July 2008 Grocery Challenge

susan946

Hello everybody. I'm new to all this but have been inspired reading about all your successes. Not too sure what budget to set but have been keeping records for a while and think the advice to cut down in stages is a good idea. Could I start off at £450? Looks high in comparison with some others but if I get too carried away I shall only fail and that's not what I want.

Hope to get lots of inspiration here and look forward joining in the discussions.

newmoneysaver_2

I've not had time to catch you on all the post yet - I will do that in a mo.

angelnikki - thankyou for the recipe links. Please put me down for £150 for the month - I will do it this time. My month runs 1st to the 31st.

I have just made a list of things in the freezer - I have enough for 18 meals and a few lunches too! I have 5 boxes of twinks and two cakes - Oops. This is not bad considering I only have my kitchen fridge freezer.

Good luck to every one!

Sunnyday

Evening everyone,
I`ve been doing my meal planner and i`m going to try again to defrost the freezer at the end of this month:rolleyes:
I`m going to experiment with keeping the dog and cat food seperate this month to see how much we are really spending on ourselves.
I`ve decided to set my budget for July at £120 please Angelnikki thankyou for all the work that you`re doing

Right - there now i`ve said it i`ve got to stick to it :rotfl:

Tonight for tea we are having salad with hm cheese & bacon terrine, cottage cheese & chives and pasta salad which is leftover from yesterdays meal.
The salad is white cabbage (shredded) red, green & yellow peppers, carrots onions and added in from the garden are spinach leaves, radishes and nasturtium leaves (i`ll tell DH what was in it after we`ve eaten it ):D
It looks nice so hopefully it`ll be nice too - mm feeling hungry now i`ve typed that.
Good luck everyone.
SD

searching_me

jak- thats just all my expensive stuff, fridge/freezer and washing machine apart from that i have nothing else of great value unless if someone decides to rob me they take the paint of the walls :rotfl: i live on a hill so no risk of flood just had new windows and doors.... i live the simple life lol... as long as my tv and pc are covered im good :rotfl: xxx

OrkneyStar

:DHi there,
Thanks angelnikki for getting us all going again this month :T :T . I am already down at £250 for this month. So far have spent £31.09- not detailed it all here but it has bought pretty much all we will need to do us til middle of next week. Been mainly shopping in Lidl as it is much cheaper although we will see what our new Tesco is like once it opens. Also purchased a slow cooker so will be looking for recipes for that later, although mainly a using up freezer month so not too much to cook yet. Can you do soup in a slow cooker ? Good luck all, newbies and not so newbies. This is my second official GC :money: and looking forward to it this month.:D

Barneysmom

Hi there, thanks angelnikki for starting us off!
I've been to asda today to look for bargains, got 6 blocks of butter for the freezer, no sign of any 50p bread though!
spent £85, got loads of stuff, all basic recipe ingredients, no choccy biscuits or anything like.
Just done a double shepherd's pie, one for now and one for the freezer.
Our freezer's very nearly quit so we've had to order a new one, but in the meantime I've had a good sort out and should only have to buy milk, bread and freshh veg for the coming month.
Got loads of beans, toms etc, and coffee.
I got a load of Fairy Liquid as it was on offer at Mr M's l2 weeks ago.
But my soapnuts still haven't arrived yet, though the money left my Paypal account on the 13th June :rolleyes:
Should I contact them yet, or is it too soon?

perrywinkle

OrkneyStar wrote: »

:DHi there,
Thanks angelnikki for getting us all going again this month :T :T . I am already down at £250 for this month. So far have spent £31.09- not detailed it all here but it has bought pretty much all we will need to do us til middle of next week. Been mainly shopping in Lidl as it is much cheaper although we will see what our new Tesco is like once it opens. Also purchased a slow cooker so will be looking for recipes for that later, although mainly a using up freezer month so not too much to cook yet. Can you do soup in a slow cooker ? Good luck all, newbies and not so newbies. This is my second official GC :money: and looking forward to it this month.:D

Hi OrkneyStar,
yes - you can do soup in the slow cooker - you may need to do a few adjustments if you are using a favourite recipe e.g. vegetables can take a long time to cook so it is best to cut them into thin slices or small dice and place root veg in the base of the slowcooker, topping them with onions, cabbage, beans etc. You can also make stock overnight in the slow cooker from fresh bones, cooked carcass bones or vegetables.
HTH
Perrywinkle

Barneysmom

Do you freeze your soups? Sometimes I make too much veg soup and it's lovely so don't want to waste any?

perrywinkle

Barneysmom wrote: »

Do you freeze your soups? Sometimes I make too much veg soup and it's lovely so don't want to waste any?

Hi Barneysomom,

I freeze soup all the time - always make a big pot then freeze in individual servings so can then just reheat in microwave when needed. I also tend to make quite thick soups which means that they take up less room when freezing and can be thinned down if preferred when reheated.

HTH
Perrywinkle

SAV3R

Hi everyone, :hello: Good luck for July.
Thanks Angelnikki for doing a great job and getting us all on the way. :T

Went to town today, specially to try out the fruit/veg shop. I'm sorry to say I was disappointed. Some things were more expensive than the supermarkets, and the quality didn't seem as good, didn't get everything I needed. I didn't think it was worth the hassle and would be much easier to continue buying with the rest of my food shop. Does anyone else have the same opinion or was I just unlucky?

Had my nice new upright freezer delivered today. :j Did have a chest freezer which took up too much room and was a pain to find everything. It was 16years old and I worked out it was costing £85/yr to run. This one should be more econmoical. A Friend is having the old one tomorrow.