January 2009 Grocery Challenge

princess_leia_3

I have done an order on approved foods too.....so many bargains to be had!! I spent £20.50 so hopefully that will arrive soon!
Also just spent £4 down the local shop on milk, a few carrots and a naughty cake for a treat for me
I will be starting wwatchers soon so I will find meal planning easier then

oldMcDonald

princess_leia wrote: »

I have done an order on approved foods too.....so many bargains to be had!! I spent £20.50 so hopefully that will arrive soon!
Also just spent £4 down the local shop on milk, a few carrots and a naughty cake for a treat for me
I will be starting wwatchers soon so I will find meal planning easier then

Ooooooo, are they open again? I've looked in a couple of times in the last couple of days but there is a message saying they are closed until the new year'

*skips off to see if the store is open again*

SAVVYMUMMY_2

oldMcDonald wrote: »

I've just been totting up the odds and ends that I have been 'just nipping to the shop' for - in 5 days I've managed to spend £12.91!

Off to update signature

WOW oldMacDonald just read your sig and found you feed 2 Adults, 5 kids and 2 dogs with a budget of only £140 for the month. How do you do it? There`s only me, hubby and 2 kids (6 &8)with a budget of £400:o (hoping to reduce every 2nd month of course:rolleyes:) What`s your secret?

oldMcDonald

SAVVYMUMMY wrote: »

WOW oldMacDonald just read your sig and found you feed 2 Adults, 5 kids and 2 dogs with a budget of only £140 for the month. How do you do it? There`s only me, hubby and 2 kids (6 &8)with a budget of £400:o (hoping to reduce every 2nd month of course:rolleyes:) What`s your secret?

Ha-ha! No secret, I'm afraid, and with food prices going up I doubt I will be able to do it for that sort of figure for long, either! I must point out that this is the first month in the last 3 that I have aimed for this amount- my shopping is usually around £45 - £50 a week - we are doing a bout of extreme saving this year!!
I do pretty much all that the other posters here do when it comes to cooking. I don't work and I home -ed, so we have a lot of time to do things in! We forage a lot of food - not a lot to be found at the moment but there are still some rose hips hanging on in places and if you look at the base of nettles there are new shoots coming up that can be picked - nettle soup is wonderful!

My freezer is full of blackberries/ apples that were foraged! I have an allotment and grow most of our own veg, again freezing it to get us through winter. Cooking from scratch, making own wine (home made wine is so cheap - if you forage the fruit you only have to pay a £ or so for the sugar and can get several bottles out of that:) Make my own bread - costs a fraction of shop-bought - cakes, cookies etc.

I think our biggest saving is in our being vegetarians - I buy our pulses in bulk from SUMA two or three times a year and save a fortune - I put £3 by a week out of our weekly shopping amount and it covers this.

Hope this is of some help?

*edit to add - Thinking about it, I have a very full store cupboard - it is full of all the items I use on a regular basis, herb and spices, flour, pulses, nuts and seeds. I normally write down what I use as I take it out and my shopping list is pretty much replacing these items. I think this has made a huge difference to our shopping bill as I don't tend to wander around the supermarket looking for insperation! The store cupboard is close to bursting at the moment as I went a bit mad in December (;)), so we have a few more goodies in the house at the moment (yet still I want to put an order in with Approved Foods!!)

OrkneyStar

SAVVYMUMMY wrote: »

WOW oldMacDonald just read your sig and found you feed 2 Adults, 5 kids and 2 dogs with a budget of only £140 for the month. How do you do it? There`s only me, hubby and 2 kids (6 &8)with a budget of £400:o (hoping to reduce every 2nd month of course:rolleyes:) What`s your secret?

SavvyMummy, hopefully OldMacDonald will tell us all her secrets (ETA - she just has- thanks OMD).
TBH though sometimes people have impressive budgets because they have to! Not saying this is the case with OMD, but in our case we could not afford to spend much more than £200 pcm (unless we ditched the car, which is essential in a rural area, never left the island, and basically wore sacks for clothing!). We don't have any debts, other than the mortgage, its just that DH does not earn a lot, and I am a SAHM just now. If we spend less on groceries then we can save more and put more into other 'categories' like holiday fund etc. Ok, I hope I have not tread on anyones toes, I realise you were asking OMD the question , but just wanted to offer a slant on it!

Lizzieanne

I'm in again for this month for £350. I really didn't get my act together last month and I need to get a grip!

orchid-96

Hi everyone, am hoping to reign in the spending this month (and the next and the next) have as usual come into the new year with zilch money and also dh and me have not been paid which is a worry (family business struggling) anyways I am hoping to get most of my shopping in Aldi, have been impressed so far with the stuff I have got there especially their 6 fruit n veg deals....(also if anyone has kiddies who like spaghetti the aldi spaghetti letters are really good and only 25p)...

anyways my budget for Jan is £200 starting from today and till 31st Jan...this is to feed 2 adults and 3 kiddies and 1 dog....and includes nappies but not milk (which I get delivered and will deal with separately) I have a pretty well stocked cupboard and a fair amount of meat in the freezer...I have also managed to get a beef casserole on in the slow cooker so thats a couple of meals sorted....

Good Luck all...

goodeys

OrkneyStar wrote: »

Welcome .
How many babies is the £100 pcm for ?
Could you reduce this by making your own snacks for them ? I buy DS some ready-made snacks using my Boots advantage points but a lot of the time he gets home made stuff. Babies and toddlers don't need a lot of the things that the manufacturers try to tell us they do! I am not sure the child(ren) age(s) but once they reach 6 months whole milk can be used in cooking and once they reach 12 months they can drink that (i.e. no need for formula). Also purees can be made easily and cheaply and they can have a pureed version of what you are having (as long as you don't add salt to theirs and of course not pureed pizza and chips lol). They can also have finger foods of bread, pittas, homemade hummus etc. Other ways to save money include using real nappies, or cheap ones from Lidl if you don't want washing, real wipes (a towel cut in strips and use warm water or water/olive oil/bubble bath mix) or cheap stores own or BOGOF offer wipes. hth.
x

Just the one baby who is 10 months old. £40 easily on formula, about £10 on wipes, he has a reaction to anything other than huggies but I do try to stock up when they are half price or BOGOF. £20.00 Pampers, again has a reaction to other brands tried all of the cheaper ones and he gets bad sores. £8 on baby juice, £5 on heinz baby biscuits and other misc snacks, £5 on fromage frais, £4 on baby cereal. I already make all of his meals but again this comes to about £20.00 per month. Just started to receive family tax credit and they sent a leaflet saying that I can apply for £6 PW of tokens to be used on formula, veg etc so have completed this but have to wait til I see the health visitor next week to complete their bit. At least this payment will almost cover his formula which is £7 a tub.
I could save money but the trouble is I think that I am honestly too lazy. Like when I run out of homemade food for him I end up going and buying some jars til I get around to making the next batch. I could give him ordinary porridge but again I am too lazy to make it, so much easier with the instant baby stuff.

Great tip about the advantage card points, I normally save all of mine up for holidays but I guess I need to forget about hols and concentrate on making the points count when I need them too.

Many thanks for all of your tips:beer:

scotsaver

Morning everyone - just logged on to update my total with spends in Asda this morning. KENCO is on offer at £3 for a 200g jar, I drink Decaff and normally buy the Asda own brand which is £1.49 for 100g so grabbed 2 jars of the Kenco which will last us ages. Free Range extra special Chickens are rolled back to £3 a kilo so picked up 2 large ones for the Freezer, Pork Shoulder £2 a kilo - we shall have that this Sunday as like to alternate the weeks with Chicken, Pork, Lamb & Beef. Free Range eggs are rolled back to £2 for a tray of 15 - hope this is useful for someone.

Off now to slave away in the Kitchen, need to make some Sausage Rolls and bits for Packed Lunches for the rest of the week. Dinner tonight is Chicken curry, using the last of Sunday's happy chicken and bulking it out with veggies. Have a good day everyone.:D

Galaxy863

Just a quick update from me ( I'm still trying to get caught up reading the thread while I can! )

As I'm sure loads of people will be I'm trying to do "healthy eating" now ( I refuse to use the word diet, I'm always doomed to fail if I call it that! ) so went shopping at the weekend and stocked up on loads of fresh fruit, veg etc. Thought this is great no alcohol, fizzy pop, biscuits etc so it shouldn't cost too much.... then I got to the till and it came to a whopping £96.18! :eek:

Thankfully I shouldn't need to buy much more this month as both freezers and all my cupboards are full, I just can't believe how expensive it is to eat healthy though! I think I'll have to see if there's any local markets where I live, the only one I know about is around 30 miles away so by the time I factor in petrol costs its not worth going to that one unfortunately.

On another note does anyone know any good recipes to use up leftover chicken? I did a roast yesterday and only used the breast so still have both legs, wings and whatever I can pick off the carcass to use up. I've tried searching on the forums but never seem to have much luck finding anything ( the ones I come across are menu ideas but don't have the recipe to go with it ).