November 2009 Grocery Challenge

XSpender

I should manage 2 NSDs today and tomorrow as I am away but will need to pick up some fruit, cheese and oil on Sunday.

I have planned a huge batch cooking day on Sunday as DH salary is down about £150 this month and we have other expenses to meet so I need to try and save some of the GC money for other things.

Have a great weekend everyone

thisismoneysaving

I'm going to join in with the GC for the first time too!
I think £160 should be managable for our first go, we have quite a bit of food in (see my thread about meal planning!) and I'm going to try to use this up & stock the freezer with hm ready meals for the two of us.
Included will be all food and household spends (shouldn't need petrol this month).
Wish me luck....!

Beki

Hi, can you put me down for £192 For november please?

I thought i might be able to have a cheapy month this month, but i've just written down the basics we need and i had NO idea we spent this much on just the basics :cool: I don't know how we can cut it down either? This is my list for the month (bearing in mind we have 1.5 large chest freezers full of home-reared pork to be going on with!!!)

(we also have a good supply of washing powder/cleaning stuff/dishwasher tabs)

Coffee - £8
Milk - £25
Butter/marge - £12
F+V - £32 (farm shop is v. cheap)
Meat - £12 (need a change from pork every so often)
Fish - £16 (although, we don't strictly need this, so could be cut out?)
Pasta/rice - £5
Tinned goods - £12
Flour/sugar/eggs - £20
Pets - £50

I think i'm going to have a good look through the recipes and make a meal plan.. also, we have a lot of teabags so maybe we could cut our coffee consumption down by half?

Milk.. hmmm, this is a tricky one as the children (4 and 10) don't actually drink a lot of milk.. maybe 1 glass every couple of days?... but they have it in cereal and me and OH have it in coffee/tea. I'm wondering if we can start being quite careful with it, if we could cut that down by maybe 1/3rd?

F+V i can't really cut down on... we get it cheaply at the local farm shop anyway (the other day we got a week's worth for just over £5!).

Pasta etc... unless we want to eat potatoes every night i can't see a way of cutting that down either :cool:

We have four chooks but they're not producing eggs at the moment so i need to start buying eggs again (for baking and for maybe a cheap dinner one night?)... also i need to buy flour for bread making and pastry making. Sugar's for coffee and baking.

Can't cut back on the pets... Dog food, chook food and 1 bale of shavings for pony per week... it's not as if we're buying treats for them either.. it's just the bare basics...

Does anyone have any ideas? I'm going to trawl through the recipes on this page to see if i can find some good pork recipes so we can have a bit of variety...

xx

GemmaBuckle

Same again for me please - £150. I haven't actually totted up my October receipts yet, but I have a horrible feeling I've failed dismally! Never mind, will try harder this month...

indiasdad

mark88man wrote: »

Hey there - we have similar family situations, but you are doing better than me - I will be watching (but not in a stalker way) and learning

Good luck

Admittedly two of our kids are very young (1 and 2 years old) so don't eat huge amounts of food as yet but they make up for it in other ways eg nappies, wipes, washing powder (they both have excema so we are really limited to what washing liquids we can buy, the only suitable ones are usually the most expensive)

I was really inspired by watching the Economy Gastronomy series that was on TV a few weeks ago and the idea of making bedrock recipes for the week eg cooking a chicken for our sunday lunch and then using any pickings from it for packed lunches, using the carcass to make a stock that could be used to make a rissotto and so on.

If there are any vegetable trimmings left over from the rissotto then those would go straight back into the pot to make another batch of stock etc.

jay20043

Hello! Can I join in again please, another £80 for us again this month.

I learnt alot last month which was the first month of the challenge.

1. Never send o/h shopping, he spends too much
2. I need to meal plan and use whats in the cupboards
3. Use the recipes on the first page as im getting bored of the same old stuff
4. Keep shopping for whoopsies
5. Find other things that are "nice" not wine, crisps and sweets.

Hopefully, I can get in under £50 this month as we are going up to Scotland for the weekend in a couple of weeks and the £30 would be nice towards petrol.

Little_Miss_Naughty

Hi All

Well, my baby is due within the week and we are down to one salary, so this month i am going to try and not spend any more than £150.

I have a good supply of cleaning goods and the freezer has quite abit of stuff in it so should be ok.

helen_jelly

Little Miss Naughty - Good luck with the baby

jay20043 - have a nice time in Scotland, I love Scotland, where are you going?

Budgets done up to and including Carolt2 - thank you everyone

Hi and welcome to the newbies and to the returners, its nice to see so many people on here helping each other out. Please ask any questions you have, lots of helpful people here and check out the recipes on page 1 - they are great

Shopping this afternoon, thats if we have any money left, the heating has broke and as I type there is a man here fixing it, cheaply, hopefully!!!!:eek::eek::eek::eek::eek::eek:

See you all later
Helen x

Kittikins

Hello, I failed miserably in October, daren't tot it all up so am upping the budget to £100 in November please. My month starts today as it's payday, but we're away until Sunday, so fingers crossed!

WelshWoofer

Hello all!
Just been to Mr T's for a bumper haul armed with my Clubcard vouchers, an £8 off voucher they gave me last week and a £5 off voucher for Morrisons from teh NOTW and they took the lot! The bill came down by £33! Result!
I also now have a full to the brim freezer, well stocked cupboards, a bursting fridge and enough laundry and toiletry products to last a good few weeks. They also gave me another £8 off voucher for next time. Very pleased with myself.

The bill came to £63 after all the discounts so that's what's going on my total.
Off to sort out the final meal plan now as I changed a few items as I was shopping..

Happy shopping all!