August 2010 Grocery Challenge

Lindy_-_Loo

hiya everyone,

between farmfoods, netto and tesco have spent £38.02. Apart from milk, bread and fresh stuff dont plan on shopping till monday 9th!

Long_tall_sally

My spends so far are scary! Its only day 5 of my August challenge and I have spent over 62% of my budget already. This is partly because I had run out of a lot of things like tin foil, cling film, washing up liquid etc, partly because I was using up vouchers that expired tomorrow & partly because I have done big shops when I could so that hopefully I will need to shop very little with the kids in tow. Mind you,I took them to Morrisons the other day where I remembered my £5 voucher seconds after I had paid. The checkout lady said that there was nothing she could do but to try Customer Services. The lady there told me that she couldn't do anything & I would have to wait 10 minutes for someone else to come back from their break to which I was not happy about. She then asked someone else who said there was nothing they could do even thougfh I suggested they just gave me a fiver back out of the till so I then told them to refund the whole lot and put it through again with the voucher even though it would probably cost them £5 in labour charges. The lady then called the manager who also told me that there was nothing they could do so much to my kids dislike & cheeky moans of "But Mum, Its only £5" they did refund it and put every item through again. A fiver is a fiver & its better in my pocket than Morrisons!
Mind you today I took my DD to Lidl and hadn't bothered to try & add it up as I went round. It came to £37 and I had it in my head that I needed to spend £40 so asked my DD to quickly go & grab another bottle of wine. After I had paid & thought about it though, I think I only needed to spend £30!

I am now pretty stocked up (apart from I forgot to get potatoes) so lets see if I can manage lots & lots of no spend days otherwise my budget will just run away with me!

sofababe

Another newbie the Grocery Challenge here. I'm guessing (pretty roughly) that I spend about £180 a month on groceries so I'll start with that as a target and see how we go for future months.
We are a household of 2 adults- me and son aged 20- and 2 spoilt cats. I'm including their food in this.

suzybloo

Hello again, I have made a big dent into my monthly figure but have got all cleaning stuff, 20lb various berries to make jam with (farmfoods have the cheapest sugar I can find) so will have at least 40 jars of jam for approx £30, which will be just sugar and fruit no additives or chemical gunk, and butcher meat for three weeks so all I need to buy is cold meat, milk and bread/rolls for the next 3-4 weeks. I had a go at making a bun loaf with Wrights Ciabbatta Bread mix and it is lovely, cost approx 90p-£1 by the time I put sultanas in and will do hubby's piece box as a cake for most of the week - would highly recommend this. There are lots of good recipes on wrights website I would never have thought of using their bread mixes. total so far is £125.83. Tomorrow will be a NSD, other than the sunday paper = might pull a fast one and ask hubby to go for it - then he can pay for it too:-)

365days

Can I join in please. Going to go for £220. That's for Me, DS, dog and 2 cats.

£36 dead spent in Lidls today.

So. 184/220

catznine

Please can you put Catznine down for £150 for August! :beer:

Winchelsea

I'm declaring £60 for August, as it seemed to work well in July. Not including my direct debits for milk and organic veg meant everything was simple. And, knowing I was near the target towards the end of the month did make me consider whether or not I REALLY needed things I was tempted to buy. The fridge and cupboards came up trumps every time.

All fired up with enthusiasm again! Hope everyone else feels the same?!

Thanks again Pink-winged and everyone.

[Deleted User]

Please can you put me down for a monthly spend of £200 - did it last month and want to make sure it wasn't a fluke!

seductivesmile

Hi All,

Started my challenge today as it seems to work with the weeks starting on saturday, spent £7.78 in Mr M, got milk, tata's, rice, bread, mushrooms, cabbage and mince - they have a brill offer on the butchers choice mince, its £1.89 off per kilo, which meant i got two packs of 300g mince for 78p each.
I've been trying to downshift, ie - instead of buying the tilda rice that was on offer, i went around and saw that twice as much was less that the cost of the branded at half price. Cuz i went with mum she gave me a couple of onions and peppers out of the stuff she bought, and for tea this eve i made bacon, onion and potatoes fried and tossed with potatoes... mmmmm ....
I have sorted my meal plan for the entire month, eating out of the freezer using up my batch cooking, so hopefully with have a plentitude of nsd's this month.
forthcoming week:
Lunch Dinner
Mon - Cabbage and bacon with tata's Gammon, Egg, Potato wedges and veggies
Tue - Cabbage and bacon with tata's Fish in sauce, new potatoes and green beans
Wed - Ham Sandwich Cajun spiced beef, cous cous and veggies
Thur - Cous Cous Chicken Goujons and pasta
Fri - Pasta and sauce Baked Potato, beans and cheese
Sat - Fish cakes and veg
Sun - Eat with the family at family event. . . Yay - freebies!

so thats that - may not have a choice but not to spend any money as the bank have neglected to send me my new card! lol.

Good luck in august everyone!
SS x

unhappy_shopper

~moneysavingnovice~ wrote: »

Have taken inspiration from the brilliant posters on this thread again and got plenty of cous cous for next week's lunches.

You could try this recipe. This is our packed lunch atleast once a week and it is healthy meeting your 5-a-day needs. Not to forget, best way to use up the courgettes we have grown this year :-)

http://www.channel4.com/food/recipes/healthy/low-fat/char-grilled-vegetable-couscous-and-feta-salad-recipe_p_1.html