January 2010 Grocery Challenge

jackieglasgow

poppy-glos wrote: »

not sure if i should have bought the nut roast and cous cous from approved foods (may have wasted £2 on 20 packets of food!), the nut roast i made one lot and didn't like it, and the cous cous i haven't fancied trying yet...

[QUOTE]

The nut roast I might be able to help with, I make it up and finely chop some onion and finely grate some carrot through it, along with some potato or anyother veg needing used up, and sone chilli, or 5 spice. Cook it in individual protions in some puff pastry and you have a veggie pasty type thing, or make it into a big roll and wrap it in pastry like a beef wellington, and serve with veggie gravy and veggies.

The couscous, if it's flavoured, I mix half and half with plain couscous as I usually find the flavour too strong. I like it with Halloumi and grilled vegetables or even the veg on it's own.

tiptoes

I'm going to give it another go please as I couldnt keep on top of the buget this month but OH was randomly spending on alcohol and take aways so wellover buget here. I'm setting my buget at £300 for Feb please Mrs M this is for two adults (should really be three as OH eats enough for for at least two he has all his meals in a large serving bowl:o) 1teenager, 1 picky eater and 1 dog.
This is to included all food and drink and cleaning products,

angelatgraceland

Oh crikes-just got on after a few days and Im 10 pages behind! I will try to skim through some tonight. Should have been a nsd day today but spent £3.50 on hospital carpark and £3 on books I bought from the W.i. or perhaps it was the WRVS at the hospital. I always buy some-shame I didnt remember to take along my old ones(charity shop trip awaiting).
Decided that including the fence panels and roof bitumen in my grocery challenge is really unrealistic as I didnt do it last year and Ive kept same budget of 6k for the year so Im readjusting my totals later tonight.
In view of this I went to Asda the other day and stocked up-we were feeling rather deprived to be fair. Got hubby a couple of pairs of jeans-just the £4 per pair ones to replace his tatty gardening/painting/DIY ones and a cheap top for myself for work(£6. The total was just under £100 and then I had to get fuel. I think I will just scrape inside my budget this month now-I will update later.

angelatgraceland

jackieglasgow wrote: »

Right, I lost track of my NSD's after a good start, but as you'll see from my siggy, I still have £8.95 left for the month. I'm sure I lost a couple of bread/milk receipts for the month, but will write them off. Hubby has gotten much better at keeping hold of the receipts now, too, which should help in future. Although I'm not ready to declare yet, I have decided to up the budget for February to include mine and Oh's lunch money for work, and petrol, too. So I am setting a £300 for February budget, which will be a real reign in, now that I have the grocery only spending under control. We usually go through about £30 a week for fuel alone. This will also include any takeaways etc., which are normally just spent from the current account. I will declare for January on Sunday

Oh I know its off topic but I love your Shaky avatar! Yes-I think including lunch money in the grocery budget is a good idea as yet again it is an area you can make savings. Just taking in a drin rather than buying one with lunch will probably save quite a chunk! Dd went on a school trip toay and was going to buy food at services.:eek: what a dreadful idea! Id bought a couple of reduced chickens yeaterday-one of which I cooked last night so it was chicken and mayo sarnies, crisps and a can of coke today. Didnt cost me more than £1.(about 60p at a guess)
Do think about those lunches-unless of course they are heavily subsidised.

Just rechecked my spens and have removed DIY, andClothes(I will set a budget for those). I have still included petrol for both cars, pocket money, takeaways.
Im keeping a separate total of all spends so that I can add thes in to see what Im spending anually with all of the household bills. I can see a nice new spreadsheet coming up!

[Deleted User]

Not very happy...am so shocked at how much we spend on food...in fact I really can't believe it and I wonder how we find this much money spare?? Total declared for JAN £283.58 !!:eek::mad:

So thats £33.58 over budget for this month and I honestly thought when I set this budget that it was going to be way over estimated....although we have had step daughter with us for 3 weeks out of this month and she is usually only here 2 days a week.

Am going to stick at £250 for Feb please as obviously have a lot of work to do....:(

Am officially banning my self from any midweek trips to Mr T's....even to look at the reduced and manager special aisles (hopefully!)....milk and bread top ups will now be in the responsible hands of OH and I will be starting my Monthly meal planner tonight!!:A

Souk08

Right can you put me down for £65 for feb. That's for me and includes all food for home and work but not cleaning products or booze. Thanks

Pink.

Hi everyone,

Just to let you know that the February Grocery Challenge is up and running here I'll unstick the January thread later today, but feel free to keep posting into it if you want.

Many thanks as always to rosieben, mrsmcawber and helenjelly for all their help. Good luck to all taking part!

Pink

jackieglasgow

angelatgraceland wrote: »

Oh I know its off topic but I love your Shaky avatar! Yes-I think including lunch money in the grocery budget is a good idea as yet again it is an area you can make savings. Just taking in a drin rather than buying one with lunch will probably save quite a chunk! Dd went on a school trip toay and was going to buy food at services.:eek: what a dreadful idea! Id bought a couple of reduced chickens yeaterday-one of which I cooked last night so it was chicken and mayo sarnies, crisps and a can of coke today. Didnt cost me more than £1.(about 60p at a guess)
Do think about those lunches-unless of course they are heavily subsidised.

Thanks - I'm not really a fan anymore, but my OH calls it my "dirty secret" so I thought it would be funny when Zippy persuaded me I needed an avatar! As for lunches, I usually spend about £10 at work a week, and the food is subsidised but cr*p, so I've decided to be much stricter with myself about cooking and making packups, which I seem to have gotten out of the habit of doing. OH is another story though. The fussiest man in the UK, I don't know what to do about his, he doesn't have access to mcrowave etc., and will tire of soup quickly, but we'll get there in the end. Thanks for the words of encouragement. X:)

huston_kw

Just tallied up and so far spent just over 110 pound that's for food, laundry & cleaning.

So will most definitely be under for January.

keys_2

Hello All ..I was in this challenge last year and I need to watch my money more than ever at the moment { Im applying for loads of jobs - But not really getting anywhere with it } So cash is tight at the mo
Please can I join in for Feb ??
I am going to be rather strict with my budget , and go for £125.00 for myself and dd . I will be going food shopping today as I have nothing in the house so I will be including what I spend today in Febuarys budget . My budget includes food / cleaning stuff / toiletries and alcohol .
Hopefully I will be able to read your posts and get some more motivation to prepare meals for the week and make decicions when out shopping to get food that will lasts longer
I am a bargain hunter so I will be visiting the bargain shelves regulary for food to stock in the freezer .
Good luck everyone