January 2009 Grocery Challenge

goldfinch68

Rather than my usual spend of £10 a week on wine, have just been to Mr T's and bought their own brand of Malibu for £5 to have with diet coke instead which should hopefully last a lot longer! Wanted Jack Daniels but at £18 a bottle, couldn't justify it! Been at work today so will be spending my Saturday evening trawling through my cookbooks to plan cheap meals for the week. Looking forward to seeing just how much I can save this month to put towards our holiday. Even dusted off the breadmachine and made a loaf, tastes so much better than shop bought stuff. Anyone actually worked out if it is cheaper to make at home rather than buy. Certainly got to be better for you?!

redmel1621

Well I don't think I am going to make it, esp as I have to get to 7th Feb and had to start on 1st Jan!!!

Had to get some dog food, although I am going to bulk buy from petplanet in future as it works out a lot cheaper from them. I did used to use them and they are reliable.

We seem to have spent a fortune on luxuries lately, but really it has either come out of dh moey or the kids money, so my budget isn't exactly blown...although it is hard to distinguish what I have spent and what I haven't. I did spend £6 on 2xboots meal deals yesterday :eek: which I paid for out of the food money. The dog food along with a few little bits cost £5.37.....

And we will need milk tomorrow, which I may try to get dh to go on his own to get as he will just buy the milk:)

Off to update sig now.

Mel x

tessie_bear

hi....im excited as i have marmalade cooking in the kitchen and it smells lovely...it is wafting from the kitchen all the was through the dining room in to the conservatory...i got the seville oranges from tesco but cant remember how much they were...its odd how such manky looking oranges make such a nice thing as marmalade(i suppose 4lb of sugar helps:p ) we were supposed to be having a roast chicken meal with all the trimmings tonite but the chicken didnt want to play and hadnt defrosted so it changed to meat balls (mix mince an egg some herbs s and p) shape fry a bit and then bake with loaded potato skins....lots of leftovers used up.....roast chicken for tomorrow......i was very money saving at the swimming lesson today i scooped up a handful of christmas chocolate into a plastic bay and the kids had that....a small bar of galaxy chocolate was 80p (didnt buy)...dont sound much but for x2 kids 50 weeks a year it is in not far from £100 which made me think what else do i waste that i could save ??...tata im off to make a list.........have a nice evening tess

Pips_Mum

Its official I am giving up this month!!!
Despite my best efforts pre-baby to freeze meals and be organised, I have already had 2 trips to tesco this week both totalling about £50!!:eek:
I will be back next month, hopefully a little bit more in a routine as baby will be nearly 3 weeks old by then.
Good luck to everyone else, keep going!!

Maisie_M

spent £10 in M&S on one of their dine in night offers but got a huge paella (which I love) it will do me tomorrow nights dinner and Monday's lunch, some roasted parsnips which I have chucked in the freezer for a day when we ara having a roast, bottle of wine which I've popped in my booze cupboard as am on my own tonight as OH has a really bad cold and isn't coming over this weekend and a huge mountain of profiteroles which me and DS have eaten 6 of for pud. There are still quite a few left so reckon they will do Sunday and Monday as well:D

Made a steak pie filling today and used some for tea tonight with 1/4 of a puff pastry block, mash, red cabbage and peas. Have two portions of steak pie filling and the other 3 1/4 pieces of puff pastry for the freezer. Have made a huge pan of red cabbage and have loads for the freezer. Also made some brocollie soup and use the stalks in it and it made a really thick soup so have that to go in the freezer as well. Just as well we ate some snack from the freezer to make way for all this food!!!

Anyway have gone over my Grocery Budget but will allow myself a further £20 this month as its the first time I am doing this and maybe underestimated what we needed.

Have a good rest of the weekend all. The weather is cooking up a storm here so time to batten down the hatches :rotfl:

Le_Foot

Goodevening everyone,
Looks like I'm gonna be well in budget this month :j . Any left over will be converted into extro €'s for our coming holiday of a week in Tenerife. ( 5 weeks yesterday..not that I'm counting ) With the £ being so poor against the € , we shall need all the extras we can get. Still, we are going self catering, so we will be able to keep costs down to a minimum...its only for the sunshine we going..not to be pampered.
With a bit of luck and a lot of planning, I'm hoping to 'squirrel away' £50 out of this month's budget.
Congrats to all of you doing well, and 'never mind'..there's always next month, to those who are struggling.
Love to all....keep the faith. :A

rosieben

goldfinch68 wrote: »

I've only just discovered this thread and would like to join the Grocery Challenge 2009, hope I'm not too late!
...Off to read the wealth of advice and tips on here. Thanks everyone! :j

Hi goldfinch, welcome to the GC! :wave: MrsMC will be along in a while to add you to the 'register' on page one.

my tv and pc just went off as the elec flickered. Keep safe in these winds everyone!

fallen_angel_shelley

MrsMc- I have just taken the lemon potatoes out of the oven and had a taste of one and all I can say is, yummmmmmmmmmmmmy. I will be making them again. only thing is i'm not hungry after cooking, so i'm going to wait abit and them have some more with the moussaka.

My trip to MrT's ended up costing me £22.44p, I must of worked it out wrong when I did my list, but I shouldn't need much else until the middle of the week:rolleyes:.

Shelley x

elizabunny

Evening everyone, not such a good day today, I spent £16.48 in Mr L and £1.74 in Mr C, now that wouldn't have been too bad, if I had managed to buy more meat, but only got 400gm minced steak. On the plus side I bought loads of veggies, -Potatoes, Onions, Carrots, Parsnips, Celeriac, B Sprouts , Swede and Celery. Also got Bananas, Milk, Fromage Frais, 10 Eggs, Cereal, Bread Flour x 2 which has gone up a WHOPPING 27p per bag -what on earth is going on??? Plain flour, Baking Powder, Orange Juice, Tinned Tomatoes, 30m roll foil and finally 2 naughty pasties for a quickie dinner tonight and some 'whoopsie' cream which I have turned into butter (my first go at this).

We had 2 lovely surprise visitors last night, DS2 & his OH who stopped off on their way back from a short break in Wales. So had to hit the freezer a bit for dinner last night -HM Soup, 2 extra HM Fish Pies and Apple Cobbler. Also managed to polish off a jar of olives, pkt of Brie, for nibbles and some left over xmas choccies and for brekkie today -Cereal, Orange juice, Eggs, Sausage Beans and Croissants and best part of a HM loaf. The good thing was, if I'd have known they were coming and planned for it, I would have definately HIT the shops and bought bacon -which they didn't seem to miss, mushrooms, more cereal, wine, beer, etc. etc and probably would have spent another £30. We just made do with what we had in.

Even managed to send DS2 home with 3 HM frozen Meals, 1 HM frozen pudding, 2 knock down price tins of baked beans, tin of tuna, jar of beef paste, carton of brandy sauce, some HM Scones and :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: a jar of pickled quails eggs -you should have seen his face when I gave him those.

So now I need to start stocking up again -for that next surprise visit. I love it when DS1 & DS2 pop home -even now they are grown up and have lived away for a long time now -we still miss them all over again when they come home and then leave -it must be empty nest syndrome.

Hope everyone's ok in this bad weather. Will update my signature now ......but it's looking a bit grim:rolleyes2

taka

I needed to stock up on Strong white bread flour this week and its gone up again from 45p to 68p in Mr T for 1.5kg! :eek: I checked Mysupermarket - 48p in Mr A so I gave them a phone to double check the price as Mysupermarket doesn't always get it right and its over an hour round trip by foot to go there from where I live and Mr T and Mr S are much closer. I'm glad I did as it was 24p :j :T :j

Strong white bread flour (1.5kg) - 24p :j
Strong wholemeal bread flour (1.5kg) - 93p
Hovis granary bread mixes (495g) - 2 for £1
Hovis wholemeal bread mixes (495g) - 38p
Allinsons Wholemeal plain flour (1.5kg) - 69p
Baking powder was down to 33p
White self raising flour -38p

I'm not sure if these prices are available everywhere (as Mysupermarket shows diferent prices for most of the above) or if I just struck lucky!
I have now stocked up for several months :j though it was great fun carrying it all home - its one of the few times I wish I could drive! No direct bus either. Instead I took my holiday sized wheely rucksack and got loads of silly looks pulling it round the shops!:rotfl:

It should be a low spend for the rest of the month as I only really need another small round of fruit/ veg at the end of the week as I'm off to Canada in a week and a half's time! :j