June 2009 Grocery Challenge

little_miss_moneysaver_3

Morning all,

Just updating my totals, so far
Food £48.10/£80, H/hold £11/£15 and toiletries £1.58/£5 TOTAL £60.68/£100
Out of the food total £17.70 was on fruit and veg, (including the 12 tins of chopped toms) :eek:
NSD 5 today, am going away next week so am running things down at the mo.

XSpender

Morning

I was hoping to get to Saturday without spending anything but will have to go and get some more milk today:mad:.

I think I went a bit daft on the aldi 49p fruit at the weekend and we have loads left, shouldn't need anything else this week but I don't think there will be enough fruit to last into next week unfortunatley as OH eats loads of it.

I am hoping to spend no more than £18 between now and the 25th. If I make it I will be over the moon as this is my smallest budget but this time I have included takeaways, food when working away and beer. If it works I will cut it down to £175 next month as we did a £95 shop the first week of the month and I am expecting to only spend £50 at the most the first week of july.

Sorry for the ramble:o

XS

mouche

I'm not doing as well as I was hoping to but still under control. We didn't need anything last weekend except some lamb and tagine paste for OH to make his yummy lamb tagine (he uses the paste as a base and adds stuff to make something quite fab). Unfortunately, M&S didn't have tagine paste and so we HAD to go to Asda to check if they did.

They didn't but somehow we came out having bought £10 ish worth of stuff. To be fair, most of it was reduced fruit (got 3 snack packs and one box of cherries, one box of blueberries and one package of red grapes for £1), reduced snacks, and chicken for the Thai green curry we decided on instead of the lamb.

Then on Monday, OH had to go to the local Indian area to buy stuff for his work (he's the head chef at a big hotel and they're having an Indian night tonight) and he came back with £15 worth of stuff for home. I can't control him!

So that leaves us with approx. £65 gone from our £100 budget. On the plus side, the freezer is absolutely bursting with batch cooking and ingredients. So I've put a ban on all cooking and grocery shopping till we reduce that a bit.

SunnyGirl

Not been on much so apologies if I've missed thanking anyone.

Karen Please, please post the recipe & icing technique that you use for your cupcakes they are so pretty .... looks for a begging smiley .... no this will have to do :happyhear

I've been shopping this morning so have updated my signature. I'm still pleased with how it's going at the lower budget this month & I'm trying hard to keep spends down to a minimum. 2 shopping weeks left for me after this month although DS2's birthday is on the 23 June so I'll be buying a few bits for his birthday cake - mostly blue/silver decorations.

I have temporarily solved the going to the shops for milk & bread problem. My Mum has a massive chest freezer in the garage that she hardly uses (she'd give it to me if I had anywhere to store it) so I'm buying 6 lots of 6 pints of milk and 8 loaves when I do the weekly shop & she's freezing the excess for me. It's working well at the moment as her & my Dad pop down most days & to get to the local town they have to drive past the end of our street. It's saving money as DH or the children can't buy 'extras' when they nip to the shop for milk or bread.

Hope everyone is getting on okay too there's certainly a lot of underspent budgets so far :T Catch up later.

XSpender

Just popped in to update my sig.

£4.52 spent in Mr S on 4pts skimmed, 4 chicken pies and 3 mini pizzas for my lunches with salad this week. OH has invited BIL over for tea and watch footie and I did not have enough of one thing to make 2 meat dinners for the men hence the pie purchase.

My plan next week is to rubberise a chicken if I have any budget left. Being a veggie I have never cooked a whole chicken before. My friend has told me how to roast it, my mum has given me a pie recipe and I just need to work out how to turn the cacass into soup.

Got a little bottle of Newcastle Brown, crisps, sandwich and squash in my race goody bag last night so that was tea sorted!

XS

slowandsteady_2

Afternoon all, spent £10 today on bits from the market but used 'my' money cos didnt remember to invade my GC pot,as only went town to pay a bill:o and cos i bought some treats, as well as loo rolls, biscuits, air freshener, 2 cooked ham shanks from the cooked meat shop and small meat and potato pie for my dinner from Sawyers. Was quite pleased at how far that £10 stretched!:D

Got my dad coming for tea tonight and am using some lamb chops from the freezer, veg thats sat in the fridge and some yummy Jersey Royal tatties. Am gonna cut the shanks up and use through the week and probably pass some on to my dad.

Will no doubt have to replenish milk tommorow as the mysterious milk monster has got through another 6 pints in about 3 days:mad:

Oh joys!

booskyeboo

Thanks Scotsaver the flapjacks are brilliant :T

SavvyStudent_2

Hello all! It's been a (very) long time since I last logged on! I'm sorry to say with revising for finals the grocery challenge so far this year has gone to pot. I think I'll need to be taken off the annual list, lurk for a while, assess the finances and rejoin in july if that's ok? Pleased to say that after finals technically I'm no longer a savvy student, now just a plain old savvy person!

Compliments on the flapjack recipe somebody (sorry, I can't remember who, but kudos if it was you!) posted on here a few days ago - made it for the OH to try and placate his sweet tooth without spending any money at the shops, made them with a load of porridge oats and other ingredients from the storecupboard and they're absolutely wonderful! I'm glad to use up the oats too as the OH and I went on a 'healthy eating' kick a few months ago and tried to kid ourselves that we like porridge, bought loads of oats... turns out we don't, so I've been trying to get rid of them subtly into crumble topping etc, but flapjacks use loadssss at once x

miss_cupcake_2

XSpender wrote: »

Just popped in to update my sig.


My plan next week is to rubberise a chicken if I have any budget left. Being a veggie I have never cooked a whole chicken before. My friend has told me how to roast it, my mum has given me a pie recipe and I just need to work out how to turn the cacass into soup.



XS

I rubberised my first chicken this week and i've been amazed at how far it's stretching! I'm not a huge meat-eater but it's certainly kept my boyfriend happy and I even managed to make a really tasty lentil and veg soup. It was really very easy

rockie4

Mid-month update and I've spent £118.27 so far:T

I'm trying really hard this month to stay out of the supermarkets (I send OH for bits with just enough money:D so he can't buy any extras)

We have a freezer full of stuff so I'm hoping to get by now with just milk, bread and fruit/veg.
Hoping that next month we should be getting veg from the allotment which will cut the food bill a bit :rolleyes: