February 2010 Grocery Challenge

earthmother

Spiggle wrote: »

Anyone know what a moderate oven would be for an electric fan oven please?

There's a conversion chart here - http://www.hintsandthings.co.uk/kitchen/oventemp.htm. Moderate seems to be around 160-180 degrees.

Spiggle

earthmother wrote: »

There's a conversion chart here - http://www.hintsandthings.co.uk/kitchen/oventemp.htm. Moderate seems to be around 160-180 degrees.

Excellent! :T

Thank you very much earthmother

Moniker

Just popped in to update my sig and look for the March posts, but not found them yet - probably too soon. I will pop back tomorrow to find it. I have done my big Sainsbury's shop for March already and have £137.69 to last till 31st. This will cover 4 'big' weekly shops - mainly for fresh fruit and veg and dairy stuff and will give me an average of £34 per week to spend to keep in budget. Mm - we shall see.

Thanks for the malt loaf recipe Spiggle. I have copied it and will give it a try later in the week. I have been cooking my socks off as I have agreed to run a cake stall for Shelter in two weeks' time and so have to stock it. Yesterday I made:

12 chocolate muffins
20 coconut fairy cakes (to be iced later)
one sugar spice and raisin cake (was my economical fruit cake recipe but only had raisins in the cupboard)

Today I made 22 scones.

All this stuff is in the freezer with the banana loaf and the luscious lemon cake I had already done. I will be doing more muffins and some hobnob biscuits next weekend. The stall is on 13th March in our village square - hope it is drier and warmer by then!

Good luck all and hope to see you all in the March posts (I will try harder to keep up this month!)

Moniker

mrssnowy_2

Spiggle wrote: »

Does anyone know if MrM stocks Calon Wen (or other brand) NON-homogenised milk please?
Spig

Newtown MrM did yesterday
HTH
mrss

banwa

A revelation! I have just cleaned my fridge (which is amazing in itself), and I didn't throw a single thing away. I usually throw a bin full away. I'm not even having to make a hurried batch of soup with veg that has seen better days. I have bought exactly the amount of food we needed, nothing more, nothing less.

I'm delighted, I'm so pleased with myself. This challenge has really made me think about what I am buying, there's room for improvement but already my habits are changing.

Thank you again everyone who posts on this thread, you're marvellous:A

Long_tall_sally

Another small spend of £12.50. Wasn't sure whether to add it on to February's or March's total as pay day was Friday but the 1st not till tomorrow but added it on to Feb's as it was so over budget anyway. I don't work Tuesdays & normally that means a trip to either Mr T's or Mr's S plus Farm Foods, Home Bargains & maybe Iceland but all I will need is bread & some f & v so going to just avoid most of those places this week. I must try & claw some of Feb's huge overspend back!

poppy-glos

a bit of info for you all, i have been looking out for a cheaper source of bicarb of soda as i use it to clean too, i found a 3kg bag for £2.85 at the chinese supermarket near ikea in bristol. I'm not sure if this would usually be on sale in such a shop for cooking, or if they had it as a cleaning supply too as it was near the washing up gloves and cleaning stand.

Have to sit and have a total up later as my month ends today, been out for lunch and shopping so am defo over by even more than £16!

bargainhunterss

Eeek! Went to Mr. A's yesterday and spent £58! Got loads of freezer fillers and bulk meals so should be ok for about 2 weeks shopping. :beer: I always end up spending a lot in the first week of the month and then regret it for the rest of the month! :mad:

franby64

Hi all

I've had a bit of an iffy start to March and my March isn't even supposed to be starting until tomorrow!

T*sco delivery came and was OK except that part of my order seemed to have vanished into the ether. It might have been me accidently removing stuff but I honestly don't recall doing this though I did make 7/8 revisions!

Then I found that the leeks they sent me were manky so have emailed them about all this and asked for a refund on the leeks - perhaps they can shed some light on what happened to the order.

Then I found I had run out of T-bags - this cannot happen so I had to go to the shop round the corner anyway and ended up spending another £11ish mainly on offers in the C*op that end on Tuesday.

Need to concentrate:mad:!!
Have already declared for Feb so all this will go on my March sig.

cw18

Had a small grocery shop today, so have just updated my spreadsheet

Declaring Feb at £47.84 spent from a budget of £83 :T

This includes £20.42 spent on Whoopsies with a combined shelf value of £81.07, and I managed 19 days with no grocery spends at all

I also used £13 of groceries from stocks I bought in 2009, but this still leaves me well under budget