October 06 Grocery Challenge

EagerLearner

Hi Toria,

Last week I bought one chicken and a few small potatoes, one sweet potato, courgette, spinach, 2 tins of coconut soup and some spices from Indian shop - curry leaves, mustard seeds and paprika. This cost £6. Will cost less next time as I won't need spices.

Out of that £6 we made at least 4 dinners for the two of us (ie: 8 single portions) and there were a couple of single portions for Mr EL to take to work for lunch too. Plus we have lots of spices left for making more curry.

This was very mild chicken curry, but as it made so many meals I thought you might like the idea. It saved time as I only had to cook once, then freeze and re-heat portions along with some rice.

You could bulk it out more with more sweet potato etc or add chickpeas which are very cheap (around 29p for a tin).

Plus you could then use the ckicken bones to make a stock for a chicken soup bulked out with small pasta pieces or rice which can also be frozen and is lovely in Winter.

Hope this helps and good luck!

toria27

Thanks EagerLearner that sounds great, do you think you could post the exact recipe for me? as I have never attempted a curry before and how you cooked it. I love chicken though and having a young child I always try and make more and freeze so this would be a great meal to try.
We are getting a bit bored of having the same things now.

harloe

Been watching these challenges for ages but never actually done one (although have reduced our food bill quite a lot) Really need a new incentive and hope to get our spend down to £175 this month..... our wine consumption is what has made us go over the last couple of months!!

I have quite a lot of meat in the freezer so will use that up and save all of my receipts - need to realise just what i waste my money on:rolleyes:

Watch this space!

EagerLearner

toria27 wrote:

Thanks EagerLearner that sounds great, do you think you could post the exact recipe for me? as I have never attempted a curry before and how you cooked it. I love chicken though and having a young child I always try and make more and freeze so this would be a great meal to try.
We are getting a bit bored of having the same things now.

I will look it up - it's based on a Jamie Oliver recipe if you want to scour the web - but here are the main ingredients:

Red onion
White onion
Mustard seeds
Curry leaves
Yellow curry powder
Chicken
Coconut milk
Sweet potato
Courgette
Potato


Then you will need rice - this is always cheap in bulk.

EagerLearner

Welcome to the challenge Harloe!

BusyGirl

So today I went shopping in Aldi and Asda and spent around £95. :eek:

It was quite a big shop as I had my brother and his family around for a meal this evening and we 'needed' to buy beer for a party we are going to this weekend. So I think I will pay for the beer out of our 'pocket money'. I also reckon I will get upto 2 or 3 meals from the spare meat from the two chickens I bought for tonight's meal.

I think that leaves me with £120 left for the month (£40 per week).

JillD_2

This second week of my October didn't go as well as hoped.
Spent about £12 on hardly anything in Asda
Spent about £10 in M&S on fancy food on my Mum's request
So on 330 odd so far

pinkparrott

Hi all , I am trying to use things up so was hopeing to spend no more than £200.

so £50 ish a week, anyway aready just over the £50 as just been to the nice butchers up the road and spent £13. But have got one or two things for the freezer so not too bad.

However i will still have to get some potatoes and some veg for thurs and fri's dinner.

Also will have to get a joint or something for sunday lunch so will probably be nearer the £70 mark :eek: so will have to try extra hard the next 3 weeks.

However on a positive not I have only spen £3.20 on me ( on what i call fripperies) this week which is a big improvement on my usual spends, so i am making some progress. And i haven't thrown any food away this week (which i hate to admit i often do):j

carlih1

I'm feeling quite posotive this month. i did a huge shop at tesco the other day, but with that i got enough washing tablets for 3 weeks, 25% extra free, enough drinks for packed lunches for three weeks bogof. Have made batch loads of curry and tomato base sauce so have them in freezer for future use. loads of spices for curry sauce, which i won't need to buy again for ages. and all the other essentials a couple of other bits on bogof that i was going to buy anyway, like bleach. I have fish pie to make for monday then i only have to buy top up items, am going to do my menu for next week tonight so i know what i need )

pollyanna24

I'm up to £95 already this month, but we did do a huge shop on 1st which had quite a bit of meat in it.

Is there a thread that has what is cheapest where? People go on about Lidl, but what is cheaper there? Veg, meat? I only ever go there and look at all the things in the middle that are on special offer!