August 2010 Grocery Challenge

NickJW

I met a friend today so I 'had' to go out. It was a small spend of £5 on street food in Brick Lane, and <shock horror> I managed to avoid going to the pub to get a 'few' drinks afterwards. It was just as nice meeting up, walking around and sitting in the park chatting.:D

Hope everyone has had a good weekend - will update my signature now :cool:

ChocClare

Casiopeia wrote: »

I mainly cook from scratch, but tend to buy a lot of extras (crisps, chocolate, deserts, ready meals) on impulse, which is probably my main problem. I need to reduce our food/household spend to under £350 a month to make our finances balance, and I'm really worried that I won't manage.

I'm planning to start by doing an online order based on value meats, flour, etc, to stock up my freezer and cupboards. I've also started making more meals with dried soya mince or mixed beans, instead of expensive Quorn products, but I'm stuck for other ideas.

Yes, I agree, it's all the kitkats and pringles that kids expect just to "be there" which cost! Online shopping is great because you can see how much you've spent as you're doing the shop, and shave things off accordingly. If you haven't already tried it, this site has some delish cheapo and nutritionally-sound recipes and you don't have to aim for £100 per month (which means you can probably be more generous with amounts of eg cheese in recipes).

Would your lot eat risotto? If so, fry off an onion and add your risotto rice (or pudding rice, if you haven't got any risotto rice); meanwhile, chop up a head of broccoli (you can slice up the thinner bits of the stem as well) and cook for 3 mins in boiling water in which you have dissolved a (veg) stock cube. Once the rice is coated in oil, remove the broccoli from the water with a slotted spoon and bung into the risotto pan; gradually add the still-boiling stock and keep stirring until the rice is cooked. The broccoli sort of disintegrates and is not really recognisable as such (you'll possibly be glad to hear). Grate cheese over the top and stir in - adjust seasoning. This is VERY tasty - and very cheap if you're trying to avoid Quorn-type stuff.

ALSO - I haven't tasted it myself - but Asda does a vegetarian sausage mix which costs about 80p and apparently if you sex it up a bit with grated carrot and fried onion it is seriously good. They do various veggie mixes - I bought some to sit in the cupboard and haven't tried any of them yet, but I know others on here swear by them.

notjustlaura

wssla00 wrote: »

5. Stay out of the shops. I know this sounds simple but for me this is my biggest failure. If I go into a shop for one thing, I end up spending on treats etc because i'm there and feel I need them...... If I don't go into the shop I don't spend it- simples!

That's the one I'm focussing on just now. I've actually left my car at my mother's house so I can't 'just pop out' to the supermarket! And if I go to the local shops - to post a letter, say - I don't take my purse.

freakyogre - Mr Bump was my favourite Mister Man

Long_tall_sally

Hello to all the newbies!

Gosh what a lot of very useful advice there has been posted here in the last few pages! I think I could print off the last few pages and it largely covers all the main points. I can't really offer anything much myself (as you probably know, I am not actually very good at ever achieving my target! Lol!) Ooh apart from check your freezer and cupboards and make a list of what you already have in and then plan your meals around that.

No spend day (NSD) for me today but yesterday I went to Farm Foods, Iceland and the market. Our local market stall is pretty rubbish. Cucumbers were 90p Friday when I asked, 5p more than the local co op next door but luckily I held off to the market in town on Saturday where they were 40p each or 3 for a £!

I have updated my signature with the market stuff, Sainsburys and what I can remember of Farm Foods but I can't find my receipt for there at the moment so will add the extras on when I do find it or guess.

Good luck to evertyone, particularly the new people.

Long tall sally

TinkerTailor

Thanks for all the great tips.

Have had a good weekend - made up packed lunches for both days. Today though, forgot to take any drinks along for DH & me (remembered the kids water bottles) so as it ended up being quite a hot one had to resort to buying a bottle of Sprite to share from a machine - only £1.30 spent though so quite pleased with that

TTx

Sue14

cw18 wrote: »

Some supermarkets (and I know Mr M is one of them, as I work there and have seen it done) can 'park' your shopping while you go back for something you've forgotten/go home for the bank card/purse you forgot. Basically this means the till spits out what looks like a receipt with a bar code (that they retain), then allows them to carry on with the next customer. When you get back to the till they scan the 'receipt' which puts the till back to the original position and then add on your additional bits (and you normally get to queue jump as well, as they want your loaded trolley moving on ).

So if this ever happens to you anywhere again, it's always worth asking if it's possible to do this

Thanks for the advice, we actually used to do this when I worked in Woolies, but I didn't think to ask if I could do that in Mr M's.

angelatgraceland

ChocClare wrote: »

Yes, I agree, it's all the kitkats and pringles that kids expect just to "be there" which cost! Online shopping is great because you can see how much you've spent as you're doing the shop, and shave things off accordingly. If you haven't already tried it, this site has some delish cheapo and nutritionally-sound recipes and you don't have to aim for £100 per month (which means you can probably be more generous with amounts of eg cheese in recipes).


.

Thanks for that link! It looks fantastic and I can use stuff I have already bought. Not claiming I will stick to the plan totally as Ive already got a lot of food so I want to incorporate that into the menus. however-Ive taken Option one of the meal plans and I am soaking some chickpeas to make humous tomorrow evening and Ive just made the Bacon onion pudding. I recently bought a lot of bacon mishapes in Iceland which I had to freeze as I didnt look at the date when I bought them and they were on the last couple of days. Therefore I used some of those. Ive not made pastry using vegetable oil before so I hope it turns out ok. ive also never steamed anything with a tie on lid in the slowcooker before so we will see-it is cooking now-ready for tomorrow night as I am going out for the day and eating out. Weighed out peas and pots to go with it as recipe says as Ive a tendancy to cook too much otherwise.
Strange sunday dinner today of Cheese and onion omellette boiled pots and carrots but it was quick and made a change from chicken.
Also going to make the "apple curd" in the recipes for breakfast and make some homemade bread tomorrow night if not too tired after being out all day.
Not going to aim for £100 per month for food(or £125 for 5 people) but just to incorporate a few of the recipes and ideas into our daily meal plans. If I can knock off another £10 per week I will be very pleased.
DD made another crumble yesterday so we had more of that today for deset-only needed that one meal and it has lasted me all day!
Just tubbed up the remainder and popped it in the fridge for someone tomorrow. Ive been teaching dd the "chuck it in by eye" method! Some may not recommend it but it works well for me and it teaches you to experiment. To me cooking is scientific experiments and it nearly always results in sucess. However-I am willing to try new ideas "by the book" and weigh things. Just need to make sure I only use the recipes containing ingredients I already have so I do not keep buying.
Thinking of veggy foods I often buy a product called sosmix and it makes the best scotch eggs you can imagine!
I also make a veggy pate from canned red kidney beens zapped in the food processor and tomato sauce onions and chilli added to taste. Very cheap and tasty.

cw18

Just totted up yesterdays GC spends - and while it came in at just over 25% of my budget for this month (£26.30 of £105), it wasn't actually quite as bad as I thought (mainly 'cos the receipt from Mr T also included £16.50 worth of items that aren't GC related, including £15 of non-consumables baking items which I exchanged £5 worth of vouchers against on the double-up scheme )

For this I got 2 cream cakes (Mr M), 6x2 litre bottles of pop (a Mr A own brand which is the only one DS drinks - and he knows that's his lot for this month), 4 boxes of cereal (again Mr A own brands to last DS the month), 2 bags of red peanuts (for me as a healthier snack food than a lot of junk I was otherwise looking at), 12 salmon fillets (Mr T frozen, 2 bags of 6), 8 cod in butter sauce portions (I normally get the Mr T value twin pack, but they had an offer on a better quality where 2 boxes of 4 were only £5 which made them cheaper per portion than the value ones), 2 large pots of value natural yoghurt (mainly for breakfast in place of milk on/with my muesli), 2 packs of value cooked ham, and a bag of value SR flour.

Today was an all-round NSD :T

katholicos

Fed from the fridge and pantry today so my grocery spends for August are still low. That could change tomorrow though :-)

suzybloo

Havent done any grocery shopping since last week, this weekendd was dd2's 21st so all the items for that came out of a different budget. Have meal planned using items from the freezers and cupboards as really need the freezers defrosted, so all we need is milk, cold meat and fresh bread this week, with a couple of bits of fresh fruit by the end of the week. Have put £10 in my purse for the week, to keep my sanity I have to have a can of diet coke on my desk so that will be £2 odds out of that - it must be a stress thing like someone going for a ciggy when they are stressed out but much cheaper!!!!
good luck everyone for another positive week,
Suz