July 2008 Grocery Challenge

mama67

OrkneyStar wrote: »

Morning all.
Well lets just say I know where most of our local town and the surrounding ones were last night. DH and I decided to go 'for a look' to Tesco's- it seems ok although was hard to judge completely due to most of the aisles being chocca with people!
I spent £50, although silly me did not cut a £5 off £30 voucher from the paper! Never mind I might well spend £30 again before the end of the month if I make sure all other shops are just £1 for milk etc. I did use £4.50 worth of vouchers I already had though (£1.50 points and a brand coupon for something I did buy) so not too bad, and got the green points for reusing bags. I am actually quite pleased with self as most of the stuff I bought was either: 1. stuff I like to keep in stock (flour, yeast etc), 2. a few things we were pretty low on. 3. milk, FV for this week (FV likely do longer). I also used the tip of looking at the bottom shelves, and hey presto there is value stuff there!
Some good buys were: 1. value plain flour (36p) hidden very low!, 2. value sweetcorn (20p)- also hidden low, 3. cooking choccie (39p), 4. 3 onken bio pots for £3 (they cost normally £1.69 each here!!), 5. value tomatoes (19p), 6. tinned peaches (35p), 7. tinned strawberries (25p), 8. dopiaza sauce (86p) - normally even the own brand store sauces are at least 20p more than that with the stores we have! 9. white bread flour (48p). I was also impressed with the juices, the chiller ones were cheaper so got three for £2.25 as a treat and stocked up on the normal cartons as they were all £1 or under (did not get any of the value apple or orange juice this time but maybe next time). Finally it was also great to get some new choices.
Hmmmm, highlight of my week is a shopping trip lol!
Aiming for NSD's today, Wed,Thur and Fri.
Ok, hope you all well and that my story of my trip to Tesco has not bored you all too much!
:wave:

Look in the choccy aisle this same type of choc is only 23p & 28p depending milk or dark both for 100g bars.

I use this for cooking now.

mouche

OH was working this weekend which meant I didn't go to the supermarket at all - big savings since he always finds something that NEEDS to be bought!

Stopped in at Sainsbury's after work on Friday in search of whoopsied bread - they always have some when I go in for something else but of course, they didn't have any on Friday. But I did get 6 wholemeal baps for 30p instead. Ate 2 for breakfast over the weekend and froze 4 for burgers sometime in the future. I also got Kelloggs All Bran for my baking activities and 1 litre skim milk.

Total spend: £2.96. That leaves £24-ish for the rest of the month. Difficult but doable if OH goes on working weekends.

I baked muffins and biscuits this weekend with recipes out of my Australian diabetic book. The banana muffins were too 'healthy' for my husband's taste, but the lemon and coconut ones were scrummy and the sugar free oat biscuits were good too! As was the salmon quiche which is serving as my work lunches for the week. So a good weekend all round.

3 NSDs but today I need to get bread, juice and lemons. Wonder if I can manage it under £2? will report back tomorrow!

jackk_2

sending love and ((((((Hugs)))))) to Mrs M.

Jackie x

mandy_moo_1

in the process of trying to catch up on the thread!!

thanks bigmummaF for letting us know about Mrs Mc

Mrs Mc we are all thinking of you and your family at this sad time (((hugs)))

well have managed my 2nd NSD today just doing pasta and tuna for tea, so a nice easy one!!

have spent the entire day cleaning out all my gran's kitchen cupboards :eek: and windows. the whole house is all sparkly clean now!!

Herbaholic

Hope everyone is well? Hugs to Mrs M, in my thoughts at this sad time. Hugs also to everyone else feeling poorly, I have a herb tea mix I drink when I have a cold and it cuts the time I'm ill down loads, not sure I can post home remedies here though

Phew it took ages to catch up with this thread! Note to self, read each day do not leave for 4 days then try and catch up! 2 NSD's in a row now, yesterday I had a migraine all day and couldn't face the world, today its miserable and wet and I don't feel like going out. Besides have everything in we need at least until weekend, so shouldn't need to spend anything. I'll give the strawberry muffins a try, thanks for the recipe, just picked some strawberries from the garden as well, so don't need to buy them for the muffins :j and going to make the lemon verbena and strawberry pudding with the mascarpone cheese I have in, not very good for diets but it tastes heavenly! I made lavender and lemon biscuits and rosemary and orange biscuits today, made extra mix and froze some, so just need to thaw cut and bake next time. I used the lavender and rosemary from the garden, got some lemon geranium leaves that are begging to be added to a lemon cake as well. Speaking of herby uses, someone Greent? mentioned using white vinegar and adding essential oil instead of fabric con to the wash. I make my own herb scented vinegar, I half fill a jar with lavender flowers and leaves from the garden, pour on white vinegar and leave on a sunny windowsill for two weeks. Then strain the vinegar off the herbs and you can use it in salad dressings, the washer or the mop bucket and it smells lovely! I've made rose petal vinegar and rosemary vinegar and orange and lemon (citrus) vinegar using left over peel, loads of uses and smells really nice!

I'm feeling chuffed today, I used a dustpan and brush to sweep the stairs instead of hoovering, burnt off more calories and saved electric At weekend I invested in a ewbank (my mum used to have one) hubby saw one for £30 in one of the local stores, and thought it would be a good idea, I was put off by the price and the fact that it needed charging with batteries, how is that money saving :eek: I refused to waste money on one! Instead I paid £8.99 for a ewbank from Argos, I've used it every day since and not had the hoover out once. Not sure how long until it pays for itself but I get a 'feel good' buzz everytime I use it as it feels 'greener' to clean this way and reminds me of the 60's/70's watching my mum and nan cleaning, so very nostalgic. The floor looks just as tidy as hoovering every day, there's hardly any noise, and as a bonus one of my cats who is terrified of the hoover and runs for cover when it appears in the room, will now continue snoozing on the sofa without panicking at all! Well that's me caught up, shall now go read the other 79 posts that have appeared since I began typing this lol!

Herby

OrkneyStar

mandy_moo_1 wrote: »

have spent the entire day cleaning out all my gran's kitchen cupboards :eek: and windows. the whole house is all sparkly clean now!!

awww you are a nice grandaughter! :T :T

KAAT_LADY

Good Afternoon all:j

angelnikki your peppers look a bit too wet I'd let them dry out a little not all the way but a bit, I have a few little ones but I shall be keeping them indoors as its a bit too cold outside and a little late,but hopefully we will get a few. you need to put them in bigger pots with potting compost, but I would keep them indoors and feed them with tomato food :beer:

I have just been to MrsM's to get a few 50p burgers and tomatoes and milk and potatoes well, it all came to £13.02 not bad,, them went to MrT's for butter,, only:A


denisefowler instead of just adding to the pages of your recipes,, I make a separate word doc for each and save them in a folder called recipes on the desktop,, if you right click on the desktop you can make a new folder, and name it anything you want

see you soon

greent

Little_Belle wrote: »

Just a quick question, maybe this has been answered somewhere but in my lunch I don't have time to read through all the posts, but does anyone know where I can buy borax? I wanted to make some of the homemade washing powder that I saw somewhere on here, but I can't seem to find any borax? well I can online but it seems e.x.p.e.n.s.i.v.e

Ta muchly xxx

You can get borax in Mr T in the laundry aisle. It's with the eco cleaning stuff and comes in a box for 99p (may have gone up slightly!). Soma asda's have it and some larger Boots stores too

hth :-))

GT
x

Little_Belle

Thank you Greent

will pop to Asda or Mr T soon then

Anitaj73

Just a quickie to send my condolances to MrsM at this sad time......We are all thinking of you and your family
((((hugs))))