July 2008 Grocery Challenge

frankerooney

Oh dear. I had a right dressing down today from my dear mother! She was awake all night worrying about me not eating enough protein and fresh fruit & salady type food:rolleyes:. As I'm breastfeeding a 3 month-old and feeling pretty emotionally low, she may have a point :think:. We do always have a good dose of protein in our evening meal but I haven't given any thought to breakfast or lunch. In fact, for the last few weeks, lunch for me has been one piece of toast with crunchy peanut butter (which does have some protein in it, I know) and one piece with chocolate spread :eek::eek:. I told her "we go through loads of milk" and you can guess what her reply was... "yes, WATERED DOWN!!" Bless her, she came with a bagful of posh steak, chicken breasts, salmon fillets and cheese. But I'm not sure what I'm going to have for lunches from now on. Today I had cheese & marmite on toast, tomorrow I'll prob have boiled egg. I'm not sure I can really face a German-style breakfast though... might have to draw the line at meat & cheese for breakfast :undecided. So maybe I'll concentrate on adding fresh fruit to my fruit & fibre at breakfast time.

Whatever I eat it's gotta be quick and easy to prepare. I'm at home on maternity leave but my 3yo finishes for the summer holidays tomorrow and baby is mega clingy at the mo so I aint gonna have any time or energy for faffing about in the kitchen (much as I would love to... ). Any easy lunch ideas welcome though.

I do enjoy coming on here. Reading all your posts is my hobby for now (sad I know!). Cheers everyone.:beer:

pink_princess

betterlife wrote: »

hi just to let all you o/s, money savers, people on grocery challenge etc that nappies are a 1/3 off at sainsburys, as far as i know all brands , i just bought sainsburys own explorers normally £4.00 ish for £2.64. certainly will help with my budget this mth, i think its on til 29th july.x

hi betterlife i posted this on tuesday its only a week offer on till midnight this tuesday .
|I love working there i get so much info and whoopsies lol

Flylady_Flower

fertyskids wrote: »

Hi everyone.

ive managed my 2nd NSD this month today as i started my challenge on 27th. its a lot harder than i thought as hubby sees were a bit low on something the pops out to get it. ive tried explainging if were low on milk maybe toast would be okay for breakfast for one day. never mind.

i made homemade pizza last night. got the reicpe of netmums. i left it in for a few mins too much was a bit crispy. they all eat it though.

i made a homemade leek and potatoe soup today - no one liked it!!!! hubby ended up making beans on toast fro himself the kids eat it as there was hm apple crumble for pudding.

was planning on doing a curry tomorrow. feel hesitant to after todays disaster. might swop it for one of next weeks meals instead.

Freezer and cupboards still overflowing i think i need to eat out of them to make room for more whoopsied potatoes!! still got 3 bags to do something with. oh i'll do cottage pie tomorrow that will use some.

anyway its so nice to see so many of us on here. i cant believe the amount of posts each day. it keeps me going, i find it truly inspiring - especially when hubbys home!!

take care everyone. karen

p.s off to update my signiture.

Hi Fertyskids
Well done on your NSD's - it really helps.

Your other half sounds like mine used to be - I think it is because they feel that they have to be the provider and if there is nothing in, they're not doing their job, IYKWIM. Mine now lets me get on with it, but took a while.
Asda currently have a great offer that I think finishes soon, 2x4pints for £2 and 2x6 pints for £3 - I brought 4 x 6 pints of full fat milk and watered it down to get semi-skimmed - so then had 6 x 6 pints - great, because I still have 4 of them left and know I have plenty of milk just in case.

Don't worry about your 'disasters' as you call them - I made apple and parsnip soup to use stuff up and no-one liked that either, but I loved it so froze it and have just used the last one for my lunch today. Don't let it make you scared to try anything else - just go for it, you can do it!

PS: For the cottage pie, don't forget to bulk it up with extra veggies and oats and freeze the extra portions - you probably already know that but thought just in case...

fertyskids

thanks denise.

yeah your right and work is crazy for him at the mo. hes so busy and overworked as many of his colleagues have been made redundant. we are waiting, 1 year left we hope!! so hes often stressed out and moody anyway.

the milk offer sounds great. will try next time im there. ive been wondering about watering it down, do the family notice?

oh and for the cottage pie. do you ahve a reciepe? do i need to do anything special to the oats before adding them?
thanks so much i always feel a bit more confident after comming on here. karen

queen_of_string

no one in my house knows I water down milk :-D

Sian_the_Green

frankerooney wrote: »

Whatever I eat it's gotta be quick and easy to prepare. I'm at home on maternity leave but my 3yo finishes for the summer holidays tomorrow and baby is mega clingy at the mo so I aint gonna have any time or energy for faffing about in the kitchen (much as I would love to... ). Any easy lunch ideas welcome though.

Now I'm sure there will be hundreds of ideas flooding in, shall I start...
>couscous, just tip water on and leave it for a while, couldn't be much easier and you can add other bits and pieces like sundried tomatoes etc...
>Tinned tuna with some tinned beans (tesco do a mixed bean salad) mixed together, tip on a dash of vinegar and a dash of oil or some dressing.
>Make a little extra at tea time and just reheat it, as a single person I do that ALL the time as it saves time cooking lunch
>Make up a massive batch of soup at the beginning of the week by chucking any veg in a big pan with some potatoes, herbs and stock and leaving on low for a few hours then portion up in the fridge
>Not very cheap but filled pasta is tasty and quick and you can just put a tin of tomatoes with some herbs or chilli sauce in.
>Turn your toast into toasted salad sandwiches with some ham in, mmmm
>There are some awesome ideas on weezl's thread for low cost, healthy food that are worth checking out.

Well those are my two penn'ths worth, hth

mama67

jediteacher wrote: »

I hope someone can help me.

I love all your recipes but find it hard to follow them - I'm not a great cook and they seem really complicated.

However, I'm determined to persevere and crack some of them. I'm really keen to make some of the cakes as we've got some events coming up that need me to bring something along. My problem is that I have no baking kitchen equipment and I cannot afford to buy the whole lot in one go. I also need to know where to buy cheaply but not too sabby if that makes sense. I really have nothing - no cake tins, mixing bowls, rolling pin - nothing! :eek:

Any advice would be most welcome. :embarasse

This has probably been answered already, but when I was buying stuff for the school cooking club got alot of things from Mr T & Mr S. as were[STRIKE]reasonably priced[/STRIKE] cheap.

teedy23

I sometimes just have a baked potato with grated cheese. Open the door of the micro, shove it in, do something e.g. wash the dishes, and pull it back out. Great for using any left over beans too.

mama67

BigMummaF wrote: »

Have I done it right Denise?

:j I DID IT!!!!! Aww thanx for the help guys....Clutz is my middle name on many, many things:p

Used my NOTW MOC yesterday so got to add another £26:01 to my spends, but real bargain on Pierce & Duff Blancmange powders, box of four flavours 17p per pack in MrT!Also got a pair of jeans for an offspring's very early b'day prezzie, but they were a fiver & need to check the size.

Going back to read up on yesterdays postings, so have a good Tuesday peeps!

These were 19p on Monday 30/06 and today 03/07 they are now 14p according to mysupermarket.

Flylady_Flower

fertyskids wrote: »

thanks denise.

yeah your right and work is crazy for him at the mo. hes so busy and overworked as many of his colleagues have been made redundant. we are waiting, 1 year left we hope!! so hes often stressed out and moody anyway.

the milk offer sounds great. will try next time im there. ive been wondering about watering it down, do the family notice?

oh and for the cottage pie. do you ahve a reciepe? do i need to do anything special to the oats before adding them?
thanks so much i always feel a bit more confident after comming on here. karen

Hi Karen,

I would def try the milk - what do you have at the moment? If it's semi-skimmed just get full fat and water down about 1/3rd (maybe a bit less if you're not sure), just make sure you shake it well. Don't tell them though, see what happens.

Here is the recipe I used for cottage pie - I think it was on May's thread, apologies to whoever posted it originally as I cannot remember (just took it off my word document that I copy them to)

Cottage Pie
650g mince
1 teacup of oats
2 beef stock cubes
1 tin chopped toms
1 tin baked beans
a very large splash of lea and perrings
3 small onions
3 carrots
You can mix and match other veg in there too.

I put it in a big roasting dish with mash and grated cheese on top. I get 9 servings out of that (I freeze them in the chinese pots you get as they are just right for a large serving - you can get these from £1 shops too).

I hope that helps - good luck with the cooking and hope the job front gets sorted out soon,
Denise x

Ooooh, forgot to say WELL DONE to BIGMUMMA - YOU DID IT RIGHT:beer: ! I expect to see lots of quotes from you from now on :rotfl: