March 2009 Grocery Challenge

egon

NSD here today. We do need more fruit, but I am trying to hold out for 2 more days....

Big THANK YOU to everyone for coming up with ideas for the dinosaur party. All suggestions have been copied onto my list.

Savvy_sewing

Problem I am having is that when I go away for the weekend to my BF's I find that my kids dont eat the food in the fridge and I have to throw it out. Think that the harder I try to reduce the cost of food and the wastage I seem to be throwing out even more. Complete cucumber was mush in the fridge when I got back today. Several carrots gone off too.! Fresh bread brought on Friday was still in the fridge. Solid of course! (Why was it in the fridge and not the bread bin?????) so I will have to make a bread and butter pudding? Grrr kids!

S_Wales_Saver

Hello all

Well got my bits and pieces (£38.16 of bits and pieces ) I did get all I needed, and also some reduced pies in M&S (DGSs favourite) 3 packs normally £2.29 each, for £5.00. They freeze well and cook from frozen. I [EMAIL="don@t"]don't[/EMAIL] buy prepared food usually, but these are good and easy.

As I've decided to buy all happy chicken, I think I'll also buy the Oakham chicken on special (£3.00 off) As my meal plan is done for this month, this will be stockpiling and not count in this month's budget.

Miss Liquorice well done on your test. :beer: (but not if your driving obviously :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: )

tjp70

Hi.

Just popped in to update my signature and I've spent half an hour on here already! This site is so addictive.

March grocery spend currently at £74.55 so not doing too bad.

Tracy

Steel_2

cw18 wrote: »

So I've an extra mouth to feed for five weeks, and a lot of meals in the next 3 weeks were using up 'the last 2 portions' from the freezer - so I'm going to have to hope the freezer space can cope with me cooking up another batch of 4 portions (which I'll have to stretch to 5, so I can use 3 and freeze 2). The rest of the meals were using up the last of things like beef grillsteaks or chicken kievs -- neither of which I want to have to go and buy another packet of, as that will leave me with odd numbers until he's home for his next period of leave (Can't do them twice while he's home, as younger DS will complain about having too many meals repeated in such a short space of time - and so will I :rolleyes2)/

Could you make up the third meal with cheapy pasta or rice dishes? I have this occasionally when I end up making three portions and end up with one left in the freezer. Sometimes I find cheap veggie meals like cauliflower cheese grills in the freezer sections and I have those while hubby has the third portion.

Well a visit to Mr T set us back £15.90 and I left quite angry. We had to buy our usual 12 pack of Kitekat for the next five days and it's gone up since a week ago from £4.70 to £6.09 :mad: We ended up buying Felix instead at £5.83. I only have a small grocery budget every month and buy 5-6 packs of cat food per month so that's an unexpected extra £5.65 - £6.78 a month.

cw18

Steel wrote: »

Could you make up the third meal with cheapy pasta or rice dishes? I have this occasionally when I end up making three portions and end up with one left in the freezer. Sometimes I find cheap veggie meals like cauliflower cheese grills in the freezer sections and I have those while hubby has the third portion.

DD suggested using '2 portions of this' and '1 portion of that', but in most cases I think it would result in the use of at least one extra heat source (due to the meals I have in the freezer) - and that goes against the grain when my electricity useage will already shoot up with him home (laptop / X-box / appliance charging) despite all my hard work to reduce it over the last 5 months :mad:

As long as my freezer can take more portions being squeezed in, it just means the month with 'no cooking from scratch' for me and younger DS will be that bit closer

I'm off now to do a totally fresh inventory of my freezers, and will then try and re-do my meal plan while I'm watching TV a bit later.......

fletch3163

Hi all

Meal planning looks like working for us again this week. Had spaghetti carbonara for tea. DH added Aldi mushrooms (fried in garlic butter) and a 1p Asda baguette from the freezer turned into garlic bread. The boy's learning!! Further good news is there's enough leftovers for my lunch tomorrow.

Yesterday saw another quick jaunt to a shop for bread, milk, Carnation milk and diet coke so that's another £8 added . I have most stuff in for dinners, etc so I still wonder why I spend so much.

I've also discovered I love crackling:eek: . I was about to throw it out when I decided to give it a try. STUPID, STUPID MISTAKE!! Yes it's hard pork fat but my God it's lovely.

I'm kind of still trying to reconcile with spending £80 odd on stuff when I "thought" I had all bases covered with the freezer content. So, in my own fashion I've worked out that three people, having 3 meals per day for 9 days = 81 meals. 81 meals for £86 = £1 per meal, give or take:p . Gosh, a daily average is a nice way to look at it. And, if I don't spend any more money this week then the daily average will go down.

Oh, reminds me, had my third NSD today. Husband's off for 2 days so the ball might well be on the slates

Atalanta

Hmmm not sure I am going to do too well this month as I've already accounted for £285.62 and it's only 9th .... though that does include 4 fruit and veg (and eggs) boxes for the month which I've added in already, and the freezer is fairly well stocked.

PennyGrabber

Sounds like people are doing well. I'm impressed with myself at the number of NSDs I've managed to fit in this month, considering I'm so addicted to shopping! I've started making alist on the inside of my pantry door of things I'm running out of through the month, and that way, if I really NEED to go shopping (like when 'D'H has the children, I can take that list rather than wander aimlessly and buy total crap!

I still don't know why I'm buying anything at all though, as my house is so full of food it's bordering on a foodbank! And there's only me, a 4yr old and a 2yr old! Damn those 24hr supermarkets!

Aah, feel better now. I think it's the fact I've given up chocolate for Lent, but I feel really ranty lately!!

I'll go now, before I depress you all even further!

PG x

Toonie

I'm going away tomorrow for a couple of weeks, so will not be updating for a while. Have updated sig with spends today (milk and bread) and look forward to having a break. Fingers crossed when we come back there won't be too many spends until next month, as we've still got a full larder.