December 2008 Grocery Challenge

leebarton

I would like to declare November as £326.82 which is in budget. :T I am going to shift the date from the calendar month to paydays which is always the last Thursday of the month. I have managed to confuse myself completely this month!

I would like to set December as £250 for December which will be a huge challenge, but we are away from the 20th. I have already spent about £100 of it, but January is always tight so I don't want to make it any worse.

We are moving out business into new premises in the middle of January which will prove expensive. At least the Christmas shopping is now done, mainly through the grabbit board on here and canny buys.

JennyBee_2

Condensed milk idea....There's a Nigella fudge recipe that is good for pressies at Christmas..... condensed milk, chocolate, pistachios and something else...will go and look it up if you're interested turbo Think it's just heat it up, mix it together, chuck it in the freezer type cooking

Natty68

Mrs M can you put me down for £250.00 for December, that's including a wee bit extra for Christmas. Cheers hon

moneysavinghornette

Right - once again I'm going to start this again. My month will be split in two - Dec 3-16 & Dec 17-31.

I'm going to allocate £200 for each fortnight - £400 in total.

Let's see what happens.

CRANKY40

I have also made a freezer inventory. I have recently changed from a chest freezer to an upright freezer, and when the new one came I just chucked everything into the new one. Today I took everything out, put it all back in properly and made a very scary list of what's in there.

I really didn't realise how much is in there. I have a hopeless memory for food, which was one of the reasons for getting rid of the chest freezer. I only ever ate what was on the top (it also had a fault which made it beep and was keeping me awake), so hopefully, with it all set out in front of me in writing I will do better.

I also made ds 7 portions of lamb and veg stew with the end of a bag of lamb mince I found in there, and some mixed veg. Although he is 4, he won't eat meat or veg, but if I puree it, and mix it with mashed potato, he seems to like it well enough. I don't want him to lose the taste for proper food (he's never been good with solids, when we moved to lumpy food he was sick every meal for a month and then we went back to puree), so I'm happy to do this for now.

Ds doesn't eat sweets, and isn't a big fan of biscuits or crisps, so that's good for my budget (and his teeth). His favourite snack just now is Twiglets, and a little goes a long, long way. He does eat proper food, but it still tends to be food that doesn't really need chewing, like quorn, (even likes quorn chilli), baked beans, and pasta (lots of pasta).

I am overweight, and would like my diet to be healthier than it is. My aim this month (as well as sticking to budget) is to cut out the junk. I don't want ds to see me eating rubbish and think that it's an acceptable substitue for real food.

ZLS I have a gallstone too, although I only have the one. After following a very, very low fat diet for about two years I find it rarely troubles me now.

Sorry for rambling on, I'm just sort of reintroducing myself as I haven't posted on this thread for a while. It's great to "meet" all of you, and I hope to get to know you all better

dazzle21

Hello, i am going to be realistic and set our December/Xmas budget at

£300 to include alcohol and Christmas dinner for upto 10...eeek! Have quite a few things in, (freezer has a whole chicken, sausages, bacon and lots of party food type bits in) but will do a big shop to get all basics in this week. Spent £13.50 today towards Xmas...

CRANKY40

Mardatha I think you mean "Fifteens". With a bit of luck I have pm'd you the link, but it's in the indexed recipe collection if anyone else wants it.

mardatha

YAAAY THANK YOU ! THATS THEM ! Ooooh I want them a LOT ...

rosieben

CRANKY40 wrote: »

Mardatha I think you mean "Fifteens". With a bit of luck I have pm'd you the link, but it's in the indexed recipe collection if anyone else wants it.

I've put a link to this in the recipe list on the front page of this thread

mardatha

thanks Rosieben --its totally OT but this was the only forum I could remember visiting and they sounded so nice I LOST ALL CONTROL