September 2008 Grocery Challenge. Please read first two posts.

mummysaver

Good evening! Went to Mr T's with dd2 and dd3, dd2 is totally on board with the challenge, but dd3 is still struggling, still she only asked for ready made jelly 3 times lol! I don't think I have ever bought it even, and the funniest thing is we made jelly together yesterday and put it in the fridge for today!

Got eggs, more pots (ones from garden seem to have been eaten!), cheese, lemon juice and lots of bread flour, shame I forgot the yeast! Still it stayed a v small shop and we only got what we needed!

[Deleted User]

Well I live alone and with all the stuff I have in my freezer at the moment I aim to spend as little as possible in September .I do have sunday lunch at my dd's every week so that helps and anything she has that she can't streeeetch to feed her tribe of DH & 5 chidren she chucks my way so I think I can easily get through September on around £50.00. But I will be seriously cutting back as I have spent rather a lot in August and had lots of visitors.So come monday morning there will be £50.00 in my purse and thats it for 30 days .Around £1.80 a day.But I will have lots of days when I won't spend a tanner as I say I have a freezer full of food and lots of fruit & veg left over from my visitors this week.
It's going to be mainly fresh milk & bread ect .Although I have almost a loaf already in the freezer in slices.
Good luck everyone
JackieO x

Mariel

I can't believe this thread was only started yesterday and there's so many posts already!
I'm thinking this month should be easier, the kids are back at school which means I get more time to be organised, there's less mouths to feed during the day and of course it helps that I've upped my budget (for myself, 2 daughters and 2 cats) to £200.
I'm doing calendar months as my money comes in randomly and not just once a month.
Fingers crossed and here goes...

Mariel

I meant to say - this month I will be including all supermarket spending including toiletries, cleaning stuff and alcohol but NOT including eating out (rare but usually only a chippy or McD's) or drinking out (would probably blow the budget in one go!).

Flylady_Flower

MRSMCAWBER wrote: »

Will pop and update my signature and the list ...its getting HUGE :eek: :rotfl:

Hi Mrs M, isn't it funny what we see and hear when we want to? I know I hear almost everything said in the front room when I've popped out to the kitchen to make a cuppa and hubby is talking to his friend about me (nice things of course ), hubby says I have ears like an elephant, yet I can be sitting in front of the TV and have to check what is said? Same when DS is trying to sneak out before he's done his chores...:mad:

Just a quick question, hope you don't mind me asking, but how many people do we have this month (so far, as obviously more to come) that have actually set a budget? I know the list is long but some don't always come back or may be away this month, so just wondered what it was. Suppose I could really get off my butt and count myself eh! will go away and do that now...

EDIT: Right, there are (so far) 297 names listed and 131 of them are in this months challenge over a 1/3rd - way to go everyone!:T :T :T

Flylady_Flower

Blondie_Bear wrote: »

Yep like the idea of this, i'll start off shall i ...... will change my signature now x

Good idea, and now I've got rid of a lot of what I had in my siggy, I can fit more in.

:j :j MRS M - WELL DONE TO YOUR NIECE! No wonder your proud! :j :j

Angel Nikki - what a great idea about the flour - I HATE weevils...:mad:

Flylady_Flower

angelnikki wrote: »

MrsM I just updated the list for August and it said "The text that you have entered is too long (25040 characters). Please shorten it to 25000 characters long" I just did word count on Word and there is only 4266 characters so I'm not sure how its being counted Although it might just be a blip cos of the forum maintenance. (fingers crossed)
So I might not be able to finish updating it all in one post and will have to split it into two posts. I'll use the post that has the recipe index on it for the second half of the list as we dont need the index posted on that thread and this thread.

Hi Nikki, try taking out any extra spacings, remove any redundant £ signs next to names that didn't leave a budget, anything like that - it should help.
Denise x
(the format on here is totally different and uses more coz it's HTML rather than normal word - even though you copy from it)

cammumof3

Staciep88 wrote: »

Id say we have the following (we dont have breakfast - we have a snack at 10 due to work hours):

Lunch
Me: Yogurt , w/watcher crisps
OH: Ham sandwhich, apple, something sweet, crisps

Dinner
Me: Quiche, w/watcher crisps, something sweet
OH: Pasty, crisps, apple, something sweet, crisps

Tea
anything from the freezer - chips and burgers,for example - basically we never cook from scratch


OH has a more operating job so eats alot more but we really need to cut back on the cost. we are spending approx £60 a week - to be fair alot of that is chucking in rubbish like chocolate etc for when your board of a night time to munch on! I'd say if we didnt buy anything like that it would be £50 a week but then id crave chocolate all the time - just need to get my fix in another (cheaper) way

Hi (may be long sorry)

I was on processed food nearlly every night, plus oh and 3 kids.
I used to do burgers, sausages, chips, pies, any thing I could just put in the oven and leave it to cook. But then I started getting fish once a week, be it fish fingers, fish in sauce, plus others just to vary the fish.
I found this thread after I had been a member of mse for ages and now I dont buy a lot of processed. Well, I still buy chips,sausages,pies and a few other bits but not as often and the chips are staying in the freezer for a lot longer.
We all have cerael for breakfast, sandwich or toast for lunch with fruit, home made cake, home made fruit bars, so lunch boxes dont cost a lot to fill.
Have started making my own bread too, doing dough in BM and finishing off in oven as BM only makes small square loafs.
I buy pasta,macaroni and rice (not that good with rice yet though)
Even with the pasta I made a recipe someone posted here the other day (on Aug GC). It turned out to be a pasta quiche basically, and I have never made a quiche in my life, all kids loved it.
I have picked up a few of feed your family for a fiver and got a yummy grilled veggie macaroni and all kids loved it.
What I am finding is that there are several ways of cooking one food, like sausages I now have about 5 different ways of doing a sausage meal. Dont get boring this way.
Alot of the time you can also make 1 meal go further like if I do a chicken on a sunday I boil the carcus down and use the chicken that I get form it (we dont eat it all) plus you got the stock you can make. So I get Mondays meal out of the chicken I get off the bone.
I am finding it is costing me alot less to eat more healthy and doing a lot of cooking from scratch, I always thought it was more expensive to cook from scratch.
I do 50 pound a week, 200 a month for 2 adults, 11 yr old (who eats alot) a 8 yr old and 19 months old, and 2 dogs. And I come in under budget.
HTH
Caz
(I am still on August GC but coming over here to read posts so that I dont have thousands to read on Sat/Sun when I declare my budget)

Borneogirl

Hello everyone!

Have loved reading all your posts. I'm a newbie and would love to join the September challenge. Please could I be put down for £130? This is my first ever challenge, but dealing with my first ever mortage all on my tod is super scary so I am determined to get my spending under control, including my grocery budget.

Bring it on! I feel excited about this, and already i feel quite empowered by the sense of control this (and other MSE things) is giving me over my diet, my health, my money and my life! Blimey! I'm getting emotional, and haven't even really started yet!

Good luck all, and good luck to me, hope the sense of control continues through the month!


Oh, and could someone tell me what a whoopsie is ?!!! (I keep thinking of Frank Spencer, but am sure its nothing to do with him!)

cammumof3

Staciep88 wrote: »

Id say we have the following (we dont have breakfast - we have a snack at 10 due to work hours):

Lunch
Me: Yogurt , w/watcher crisps
OH: Ham sandwhich, apple, something sweet, crisps

Dinner
Me: Quiche, w/watcher crisps, something sweet
OH: Pasty, crisps, apple, something sweet, crisps

Tea
anything from the freezer - chips and burgers,for example - basically we never cook from scratch


OH has a more operating job so eats alot more but we really need to cut back on the cost. we are spending approx £60 a week - to be fair alot of that is chucking in rubbish like chocolate etc for when your board of a night time to munch on! I'd say if we didnt buy anything like that it would be £50 a week but then id crave chocolate all the time - just need to get my fix in another (cheaper) way

Just been thinking about this
And wanted to say it does help to have a menu, I write down my shopping list from my menu (if I not got it in) and just buy what I need for that week.
Millies cookies are a good and cheap way to get chocolate fix.;)
One day in early August we didnt get in till about 4.30 to 5 ish and before I would have looked in the freezer and thrown something in the oven or opened freezer and looked then slammed it shut saying 'dont know what to cook, cant be bothered' but on this day I knew what I was cooking as it was on my menu and I just got on and done it. So we had a proper meal and I was chuffed.:j