December 2008 Grocery Challenge

blaque*angel

you all amaze me

Baileys_Babe

I declare at £734.63 which is over our budget.

Plan on making a Christmas food file so I can organise my time/budget better in future years. This will include suppliers, recipes, menus, to do list, delegation lists plus anything else I think of.

Off to update signature.

lola34

I declare £325.77 which is over my £300 budget :rolleyes:

Happy New Year Everyone

belfastgirl23

I'm back to declare a guesstimated £220 spent - I'm afraid I lost track in the last week or so but I think this should be reasonably accurate. Have to do better in 2009.

this means that for my 2008 challenge (to spend no more than £2000) I have succeeded :j:j:j having spent a total of £1899 - I ideally wanted to keep it under £1800 but I guess the rising prices mean I should still be pretty pleased.

I used the money I would otherwise have spent on groceries to overpay my mortgage and managed to overpay £100 a month from what was previously my grocery budget. It's a good feeling

meanmarie

Declaring €276.94 for December...admittedly helped by the Christmas budget which had a surplus which was used on food

Marie

LilacPixie

Thank you everyone. Sorry for the deay in replying, both kids have the lurgy :mad:

OllieBeak - I Have not yet taken a full list of everything I have in the cupboards Thats will be first thing on my list tomorrow. I think organisation is a major failing here.

Desperate Housewife - I usually shop at a mix of tesco and aldi/lidl. He already has porridge in the morning and takes a packed lunch with him. Fizzy juice is another of our luxury items that will need to go. I have lots of plastic dishes and tubs.

THG - yeah I guess I am a competant cook. I used to buy the arge 3kg backs of pasta twists in Asda but the price has increased dramatically for £1 to almost £3 so I now find it not worth the special trip.

Dazzle - I have not tried the lidl nappies. I usually use huggies £16 for 84. So obviously the lidl ones would be roughly half the price.

I need to plan. currently have OH writing a list of meals he enjoys.

Does anyone have a cake/muffin recipie recomendation?? OH tends to graze on that sort of thing usually a muffin in his packed lunch and another at supper. at £2 for 4 they do use quite a bit of cash. Hmm pudding everynight will probably be a good call as well. Hopefully it will becomesecond nature.

clutterydrawer

Hiya

My current favourite tip is to spend a few hours reading through all the good threads on this forum - I thought I was pretty good at shopping cheaply, then i came here and learnt enough to quarter my food bill. There's a really good thread on shopping for a family cheaply here

http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1129333&highlight=family

D&DD

Muffins are a really easy way to stretch the pennies.Freeze the surplus as soon as they are cool too then they are just as good as fresh when you take them out of the freezer
There are loads of recipes for them on here (Pretty sure we have a whole thread of muffin recipes) I'm sure you'll find lots of cheap but sweet things to satisfy OH
I've got a thing now for fruit cobblers done in the slow cooker,they can be made up so cheaply and they are extremely filling too

pink_princess

WOW DD&D 2 payments to go well done !

bullet_2

You can make an immediate saving if you use disposable wipes by switching to reusable ones. Both of my lads are still in nappies, though the older one mostly just at nights now, and earlier last year I bought some cheap towelling material, cut it into rough squares and just wet it with warm water when it's needed. It's saved us a fair bit of money.
If you're not already doing so, then don't prepare your baby's meals separately, but give them what you're eating. Of course, this doesn't apply if you're tucking into burgers and chips, so of course you need to look at what you're eating if you're not already doing so. And of course you know about not adding salt to the meals you're preparing.
Do a store cupboard, fridge and freezer inventory and work your meals around those for as long as you can. Don't be afraid to experiment with what you've got in as well.
Good stock items to have, in terms of bulking out meals, are oats, pulses and dried beans.