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January 2009 Grocery Challenge

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  • Originally Posted by miss_keep_counting
    I eat a lot of fish and chicken, some times I'll have no meat in a day though. Are there alternatives to meat for protien which I could cook wth aswell which are cheap?? Protien is important to me as I go to the gym 3 x a week.

    And if I want to buy fruit juices is fresh orange juice worth it?? I like the taste and want the vitamins too but don't know if it's bad for me and whether it's cheaper to make your own???

    Beans of all descriptions are protein-not just your "baked beans" so if you get into a little bulk cooking and you use things like chickpeas this will help. They are cheap and tasty and can be grown sprouted for salads,cooked and made into burgers or used to make veggy curries. I also make a veggy pate from red kidney beans(tinned ones)all good protein without the fat you would get from meat. Both of these beans are good storecupboard items as they keep well and can be bought dried or tinned. Both are cupboard "must-haves" for most of us.
    Annual Grocery budget 2018 is £1500 pa £125 calendar month £28.84 pw for 3 adults
  • Maisie_M
    Maisie_M Posts: 1,524 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture Combo Breaker
    Hi all

    Done my shopping for this week and spent:

    Asda - £5.72
    Aldi -£8.68
    Tesco -£19.51
    Iceland - £4.25
    total = £38.16

    Had a list for each and bought nothing more than the items on each list. So really pleased with myself for that.

    I am now overbudget by £41.69 and am realistically looking at being £60 over for the whole month as I have to do a shop next week (that will be a small tesco top up as I did shopping for some meals for two weeks today). I know this is 60% over budget but to be honest I am happy with that as this is the first month I have kept a true budget and have been good at resisting temptations to pop to the shops more often or buy stuff I dont need.

    Next month I will aim to shave £10 of this and so on and so on til I am around £100-120 mark.

    Its been great following all the posts on here and I know that some have saved me money (today I went to asda as they had the bread flour on offer which was mentioned on here and it was too good to miss). I am also enjoying the recipies and am off to do a mince for a cottage pie in my slow cooker with some oats in for tomorrow's tea.:D

    Thanks all and well done to those of you who finish on or under your targets, and for the rest like me - its a learning curve and we will do it one day :T
  • greent
    greent Posts: 10,760 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 10,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    angelnikki wrote: »
    I hope lots of others do join in and chicken out too.

    Nikki x


    I've been buying FR (& organic if I can) chicken for ages - from both a taste & ethical viewpoint. DH was only partly convinced until about a year ago when we had the same dish twice in a fortnight - the forst time made with an organic cicken, the second with a Mr T cheapy - and the 'standard' chicken was pappy with little texture and taste. Since then he believes me! I will buy freedom food chicken at a push, but will tend to use that more in casserole dishes. Whole chooks have to be FR - the legs are scrummy frmo where they actually use their muscles! I also buy organic pork most of the time, and definitely only English pork. We have a fab farmers market close by, but i don't get to it as much as I'd like now - but stock up if I can. Otherwise there's a good butchers in town, Abel & Cole chooks online and the supermarkets :D

    I made my mum buy only FR eggs from when I was a teenager (I'm 38 now). That was from a moral viewpoint, but I do also think they taste better (and are so often on offer in smkts now) Again the f mkt has some nice eggs - and you can recycle your egg boxes with them too. IF we ever move to a place with a bigger garden I'm having chooks :j


    Mince: I buy steak mince, usually scottish. DH & DD have a passion for steak (sirloiin usually!) so I sometimes buy that - preferably organic or local from f mkt (Unless a fab whoopsie is found in Mr T - VERY rare, but once in a blue moon it does happen!!)

    Balancing taste/ ethics and finances was a concern of mine with the GC. I have to say I don't think I could get it lower than £400/ mth (for 5 + pets, includes toiletries/ household stuff) - and I'm actually finding £400 tough this month (having lost meat in a broken freezer :( ) - DH & DD have meat at every meal for starters!!

    Have a delivery from Mr W next week - they sent me a £15 off £50 spend, so have 'offer shopped' with them, including some happy chooks, - should hopefully come in at about £35 MAX after delivery - so should still just scrape in (fingers crossed!) However, we also need a joint for this Sunday.

    apols for long post! Hang on in there everyone - month end is in sight!!


    greent
    x
    I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul
    Repaid mtge early (orig 11/25) 01/09 £124616 01/11 £89873 01/13 £52546 01/15 £12133 07/15 £NIL
    Net sales 2024: £20
  • elizabunny
    elizabunny Posts: 1,030 Forumite
    quick question about the hobnobs - I have no golden syrup of bicarb, would maple syrup/honey and baking powder work?

    Hi yummymummy05 -I made the hobnobs today for the first time. I had no golden syrup or bicarb. I just used honey instead of golden syrup -no substitute for bicarb. They still tasted lovely.

    orchid-96 -Thank you for the soup recipe it sounds lovely!!

    Hope everyone is doing ok. I am still hanging on to my £12.34p ....just....
    but for how much longer??? Hoping for another NSD -can she make it 4 in a row:confused: ?????
    Sealed Pot Challenge 7 Member 022 :staradmin:staradmin:staradmin
    5:2 Diet started 28/1/2013 only 13lbs lost due to Xmas 2013 blip.
  • Frugaldom
    Frugaldom Posts: 7,136 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Photogenic
    Sorry I haven't managed to catch up - I do try but still seem to be falling further and further behind, so ... appropriate responses to what everyone has said, well done, commiserations, sorry to hear that, congratulations etc, etc, etc. If I miss anything really important, perhaps someone could PM me about it. :)

    Food prices are getting ridiculous when comparing them to last year's receipts, what's happened to the price of cooking oils and margarine? 80p for a tub of 'leggy bird'? :eek: Even lard has gone up almost 30% since I last stocked up! I did manage to get my flour at 48p per 1.5kg but 88p a bag for sugar was the cheapest I could find and powdered milk has jumped to £2.07 per pack for store's own value brand! :eek: On the topic of beans, our Bran$ton offer was pack of 4 tins for £1, not quite as good as M0rris0ns but good to find in our area :D

    The new Ald! store is due to open in less than a month; that should be interesting once we lose S0merf!elds. It means that Co-op and Aldi will be the only supermarkets within about 25 miles of us! There is a small C0stcutter store but it certainly doesn't help to cut our costs, so I seldom go in it. Over a sixth of my annual budget gone, baking cupboard filled, larder filled, cleaning & toiletries cupboard filled, freezer filled, fridge filled, signature updated, can I hibernate now? :rotfl:

    PS: In defence of the consumer driven poultry industry - Not all intensively reared chickens are badly treated. :)
    I reserve the right not to spend.
    The less I spend, the more I can afford.


    Frugal living challenge - living on little in 2025 while frugalling towards retirement.
  • elizabunny wrote: »
    Hi yummymummy05 -I made the hobnobs today for the first time. I had no golden syrup or bicarb. I just used honey instead of golden syrup -no substitute for bicarb. They still tasted lovely.

    Thanks for your help - ds and i have just finished off the last of the chocolate and raisin cookies i made this week (millies cookie recipe on here) they were yummy! So I think I will try it with maple syrup and see how it goes - will let you all know!
    FebGC
    wk1 £0/£100 NSD's 0/7
    wk2
    wk3
    wk4
    Total £0/400
  • OrkneyStar
    OrkneyStar Posts: 7,025 Forumite
    Part of the Furniture 1,000 Posts Name Dropper Combo Breaker
    angelnikki wrote: »

    We hardly eat pork other than occasionally having sausages; but when we do, we always get finest because of the meat content. So making the change to free range/organic sausages isn't going to cost much more ;)

    thanks :) I hope lots of others do join in and chicken out too.

    Nikki x
    Nikki (and anyone else who wants to read ;)), I know you [STRIKE]prefer[/STRIKE] have to shop online (and can't [STRIKE]always[/STRIKE] get out) but if you are able I suggest you try your local butcher for sausages, as they beat finest every time. Three or four times in MrT today I looked at pork meat, steak mince, sausages and chicken (ranging from value to organic) and ended up with none, in the end I got steak mince (from butcher) and steak stew (local sourced from Coop) and will get sausages next time.
    Just a thought ;) ...... can any of you tell I am on a 'support local' mission again ?! lol
    Ermutigung wirkt immer besser als Verurteilung.
    Encouragement always works better than judgement.

  • gillst_2
    gillst_2 Posts: 98 Forumite
    Just caught up with recent posts snuggled under a quilt on the sofa. Have had to have a day off work, following an asthma attack last night. Have been troubled with an asthmatic cough these last couple of years (never experienced it until I hit 40!!) but never quite like the last couple of days. GP informs me it is probably due to the current damp cold weather and has upped my medication, so hoping to feel a bit better soon. Good thing to come out of this is that I have had a couple of NSD.

    WELL DONE to everyone keeping on target, and those like me who have gone over for the month, lets keep trying. Even though I did not keep to target I have done much better than if I had not been following this challenge. Waste is a thing of the past in this house, whereas in the past I have thrown so much out. I used to cook much too much and so food was left and binned, but I have been working on portion control and this also seems to help. Seem to always have a turreen of hm soup in the fridge and if by any chance someone is still hungry after our main meal they can have a supper of hm soup and hm bread.
  • scotsaver
    scotsaver Posts: 824 Forumite
    Thanks orchid-96, angelatgraceland & elizabunny for your words of encouragement yesterday on my "failure", feeling a lot better today and I know that I've only "failed" this month because I've refilled cupboards and both Freezers after Xmas so I know this is just a temporary glitch.;)

    orchid-96 - I do include DD1's Dinner money in the Budget because she only has them twice a week and the other days she has a packed Lunch, may have to reconsider this in September though because DD2 starts High School so may also want Dinner money which would then make a huge dent in my Budget so may take it out of somewhere else - will have a rethink later in the year.:cool:

    angelnikki, OrkneyStar - I too only buy Free Range eggs and Free Range Chicken and after what you were saying I am thinking of trying the Butchers for the rest of our meat/sausages etc - just have to run down the huge supply I have in Freezers at the moment. Jamie Oliver has something coming on soon on Channel 4 about Pigs/Pork, something to watch out for.;)

    gillst - hope you are better soon.

    Dinner tonight is CHICKEN JAMBALAYA - thanks Angelnikki, never cooked it before and looks like it's going to be yummmmm.:D

    Sorry for the long post.:o Have a good evening everyone.:D
    "WASTE NOT, WANT NOT!"
    GC for OH, myself, DD18 & DD16 includes Toiletries, cleaning stuff & Food.

  • just taken my 1st batch of twinks hobnobs (with maple syrup) - yummy!!! huge success!!:T

    going to Mr T's tomorrow for febs monthly shop so will stock up on oats and maple syrup!!

    well done to everyone this month I think we're all doing very well. It's the first time I've stuk to a new year resolution for more than a week so double yay to me:j :A and I'm sure I'm not alone!
    FebGC
    wk1 £0/£100 NSD's 0/7
    wk2
    wk3
    wk4
    Total £0/400
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