December 2009 Grocery Challenge

SunnyGirl

A NSD today mainly because I haven't been out of the house :rotfl: We have had our car parked up on the drive at my Mum & Dad's for the past month, as it's due for MOTing, taxing & insuring, and with DH being out of work we can't afford it. It'll save on running costs for a while though at least :T One thing that I have noticed is that as we now have to walk or use public transport (I get a £2 taxi home from the supermarket with the weekly shop) the NSD's have increased massively. When I had the car I would nip into a shop for milk or bread and end up seeing bargains that I couldn't resist Now if we need milk or bread I'll ask whoever is going out to bring some back, if I'm not planning on going out, and they only bring back what I ask for so it's saving money. I hadn't realised how much is spent nipping into shops after picking the kids up from school either :eek: Now they walk so we don't get the usual 'Can I have a KitKat cos I'm starving' routine

It's a tough month is December so let's all keep up the no shopping for as long as we can!

carolt2

Evening Everyone,
Popped in to update spends and catch up on thread.
Spent just over a third of our budget for December.
More or less got christmas sorted and hopefully just need to get fresh F&V, milk etc christmas week. Fingers crossed.


Signature updated.


CW18 what included in the £4 meal deal? I have not seen it advertised

cw18

Still no NSDs for me this month - mainly 'cos I'm picking up Mr M whoopsies on my way out of work every day :eek:

Today fetched

2 x pack of 12 mini C&O rolls (the sausage roll type). Reduced from £1 to 25p each (1 pack gone tonight, the other is in the freezer for Boxing Day)
4 x individual steak pies. On offer at 2 for £1 (instead of 59p each), paid 15p each
1 x pack of 4 fruit smoothies (way of boosting fruit intake as I can feel a cold coming on). Reduced from £2.49 to 59p

But the best bargain - which has solved my Christmas dinner dilema if I can find freezer space, or will be cooked up tomorrow if not - was an Organic Chicken. Currently 50p off a kg (so down to £5.49/kg), and should have been £7.85. Cost me a 'whopping' £1.79, and should be plenty big enough to feed the 3 of us who'll be here on the day :T

cw18

carolt2 wrote: »

CW18 what included in the £4 meal deal? I have not seen it advertised

2 x 600g tubs of soup (Mr M 'The Best' Tomato and Basil - which I'm not actually sure we'll use!)
1 900g Pork Loin Joint (priced up at £6.50 as an individual item)
1 pack veg - potatoes, carrots and sprouts. I heard several people saying they'd need more spuds, but plenty for 2 of us as mash or more if done as jackets.
1 trifle (600g size - again not something I eat, so may get passed to DD and GDs)

Shelf price if bought individually is £12, so an £8 saving


Offer is subject to availability, and ends Saturday

oceanspirit

I had an opportunity to shop yesterday so I bought several things for Christmas day breakfast which are now in the freezer plus some whoopsied veg to top me up.

All I need now is some yoghurt and milk for the breakfast nearer the time and perhaps some more veg.

Spent £9.28 yesterday so my total spend to date is £30.62. I was hoping to come in £10 under budget but that's not going to happen.

x_raphael_xx

Another £9.63 spent today. Needed some basics & stuff for work lunches. Got a couple of nice woopsies too. Total of £43.15 spent so far, £26.85 left.

poppy-glos

Was aiming for a nsd today but was drawn into mxs for lunch as was near one and usually i'm not! so £3.50 spent on hoisin duck wrap! did a bit of money saving in that i drank the water and ate the fruit i had taken from home too rather than buying 3 or 4 things which i may have done before joining on here. will update my sig with spends in a minute.

:kisses:, dd still up so the pic on left is her contribution my post tonight.

Long_tall_sally

Well another spend today on wine. Signature has been updated. I am really going to try & avoid the shops for a few days now. If I could just get to half way through the month without spending any more, I would feel that there would be more hope of reaching the monthly target so for now, I am just going to focus on having nsdays to get me to the 15th or 16th.

Flat_Eric

My budget seems to have taken quite a hit this week

Im not too concerned however because Im well stocked now on cat food, loo roll and booze ("the essentials") :rotfl:

The tesca voucher saga got sorted, I went into my local store and the cashier scanned it ok :T so got the £3.50 off I don't know why it wouldn't work online.

I was pondering either a tesca or an a)da home delivery order this weekend but Ive decided against it. This is partly because I haven't had time to shop for it ! and because I am adopting a whole new approach to my grocery shopping.

I have shopping options of a metro tescadiddles, a metro sainsborys as well as a larger metro sainsborys plus somerfeeld / now co0p ? and c0stcuttter.

So the only shop I don't have easy access to is a)da which isn't the end of the world when you consider what my other options are. So until Jan, 6 tins of my cat's favourite food is £2.50 in c0stcuttter, 4 tins of tinned tomatoes only £1.89 in the same shop. somerfeeld / co0p - 3kg king edward spuds for £2 (£1.40 each or 2 for £2)

Although its a bit inconvenient, im shopping according to which store has the best offer on the product i want. So c0stcuttter its cat food, beer, wine and tinned tomatoes, s0merfeeld its loo roll, sirloin steak and spuds and tesca its anything else. visited c0stcuttter tonight and got 3 bottles of hardies red vino for £9.99 (the really nice one with the koala stamp on it), the tinned tomatoes as mentioned plus the cat food. 4 bottles of bitter for the OH for £5. The only thing I overpaid for really was the McccaIn chips but thats what we fancied for tea and I know that if I didnt buy them and had a home delivery order, I would have spent much much more..... i need to get over the fact that just because I fancy tinned cherry tomatoes, normal tinned tomatoes will do. Im sure if I did a blind taste test, I wouldn't be able to tell the difference.

hopefully be able to itemise freezer on sunday. slowly using stuff up from my inside freezer (but it still seems to be full) but have a whole chest freezer to work through too (and I seem to conveniently forget about it) :rolleyes:

Hope to have a quiet couple of weeks before xmas so that i can stick within my budget but won't worry too much if i go over because hopefully the saving will be reflected next month with all the bulk buying I have been doing.

sorry to have waffled on....

Kitchenbunny

Another NSD today. I'm going to try and get to the weekend without spending anything, then I'll probably have to buy a few things. I have to plan the food for a party next weekend, so that's another thing to worry about. Bleh. Still, it gets me closer to attaining my goal of (((gasp))) actually meeting a grocery challenge target!

We've had to rearrange tea plans for the rest of the week due to things not going as planned (been there before ). Now, we had a frozen pizza dug out from the bottom of the freezer as we didn't get in til late and had to go practically straight out again. So, the lamb mince I took out of the freezer last night now won't get eaten until Saturday - it'll be ok, won't it? I haven't opened the pack or anything...

Kitchenbunny xx