December 2009 Grocery Challenge

SunnyGirl

No spend days over the weekend for us too :T and I'm only going to the library this afternoon so hopefully it'll be a NSD today as well.

I'm going to do the Christmas Day roast potatoes, parsnips & carrots today and freeze them then it's another job done My Mum is making the stuffing (lemon & rosemary) and the pigs in blankets for me so the day itself shouldn't be too hectic.

BigMummaF

tiggr212004 wrote: »

....2 for £5 on trays of chicken and lamb so I can get a meal at least out of a tray.... And even some left overs for my hubby 2 take 2 wrk as he is nights perm....
I just find it difficult cooking with leftovers as I am limited to the number of veg I can add to a meal.....

We've got a couple of butchers who do those tray deals; some of them can be good can't they! Usually tho, I think it's cheaper to get a whole chicken rather than portions. If you don't want to cook it all in one go you can easily cut it in two with a good pair of kitchen scissors, or joint it by taking off the legs & wings & cook the rest as usual, or take the breast off too.
More often than not I cook mine complete as a roast dinner one day, then strip the meat & use it for:-
a "casserole" which is extremely difficult :whistle: cuz it involves opening a tin of condensed soup :rotfl:& that gets served with pasta or rice..guess you could use noodles too if the mood takes you. I add sweetcorn, peppers, etc cover the dish with a bit of foil & warm it thru for about 40mins in the oven.
wraps with sliced raw peppers, bit of lettuce, sweetcorn relish, etc on tortilla. Keep meaning to try a variation using pancakes & putting them in a dish with a white sauce but haven't got there yet
a pie with assorted veg or even ham/bacon & again a tin of condensed soup. You can sometimes get away with only a 'lid' too, particularly if you make a suet crust :drool:
rissoles! a type of fishcake mix where you mince up any cooked meat & add boiled potato, herbs, etc. Form into little sausage shapes/ fishcake shapes etc, roll in breadcrumbs & shallow fry or bake.
even the bones can make a lovely stock for soups & sauces. MrsMac has some lush soup recipes on the first page.

We had a little lamb shoulder joint from MrM last week [£2:87] & I cooked it in a covered dish with about two inches of water while that day's dinner was in the oven. The next day I diced up the lamb & mixed it with almost cooked cubes of potato & carrot, made a thicker-than-normal gravy from the juices from cooking the lamb the night before & added a bit of dried mint. I rolled out the shortcrust pastry into an oblong & put the meat-n-tattie in the middle, poured on a little gravy & folded over the sides of the pastry to make something looking like a 'plait'. That served up five adult portions, alongside chips & mixed veg. I would have preferred mash but the Offspring were left to their own devices that night :doh:& the oven was on to cook the 'plait'.

As for 'secret' veg...I suggest you invest in a good grater if you haven't got a food processor to do it for you. Swede--the big brown skinned veg some call a turnip --looks very much like carrot once it's cooked & mushrooms can "disappear" altogether. Mince is great for hiding stuff including red lentils, porridge oats, grated veg & is a really versatile meat so you could have it almost every day for a fortnight & eat something different every time.

cw18

We have a LOT of mince based meals (compared to any other one type anyway), and never get complaints from DS as each one is different (spag bol, chille, mince & mash, macaroni casserole......), but I've never try hiding swede. That's one veg I can't stand, and I find it has that strong a flavour I can always tell when it's been added to a meal

I make a thick veg soup using loads of veg types and then blitzing in my blender - but the once I tried it with a very small amount of swede in I almost had to chuck the lot. I'd frozen it in portions while I still had some without swede, and I could tell by taste exactly which batch I'd pulled out for my lunch

yummyhoney

spent €2.80 yesterday on a jar of coffe and a viennetta yum :)update sig now

poppy-glos

morning everyone,
i've been to morrisons this morning tempted by the gravy granule offer, got the gravey granules (2 for one) plus asked for the voucher book, and on 4 tubs of granules and 2 packs of stuffing got another £1.20 off.
Soft flour tortillas 2 for 1 so got some of them, have cooked chicken and some peppers in, and some tortilla seasoning (only use a third of a pack each time as strong, and some onions and cheese so thats tea today done.)
choc fingers 2 for 1 (i think) but checked receipt when i got home and they are charged at £1.39 each, so will present it next time if i remember..
I bought the beautiful glass candles for adult stocking fillers, good value at £1.29 each but on receipt discounted to £1 each on a 'candle offer'.
Diet coke on 2l bottles of 3 for £3 so got that too...
also half price shoer so bought some of that in for xmas

nipped into mr t on way home, got whoopsied mussell meat for 60p a pack, reduced from £1 each, so will add that in next time we have mussells, always alot of 'juice' left over so that'll be fine.

i'm still not doing brilliantly at buying only reduced bargains or things i need just for today, (given i go to the shops almost daily almost as a social thing!!!). bought tinned fruit and curry sauce today and have both already in!

Planning a january delivery from sainsbugs and going to order alot of their basics things to trial. having said that looking on my supermarket the deliverys for mr t between xmas and new year all appear to be £3.50 rather than rising to £6 so maybe will need to weigh up and have the sainsbugs one at full price later.... decisions, decisions....

have a lovely day everyone

thisismoneysaving

Hi everyone - hope you all had a great weekend! I managed one NSD (Sunday - working OT) which I'm fairly pleased with. It's weekly shop day today - tesc0s as always. I'm planning on eating meat from the freezer only this week which shouldn't be hard, I could open a butchers up, I think!

Does anyone have any nice savory christmas snacky recipes they wouldn't mind sharing with me, please??

TIA xx

XSpender

I haven't been too well this weekend so GC budget has taken a beating and I am about £5 over. Misplaced the receipt for Mr M as well which is annoying, hope it will turn up:mad:

Did my shop on Thursday at Mr S and was really pleased with my £20 shop as I got all we needed up to the 'Christmas' shop then DH wanted to go to Mr M for some beer and we ended up spending another £25:eek: although this included some stamps (different budget) and the christmas turkey. Sunday saw another £4 down the swanny on bread and rubbish because I was too ill to make any in the BM and to cap it all DH spent £4 on a kebab! He has been wanting one for ages and I gave in as I was too under the weather to cook.:o

I will update the signature when I find the receipt but I am in damage limitation mode now.:eek:

Winged_one

I have a huge jump in spends over this past weekend. I ended up spending €23 odd in the F&V shop, €15 odd in Lidl, and €243 odd in Dunnes Stores. I was expecting a large spend alright, but not quite that large.

F&V we needed as we were out of almost everything (and it was a HECK of a lot cheaper there than supermarket). But I have enough for this week (including some salad days for my lunches) and I think enough veg for up to Christmas (apart from Brussels sprouts I must harvest myself next weekend on the plot) in that bag. I might need some extra fruit though, as we are eating ltos these days.

I needed a few "useful bits" in Lidl - chorizo sausage, bacon pieces, edam cheese, and pasatta. And I stupidly forgot to get either a bag of oven chips or any wine there (the merlot at €5.50 is really tasty!). But I can get there during the week for those.

And then I had run out of a load of washing and cleaning things, grocery stores cupboard items, and the Christmas specials were all out too (so great for stocking up on things we use anyway, that I can use for the next 2-3 months). We tend to use cans of soft drinks most of the year (as we drink so little that the bottles go flat), so I buy lots when the multipack offers are on. And a couple of actual bottles for Christmas itself when we are likely to have visitors and drink them ourselves too. I only bought 1 jar of Hellman's mayo (the 50% extra free) - I try to buy them at Christmas and mid-summer when on that special so I never pay fullprice for it. That kind of thing. Which is one of the reasons my December budget is larger than normal. (I also was a bit bold and got a box of snowballs, and one Afternoon Tea tin of biccies as it was half the price and good to eat until next November).

I also had to buy a number of items to make life easier for the next fortnight. I have lots of HG veggies in the freezer, and cookie dough for Christmas events. But very little of my normal emergency dinners and easy-prep stuff like chicken breasts. So I bought a pack of 2 chicken kievs (to eat with homemade potato wedges), pork sausages with apple (for eating grilled with mash, or making into a saussie stew) and 2 lamb shanks (crock pot tomorrow with cannellini beans and tomatoes). And I have ideas and the fixings for another 4/5 easy dinners as well which aren't as timebound - gorgonzola pasta, macaroni chese, chorizo potato bake, nasi goreng - so I can use those in the next fortnight or keep them for after Christmas altogether.

So I should only have to buy a Sunday roasting joint for next weekend, and the turkey, ham, spiced beef and cream for Christmas, with some bread, milk and veggies to keep us going until then.

Winged_one

Ooops. Just remembered I got the "Dine in for 2 for €12.50" in M&S on Friday night - so €25 on that and a few other bits (like a scotch egg for DD to eat in the car as we were dreadfully late leaving work and I couldn't ask her to wait til we got home, she is only 3) added another few euros. So I must find that receipt as well and add that onto sig also. (But we do have a yummy steak dinner to look forward to tonight as a result!!).

taka

Ohhhh its getting close! I've spent £1276.08 out of a possible £1320 annual spend so I have the grand total of £43.92 left for the year! :eek: I need to spend ~£25 for the rest of the year I think. However, if I spend £20 in MrS on or before the 16th I get £2 off a £20 spend in the week up till Xmas so I might stock up a bit for the new year as I'm dropping the budget from £1320 to £1050... :eek: That would leave me ~£5 for anything else! :eek: Me setting foot only twice maybe 3 times in a grocery shop in the next 17 days would be a miracle... :eek: Wish me luck! :rotfl: