February 2010 Grocery Challenge

meanmarie

Spent €40.70 today, hopefully will not need to do any more shopping until end of next week, finding it tight to stick to €150 but most of the time there are only two of us here....think that I have enough cat and dog food until the end of the month.

Good luck to all

Marie

rosieben

Purpleclutterbuck wrote: »

Hiya Longtallsally! recipe as follows-
...
Pcb x

Microwave Flapjack recipe now in front page index :T
If you have a mo Purpleclutterbuck, would you just put the title in your post please? Thanks :A

CherryPie

Did another fairly big shop for me today, £26 something. Although I prob have enough food to last til end of March!!

My Mum phoned today to say she's coming to stay for a few days, which is good. She's my Gran's carer and has only just managed to persuade (under duress :mad:) one of her brothers to look after Gran for a couple of nights. Sorry for going off topic, but just needed a bit of a rant!

So got the good old bolognaise mix going in the slow cooker. HM lasagne and garlic bread for Mum's dinner 2mo and rhubarb crumble & custard for afters.

I'm slowly teaching my old Mum how to cook from scratch. Made sausage casserole last time I was at hers but it was too tomatoey. So I rescued some of the liquid and put in some bisto to take the tomato taste away, froze the liquid & told her to use it next time she made soup. She phoned a few nights ago to say she had made the nicest stuff soup so far! Tomato stock, carrot, onion, turnip, peppers & mushrooms. Wasn't thick enough so she added some pasta!

Just need to get her on the internet now and I'm sure she'll join us!!


Thanks for all the hints & tips guys, much appreciated! :T

goldfinch68

February target is £400. Spent £34 more than this in January so aiming for less than the target this month. Have a good week everyone.

Long_tall_sally

Small spend of £5.93 this morning in the Co-op getting some ketchup, fruit shoots & egg mayo mix but will probably get more as OH has just asked whether I got rice crispies & white bread for his son which I hadn't realised that we had run out of.
This is going to be such an expensive month for us. It was OH's 18th last week so so far we have had an expensive present to buy, half the cost of the hall & food for his party, next weekend a family meal for 11 in a pub, the balance of my DD's school trip and on top of all that my carer's allowance has been stopped so we have even less money than normal to do it on!
If I can't come under target on groceries for this month, through sheer necessity then I deserve to be shot!

Berni888

Long_tall_sally wrote: »

Thanks for all the suggestions regarding my glut of tomatoes and bananas! I am definitely going to freeze them both, after I have roasted the tomatoes as suggested. Thought I would make a tomato soup tomorrow with some of them though but looked on 1st page and no tomato soup recipe! Anyone got one that uses actually uses real tomatoes rather than tins?

Sorry to keep being a pain!

Long tall sally

You might find the following sites have some good tips

Freezer Tips

Sweet & Spicy Tomato Sauce

Not used this one but says vegetable specific http://southernfood.about.com/od/vegetablerecipes/Vegetable_Recipes_Recipes_using_Specific_Vegetables.htm

And finally the one you specifically asked for.. Tomato Soup

mijm0t77

Morning

Yesterday i did a big shop which came to £76.51. This will hopefully cover me for the month and mean i only need to buy bread, milk, dairy, veg, etc. As this is the first time i have shopped for a month i imagine i will need to top up at some point.:)

I already buy some of Mr S basic range, but yesterday i decided to try a few more of the range (was Mr T's vaule range though, as that is where i went) I already buy the tinned tomatoes, orange juice and mince (mince is fatty but i always drained it anyway so i am happy with that) Yesterday i picked up a tin a value tuna and bacon ( i will be using these products in things rather than eating them on their own so i figure they should be good):)

so today is going to be my first NSD of the month (hopefully first of many)

MrsBsBlog

Morning all:hello:
A big thankyou to chocclare, about the bread crumbs. That will teach me to put too much salt in:o, but at least it`s not wasted. I will update siggy in a mo, but spent a total of £5.77 so far on milk, bread, sausages and bacon. I now usually make my own rolls, but the kids are so famished after school, that I can`t make the bread quick enough, so now when it`s reduced I will buy it(but only when it`reduced). They seem to be eating for england at the moment and they`re only 7 & 9. Anyway off to do a bit more baking, so catch u all later.

Ayeshalush

I've spent £27.45 so far this month (better watch what I'm doing or I'll run out of money waaayyy before the end of the month!!:eek:).

I stocked up on chicken breasts - 3 packs for £9 at Asda, bread flour and eggs. Unfortunately the rest was impulse buys!!!:mad: I've got loads in freeze and cupboards so I'm planning to eat from those for the rest of the month and just stock up on milk, fruit and veg as necessary. Well, that's the plan anyway!:o I WILL NOT blow my budget!

earthmother

Well, the month is off and running - did my start-of-month stocktake yesterday, and I can feed us until next Wednesday without having to do any main-meal shopping, so that's good

Did a small shop yesterday at Mr S - £6.84 for milk, sugar, butter and lemon curd. Today is a NSD, and whilst tomorrow should be, I'll probably take the chance to pop into the Co-op for the £1 Heinz sauces as we'll need them before the end of the month anyway.

While I was doing the menu plan, I realised that we've got a bit lazy these past months, and there are too few 'different' meals, and too many variations on a theme and processed things going on.

So I had a dig through my recipe file, and found a few things that we haven't tried before/for a long time - nothing amazing, but new all the same, so I'm aiming for at least one new, from-scratch, meal each week. The best of it is, all I need to buy for them all is a pack of suet, some onion powder and a bit of chicken - it's scary what I have storecupboarded that I didn't realise