February 2009 Grocery Challenge

rockie4

Just updated my signature:eek: I was a bit shocked when I totted up my receipts but I'm pretty well stocked up and should manage with just buying milk, fruit and veg.

Spent half the afternoon cooking, made homity pies :drool: for tea (plus 1 for the freezer) and a big pan of pasta sauce. Tomorrow I'll make some Twinks and a veggie shepherds pie for in the week, we've got GS for the day so he can 'help' me :doh:

Nothing planned for valentines, OH is asleep on the sofa!

TheBees

I am soooo cheesed off!:mad: I made a sausage casserole in the SC yesterday using the recipe on this thread, and just had to heat it up tonight. Served it up with mashed potato/swede, sweetcorn, broccoli and peas. A nice healthy meal I thought and the actual casserole had an onion, tin of tomatoes, a grated carrot and a grated parsnip in it. The trouble is DS(15) decided to pick out all the nice sausage from the sauce, ate the mash (not realising there was swede in it- ha ha) and then picked at the broccoli and sweetcorn moaning that he was full up! At his age I shouldn't be having to hide vegetables in food and he should be capable of eating a variety of vegetables. I swear he's getting worse at eating lately and would appreciate anyones advice. I even thought about taking him to the greengrocers and making him pick out a selection of vegetables that he WILL eat and then serving up a whole week of what I call VEGETABLE meals.... Toad in hole and veg, shepherds pie and veg, meat pie and veg, chops and veg etc.... no nice things like bolognese or curry just boring veg meals until he gets the message!!!:rotfl: I just feel so used when I've taken the trouble to make a nice meal and he won't eat it.

kj*daisy

I'm not doing well at all, got another veg box for £12 next friday so only got £20 left out of total for other food. Should be OK if I can avoid going to a supermarket as spent a fortune in sainsburys yesterday - although did get alot of meat and fish to freeze.(And a very nice duck that we've had roast for tea!)

Going to meal plan to make it last now!

carolt2

Flat_Eric wrote: »

Someone mentioned in a post back along about old fashioned (cheap) cleaning tips - is there a specific thread for this and can someone point me in the right direction?

Here is a link to the flylady thread, about weekly cleaning
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=1476587
And the complete indexed collection of cleaning
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?p=4098550#post4098550
stardrops, http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/....html?t=172073

JayneC

Hi all,

Well went to Tesco for my 'few bits' and managed to spend £45+:eek:

Now I've gone over budget and still got to get to 24th before I can start again.

Must only buy bread and milk until then to minimise the damage - feeling a bit annoyed with myself but wasn't aprticularly frivilous. Bought a bottle of wine (less than £4) and some nice ice cream (£2) for Valentine tea but the rest was 'normal' stuff.

Must do better next time....

Hope everyone's hAving a good eve,

Jayne x

rosieben

sparklymessygirl wrote: »

... I am here to brag that I found a copy of Kitchen in the Hills by Elizabeth West in a charity shop for 50p - am so happy. I GASPED when I saw it and got a kind but bewildered look from another shopper

Sparkly

And brag you should! I just gasped when I saw the price of the new one on Amazon looks really interesting, enjoy your bargain!

No shopping for me again today, but I've been offered a lift to town on Tuesday so I'll be spending this evening writing my shopping list :j Can anyone give me clue as to what's on offer at S'fields or Morrisons? TIA

what a sad life I must lead when I get excited over a shopping trip

Julimk

Another NSD here, and should be tomorrow, as I have to run around taking DD’s friend, who is here for a sleepover tonight, home & then DD to her Dad’s. So no time for shopping!

Still have about 30 HM dinner portions in the freezer with one week to go & only me here. Have finally gotten around to doing the meal plan for next month & can make another 60+ HM meal portions from the meat that is in the freezer, plus a whole chicken (FR) for a lovely roast dinner, left overs & stock from the carcass and f&v.

I have costed this out on mysupermarket at around £25. Adding in bits for lunches & basics like milk, eggs, cheese, butter etc. should not come to more than £50.

I should then be in a position to only buy meat when it is on special offer or whoopsied, ready to use that for the meal plan for the month after!

laurasbump

Aaagh! I've just spent £151 at Asda. I knew I should have stuck to online shopping. I spent £50 on baby stuff - clothes n stuff. Looking at the receipt, I spent at least £40 on items I didn't need, including a blinkin' Pedegg, as seen on the JML adverts for 10 quid!! I'm such a sucker. So that's £90 I needn't have spent.

I've planned meals for the week, so other than buying milk mid-week I shouldn't need to buy anything more. So then, I only have to get next week's shop next Saturday. I'll have to tell OH to curb spending too as he keeps coming home with the odd plastic bag full of goodies, however it is from his spending money and not from the budget but that's not the point.

I think leaving the baby home with OH was a mistake too. If I take him I have to whizz round before he gets bored, hence the reason I'd shifted to online shopping. It also means I can't browse. Today I took 90 minutes to wander round the store.

Eek! Really want to stick to the budget. Maybe I should take the baby clothes out of the equation. We'll see for now.

Sorry for the rant, need to put things in writing to get it clear in my head.

angelatgraceland

Could you return some of the unwanted items next week for a refund? Asda are pretty good if you take your receipt.

mummyyof5

Ended up spending more than I thought today

£2.00 on eggs
£1.65 on veg
£2.99 on Woolite not vvery mse but everything else fades my DDs black jeans and she goes mad (any ideas)
£8.30 on a chicken,bacon and sausages.
£1.25 on pizza bases
and£2.55 on milkshake powder and jaffa cakes my LO loves these and were a treat for him.

Total now up to £256.73.

A NSD tomorrow though:T