December 2008 Grocery Challenge

Jacks_xxx

Gah! I'm having a bit of torrid time of it at the moment and so i haven't done the big add up for November or set a proper target for December either - but rest assured we're still living by the precepts of the Grocery Challenge. (It's far too firmly ingrained to give up on now! )

I got the car too late to go to Lidl a few nights ago so I went to Mr T's instead, and managed to spend £130 despite only getting about half of what was on my list. (I'd planned to spend £150 at Lidl.)

The aisles were all full of stroppy shelf stackers blocking access to the goods. They split their time venly between tutting and sighing at us poor shoppers if we had the temerity to remove anything from a newly filled shelf and gossiping loudly about their neighbour's gruesome sexually transmitted diseases, or sister in law's abortion. (Nice! :rolleyes: )

Once I'd realised that I wouldn't be able to get the specific meat, cereal, wholemeal bread, fresh veg, hoummus, Marmite, sultanas, tomato puree, apple juice cartons, free range eggs, frozen veg, frozen pizzas, fabric conditioner or toilet duck sticky-onny thingie - and more - that I wanted I should have abandoned my trolley and just grabbed a bottle of gin! :rotfl:

I won't make the same mistake again though. It was hell on earth shopping in there. It cost me loads and to add insult to injury I've still got to do my big shop because of all the things I couldn't get.

Not Impressed at all Mr T! :mad:

Love Jacks xxx

highland_fling_2

morning everyone,
well apart from initial grocery spend I have only spent about £3 throughout the week. This was on cream cakes, (I know, I know) but I believe once you have weathered the snow and ice and the Christmas shoppers scrum you deserve a treat and cream cakes do it for my sister and me.:j
Making final list for Christmas dinner food shop to avoid overbuying and being wasteful. Last year was a disgrace.:mad: Hopefully this year will be better.
Decorating Christmas tree today but have dinner already organised so I can take my time and enjoy the experience.
Being so in control this weather I am beginning to scare myself.:rotfl:

cw18

I started this month will the intentions of keeping track of what I spent, even though I wasn't officially taking part in this challenge for December.

But it's not happening!! Things keep cropping up on other sides of my life, and by the time I realise I didn't note down something I picked up two days ago for which I didn't get a receipt, I've totally forgotten what it was / where it was from / how much I paid :eek:

In my defence, other than milk (I'll be glad when elder DS goes back to Camp - but they've decided not to recall him for a week before his Christmas leave, so I'm "stuck" with him until New Year now! Bang goes my chance to do some decluttering!!!!) I've not actually bought much of anything....... and my freezers have spaces appearing to prove it. This is actually worrying me, as I normally have crammed freezers at this time of year, and it's this that sees us over the holiday season. So it looks like I need to do an[STRIKE]other[/STRIKE] inventory of my freezers, pack them neatly to see exactly what space I have, then do a shop just for frozen goods in the next 7-10 days !!!!

JennyBee_2

poffigirl wrote: »

That my mission too JennyBee, expect i don't want to go back part time, don't want to go back at all! I have a 2 year old and a 5 month old, both DD's, I think going back to work would be a rest TBH but I'm enjoying being a full time mum and don't want to resort to nurseries.

If I'm being truthful, I'm the same about going back part time. I don't want to at all, but I'm not sure how possible that would be for us at the moment. If we can get through next year on maternity leave, and 2010 on me working part time (evenings and weekends so no nurseries!) then I'll have paid off the last of my loan and then we can have another look at it all. I know that's 2 years away but I have to plan ahead!!!

JennyBee_2

Have just spent the last 45 minutes reading through all the pages I needed to catch up on! To be honest, I might just pop into the kitchen and give my OH a huge hug. He has completely bought into this grocery challenge/meal planning thing and until I'd read about the trouble some people are having getting their OH's to accept it, I didn't realise how lucky I was!


I can't remember who it was that mentioned about wasting fruit and veg, but I found two possible solutions....

Buying from our local farm shop works out very marginally more expensive, but because it's actually fresh rather than "stored in the cold warehouse for 6 months before getting put on the shelf" supermarket stuff, it lasts for ages

Alternatively, tinned fruit in the cupboard and frozen veg in the freezer. I always do a bit too much mash when I do any and then freeze it for the days when we really can't be bothered! Other than that, there's always peas and other veg in the freezer. Not the ideal solution I admit, but at least we're getting some veg!!

angelatgraceland

gailey wrote: »

Well to think I was exited feel bit dissapointed with my shop this aftrenoon.

1st stop iceland-milk still cheaper at £1.25 for 4pints so 30p cheaper than local shop!

my inner cake monster made me spend £3 on cakes now feeling guilty

6lyons cupcakes love these cant get them elsewhere cost £1!
cad cake bars 10 for £2-yes impulsive shouldent have brought but was peckish and they were tasy will cheer hubby up later!
Right I have mushy peas in cupboard so brought some more chips
macain french fries on offer at £1
and youngs fish only £2 for 2large fillets so fish,peas and chips 1 meal!
weightwatchers erady meal £1 great for emergancy standby do love their chicken curry.
Looked at chese and thourght no get elsehwere however was tempted by bousin garlic chese spreda only £1 only to discover later co-op had same one for £1.08 bogoff so bit annoyed!Its yummy on crackers.
Got frozen cod fillets for £4 hwoever filelts seems smaller and less sof them than there used to be!

iceland £13 in total so thourght ok not bad

.

I used to work for Iceland and Im told that their own brand fish is in fact Youngs! So don't pay extra for youngs fish. Their own version of Philly cheesse is very good too. Their tins are generally expensive but they do get good offers on heinz at times on the multipacks.
On a previous post you said you bought pizza bases. I always make mine in the breadmaker and you can freeze the dough. So much cheaper. Also make naan bread for curries-all in the breadmaker. Yes-Ive used fish in curry-and whitefish. If you are making a fishpie or something you dont have to use cod! Use pollack-far cheaper or just buy a bag of whitefish fillets-which are usually pollock anyhow. Great on the mealplans-it will keep you from the shops. Naughty naughty on the cakes though!:rotfl:
I had a nsd yesterday-didnt go out after all-nothing that couldnt wait for the delivery which is anytime now and nobody has complained. Oh it will be nice to have milk tho(well I hope I ordered some).
Thawed out sirloin steak and chops and mince for today. Chops for hubby steak for me and savoury mince for the kids is what Ive planned. There will be mince left over as I will pad it out so that will get frozen for another day.
Managed to dig into the freezer and retrieve some of my hm meals from the bottom so I can find them when in a hurry. Most annoying price hike for me is pasta-shame-as we love it.
Bought asdas own green pesto last shop but not a patch on sacla! Glad I only bought 2 -very bland. A case of you get what you pay for on that one.
Making sure that any pasta or rice left over gets frozen and not allowing overfilling of plates causing waste. If it's still unwanted in the pan I can freeze it-if its unwanted on the plate it's wasted-so smaller portions and top-ups as required. This usually provides one freezer meal in itself.
DD cooked for DS and his mate and myself supper last night-oh it was 10.30! beans and sausages(tinned) and egg on toats. Now the beans and sausages seem good value at the mo as they are a lot bigger tin and not much more money.:beer:Mmm I didn't eat a lot yesterday-what I had filled me up for once though I could smell sardines all afternoon! So my total meals for the day cost about 75p! (porridge-sardines on toast and egg on toast) so today its sirloin steak!

cw18

I rarely use fresh veg any more -- the frozen works out much cheaper for us (due to expense of small quantities or waste from value packs), but I've read that it's generally better for you anyway as it's been frozen straight after harvesting. As the "fresh" has been sat around for so long, it loses loads of nutrients before it reaches the shops !!!

I do, however, want to start growing some of my own -- but as the entire garden needs sorting (and I won't have the money for that until closer to the summer) I doubt I'll be harvesting my own produce until 2010

Sylvan

Spent my £40 at Mr M's yesterday (£40.84 actually - I got carried away). That was my last one so I won't be going back till I get the £20 voucher. The boys now have 20 boxes of cup-a-soup to keep them going - should last a couple of months. :rolleyes:
DH went to Mr A's to get the crusty rolls while I was at Mr M's and he was very good - didn't buy anything else!

People have been telling me I'd spend less if I shopped at Aldi and Lidl so I dragged poor DH round Aldi next. We spent £95.33:eek: (Note to self: never shop before breakfast). At least we have Christmas and New Year's day taken care of now though, and DS5 has just rushed in to tell me how much he loves the peppered salami.

I nipped in to Iceland, to "price the chicken fillets" while DH was loading the car. He probably knew I'd come out with another cool box's worth.:o £22.25.

Then on to Lidl. We would have given it a miss but DS5 needed a new wallet and they had a nice one in their specials. DH moaned all the way round about the need for speed since we had frozen food. I was very good - I refrained from pointing out that it was actually below freezing outside - but did hurry so we [strike]only[/strike] spent £38.58.

DS5 has just taken £1 for extra food tomorrow (He'll be swimming for an hour before school and he passes Greggs on the way back - IF he makes a rather odd detour:rotfl:)

That brings this weekend's spend to £193.25:eek:, but we do have a month's worth of fruit juice and packed lunch makings in the fridge, over a month's worth of breakfasts, lunches and mid-morning/afternoon/night snacks (where do teenagers put it all?), coffee, tea, fizzy drinks and even a bottle of wine for Christmas (how decadent can you get!) and a couple of weeks worth of main meals (Probably a couple of months' worth if we denuded the freezers and storecupboards but hell isn't that likely to freeze over anytime soon:p)

I was very good last night. We had the (gorgeous) Aldi pizzas for lunch so for dinner I used some of the 39p veg to make soup. If Aldi do that veg offer often I probably won't bother growing potatoes and parsnips. (I found it oddly reassuring that some of their potatoes had slug damage:D.)

I have found £18 of Co-op dividend vouchers that have to be used by 31st December and I have a vague idea that Mr T normally sends out Clubcard vouchers round this time of year (or am I having another brainstorm?) and then there'll be the Mr M "£20 off a £40 shop" voucher so, unless I go and investigate Lidl properly, we should be able to get through the rest of the month on £90. (Famous last words?)

When I was putting away the shopping DD4 asked me how much weight the fridge shelves are designed to take, DD5 suggested he could strengthen the kitchen unit shelves for me and DH expressed concern about the load bearing capacity of the floor joists. Men!

Sylvan

I've heard that about frozen veg too cw18. I've been using a lot of it, mainly because we live(d) so far from the shops and I had a few years of not being able to grow much of my own, but we're hoping to change that this year. Sorting out the garden will be a big intial expense (and a lot of work for DH and DDs) but it should work out cheaper in the long run. I'll probably still be using frozen veg for part of the year though, even though it will be home grown frozen veg:cheesy:

gailey_2

Sylvan you make me tired just reading your post as thats some shopping around but if you get more.
The problem I have its job to get hubby to just one in week minus the toddler as shes in nursury.
If we go later in evening toddler is stropopy availiability rubbish so always end up with junk and not all the things we need.
Im wondering if we should withdraw 200cash each month and I do the bulk of it.
But after yesterday shop with no luxuries OH not impressed with my shopping skills despite buying lots!
I want to check out more indpendants and steer clear of supermarkets.