicer and he loved it.
    I had a cupboard especially for all my HM jams/chutneys and pickles. You can use windfall apples for this chutney as long as all bruised parts are removed. My children were sent into the garden with a bucket after a windy day - I even used the smallest windfalls! I sold jars of this chutney as well from my doorstep - had regular customers. Selling a few jars paid for the sugar/vinegar I used.
    Let me know if anyone wants the spiced vinegar recipe. I had a 4 storey house - the smells when I was making chutney went all over the house. It was a Victorian house and the kitchen door had warped over the years!
    Decluttering Achieved - 2023 - 10,364 Decluttering Target - 1277/2024 March - 1895/171
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  • craigywv
    craigywv Posts: 2,342 Forumite
    I have joined the eating out of freezer and cupboards too ...............needs...must!!!! No room left,might try fiscal fast also , and maybe give hide my carkeys and purse challenge, starting that one up myself !! Along with my family will not concede to a terrible fate if there is a quarter inch of freezer space exposed!and also the walk away from the tinned tomatoes challenge convinced those blo%y tins have a magnectic force all of their own....rambled on enough here away to count my bottles of stardrops...didnt i mention yet another ocd of mine bye for now xx
    C.R.A.P.R.O.L.L.Z #7 member N.I splinter-group co-ordinater :p I dont suffer from insanity....I enjoy every minute of it!!.:)
  • tigerfeet2006
    tigerfeet2006 Posts: 14,030
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    JackieO wrote: »
    Closing my April budget with 37.80p left over as I have no shopping to get this week and I'm away on my hols next saturday for a week but will set my May Budget at £75.00 as I will start again on the 5th may when I come home.Very pleased with how April went as I managed to use up quite a bit from the freezer

    Have a fantastic holiday Jackie. Come back rested and raring to go.
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    The only stupid question is an unasked one
    Loving life as a Kernow Hippy
  • PennyGrabber
    PennyGrabber Posts: 1,288 Forumite
    All this talk of soup...

    I made bendy soup on Thursday night. We had boiled ham for dinner, and I usually save the water, put it in the fridge and think 'I'll do something with that later...'. Well, Thurs I actually made some soup while dinner was cooking! I chopped up loads of veg while making the parsley sauce for dinner, and then just shoved the veg into the pan as soon as I'd taken the ham out. Then, when I took the plates back to the kitchen after dinner, it was done! (I added some lentils and stock cubes too.)

    I had some for lunch on Friday at work, and my friends looked at it and said it looked nice, what type was it? I replied that it was bendy soup, and they said they'd never heard of it, what was in it?! I said you know, all the bendy veg from the bottom of the fridge! They all rotfl!!!

    It's generally the only type of soup I make! This one was a carrot, an onion, a leek, a swede, two spuds and some celery. Was lush! Serving it to my mum and brother for lunch tomorrow. Hopefully she'll approve; either that or she'll rave about my brother who's so amazing and so skint but makes such wonderful food... Of course, she's bringing the brother who had depression so much worse than me. I'm kind of the failure of the family, never done anything quite as good as my brothers... And my sister in law is like the daughter she never had, the way she raves about her. I'm so looking forward to them visiting for my birthday!!

    Whoops, I digress. Sorry.

    Guess I'm off th bed then.

    Night all,

    Pg x

    ps - spent £17 odd in a$da today, got loads of fruit for the week so no need to shop for a while.
    Grocery challenge for family of three - me, dd(12) and ds(11), feeding dp 2 or 3 x a week too. Only food, not toiletries. Jan £87.97/£100 Feb £0/£100
    Frugal 2018 needed! Saving and NOT spending
  • tigerfeet2006
    tigerfeet2006 Posts: 14,030
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    We've had a pyjama day here today as well :D

    Dinner tonight was pork (from the £1.50 YS pack I picked up the other day) cut into chunks. Around 250g of MrT's cooking bacon. Cooked them off in a pan. Added a couple of chopped mushrooms and cooked it a wee bit more. Before serving I mixed in a 200gm tub of garlic and herb philly (I use Philidelphia as some shops own contain gluten.)

    I served it with mash and purple sprouting.
    BSCno.87
    The only stupid question is an unasked one
    Loving life as a Kernow Hippy
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