November 2010 Grocery Challenge

Herbyme

fellwalker09 wrote: »

Hi - I am amazed at how small budgets seem here. We are a family of 2 adults and 2 children. I have 2 labs also. Excluding their food, our grocery bill weekly, which includes any household sundries also, ie toilet roll, washing up liquid, etc, is on average, £100. I do buy only fresh food -meat, herbs, veg, fruit and muesli. No processed foods, no take aways or ready made meals. Usually shop at Tesco. Don't have a local cheap supermarket sadly where we are.
Are there any lists/info here on where to start? ie any menu suggestions.
Thanks.

Hi fellwalker (me too!), I am in the same boat only worse (see sig). Will try and link to some of the posts people helped me with. Don't do as i do tho, do as they say! They do really help. Good luck!

Here's an old post from loulou:
there are a few things we do whch may help you. ( I shop for 2 adults, 2 kids(who eat adult sized meals), a king shepherd (basically a huge german shepherd) rabbit, parrot, budgie, tropical and goldfish and add all toileteries in the budget).

- We try to shop monthly mainly, making a list of everything we have in before ordering.

- flexable meal planning i.e. I make a list of say 10 meals that we like and buy the ingredience to make enough for 3 meals of each for all of us within the monthly shop.

- Never throw anything edible away ( a recent thing we started and it's saved us loads)

- Dont cook 1 meal cook 3 and freeze the rest not only does this save time on future rushed days in saves on gas/electric as you only have the oven on once. (cook 10 recipies, have 20 days off!)

- Buy bigger pans and oven trays (comes in handy for the above)

- don't buy to much fruit or veg that is out of season

- Make at least two whoopsy hunts a month ( I find Monay and Tuesday evenings the best, it varies but usually better around 6-7pm near us) set yourself a budget and only take that amount of cash with you and no cards.

- Use FF for bread (2 for £1) and milk (2 2ltr for £1.50)

- Forage, me and the kids love blackberry and damson picking which funnily enough grow in the middle of a new housing estate near us.

- Shop by per kg not by pack price (funnily enough tesco's grated cheese works out loads less per kg that tesco's block cheese)

- Bulk out everything, use loads of veg, pulses, lentils and beans if you like them.

- Buy potatoes by the sac (make lots of potato bakes and shepherds/ fish pies, freeze mash etc)

- Use value herbs i think they are 19p? instead of italian seasoning Mr T's is mainly oregano and basil anyway.

- do you have a slow cooker? these are a godsend!

- Make very good friends with anyone you know who owns an allotment.

The first couple of days after the big shop you feel a bit like a headless chicken but once you have your freezer stocked up with meals it's great to say "oh we'll have a freezer night go and pick a meal out of the freezer kids and nuke it!" you know the 'ready meals' have all the veg and meat they need they just cost a hell of a lot less!

Chloris

Spends in C**p of £5.75, bread, marg and grapes. I've not managed a NSD yet:o.

Bonfire Night menu, my mother always did tomato soup and crusty rolls, followed by jacket pots with cheese and beans and for pudding we had apple bonfire cake. Possibly my favourite meal from my childhood!

DH bought us a slow cooker yesterday!!!:j Thank you to everyone who gave advice:beer:. We went for the large cooker reduced in Arg*s. Now I have to work out what I'm going to cook in it!!! Fancy beef and ale or red wine but trying to keep it cheap as my budget is looking shakey.

Herbyme

Hi again fellwalker, here is the other really useful post I mentioned, this is from Spiggle, thanks again Spiggle! (there may be lots of others but these really helped me, hth u 2)




OK, firstly one of the newbies (sorry I haven't got your name - carolinerunner possibly?) asked what we all do but I couldn't answer before as my head was in a shed! When we started in March we had spent in excess of £600 in the previous month. :eek: This had to stop, (there's only me and him and our two beautiful black cats)something which thankfully my OH completely agreed with so I have been lucky that he has been on board from the start. He gave me his debit card voluntarily and I still keep hold of it until he needs to get something for the home. At the same time we set up a system of pocket money (pm) at £15 each per week which doesn't count towards the GC and which we can each spend as we wish with no comebacks or complaints (there's a song lyric in there somewhere!). OH (until recently) predominantly uses his pm on his beer and I ferret mine away mostly. :rotfl:

The next step was to set up my own spreadsheet which is absolutely simple onto which I put all spends so that I have a continuous running total for the month and for the year. We initially set our budget at £280 per month and brought it down to £240 where it now resides.

The important 'tools' we found greatly helped and continue to do so now are:

Stocktake cupboards, fridge, freezer - make lists and ensure that the older products get used up first. you'll be amazed at what you find squirrelled away and it will help with your shopping list as you'll realise that you don't actuually need so much.

ETA: Before you go shopping check staples - running out of milk, bread, butter, etc often leads to going into a shop for one thing and coming out £20 lighter. Always check these and if they'll ruin out tomorrow buy them the same time as getting other things.

Always make a shopping list and stick to it - the sm try every which way to get us to spend so having a list and strong resolve is the only way to beat them.

Keep every receipt - and then note it down on your spreadsheet/spend diary so that you always know where you are.

When tempted ask yourself do you NEED it or just WANT it - now this advice goes with two things. Firstly, the things you see in store when shopping that APPEAR to be bargains - if you hadn't planned spending the money then its not a bargain. Secondly, the sm send us loads of vouchers for £X off a spend of £XX - if you had no NEED to spend £XX then have you SAVED anything???

Use my supermarket to compare prices (limited to four of the biggies) - We didn't start using this until recently and I think it was because I predominantly shopped at MrT but became increasingly peeved by the prices they now charge. The site may be used to actually do an online shop at whichever of the four offers the best value or, if you have the time and sm availability, to make up lists for visiting each of the stores so that you can purchase all you need at different stores thus getting the best possible value. (I'd add, do a 'shop' virtually on this site and take the list you create on it with you, whichever one you shop at, it will help keep target prices in your head and allow you to spot bargains - eg today a huge jar of Hellmans was cheaper at M*rrisons than a less huge one at JS)

Always have a list - this is just as important when shopping online as shopping on foot.

Use Approved Foods online (with a list!) - if you don't mind out of date things (ood) or you can search for only in date items. The only drawback is storing the goods as far as I can tell. Oh, and watch the delivery as it's done on a scaled charge for weight so keep an eye on it. You can of course do an AF order with friends, family, colleagues or like minded neighbours.

Invest in a breadmaker - we have saved so much by making our own bread. The prices in the shops are extortionate for bread these days. There's loads of advice on this thread and others in the forum on this.

Use the recipe lists - always posted at the front of a new thread. There are fantastic, tasty, healthy and economical recipes to use there and there are a number of other threads on the forum such as Weezl's that will help you to eat well on a budget.

Shop locally - the local greengrocer (or preferably market but I don't have one ) is usually cheaper as an option for f&v than the sm. Often the prices may look the same but when you look at the quantity for the same price the greengrocer will be cheaper. The same goes for the local butcher. Often you will have far more variety of meat available, advice on how to cook a particular meat can be offered and there is (for me at least) no comparison in terms of quality. We buy our huge FR eggs at £1.25 per half dozen there and I'm yet to find an equivalent FR egg in a sm at that price. Obvioulsy if you have your own chicks/know someone who has chicks you can get them even cheaper again.

Grow your own - it's quite simple to grow some f&v at home even if it's only in pots on the patio. There are also supportive threads on the forum for this.

Cook your own - making meals at home from ingredients is far more economical, often tastes better than shop bought and is probably far better healthwise.

Meal Plan - this is something that others can advise on as we don't do it. I have a tremendous capacity for eating the same food over many days but presented in slightly different form. For example, we could buy £7 worth of brisket from the butchers and eat it as pot roast for a couple of days, sliced for sarnies, sliced with a salad, chucked into a casserole or shredded up and fried as crispy beef.

Don't waste food - either only make what you need or use any leftovers for other meals/creations.

Withdraw the cash you want to spend - and keep it in a separate purse. This can be particularly effective as you have the money in front of you reducing rather than spending with plastic which is so easy to lose track of. Very useful when you first start out.

ETA: Don't go to the shops to browse - this can only lead to pain and hardship!!!

Keep posting and reading the thread - there really is no better supportive, wise and inspirational place to be! I think I saw that somebody mentioned forgetting to read/post. I get around this by using the Advanced button to post, below the window where your text is displayed you will see Additional Options. In the Thread Subscription box use the dropdown to select either instant email notification (this is what I use) or daily email notification before you submit your latest post. Then you will get an email into your inbox from which you can click to the thread to see what others are saying.

Always remember the sm is not your friend - it wants to profit from you and take as much of your money as it can coerce out of you!

freakyogre

£6.02 spent today.

£4.28 in Lidl on a big box of 40 packets of crisps, a tin of hotdogs and a bag of red onions. The onions are all chopped and i'm going to caramelise then freeze them for future meals. They're yummy on the base of a pizza. I'm picking at food at the moment, but really fancied a hotdog so got a tin, but couldn't find any finger rolls, so have given up on that idea for tonight.

£1.74 in Tesco on a lettuce, a bag of reduced halloween sweets and a packet of 12 bread rolls which were also reduced.

Sunflower1227

Freakyorge - how do you do the caramelised onions please?

thanks

niksyg

curlybap wrote: »

!
I find that alot of our budget goes on packed lunch foods - my DH has a manual job and eats a mountain of food everyday. What really gets me is how expensive cereal bars are. Unfortunately he loves them so I'm stuck having to buy them. Does anybody have any homemade alternatives to cereal bars?

Curlybap I have the same issue in our house. I have found that Ald! fruit&fibre bars are really good and not too expensive around 99p for 6, Mr Ms and Mr Ts both do cheapy basic versions that are also nice - I think those are around 89p for 6.

NSD for me today, and tea was cheapy spaghetti on toast. OH and I now have a Grocery tin for our joint cash to go in, and we are only letting ourselves use that for the shopping, it makes SUCH a difference having the actual cash rather than a card doesn't it?!

Sunflower1227

2nd NSD in a row OH will not believe :T
Could have been because of the torrential rain all day.

Fish pie for tea tomorrow.

adelight

OH wanted to bake a cake so I gave him one of my eggs and went to budgens with him to get sugar and of course ended up at the reduced shelf...
got mushrooms, bag of salad, 4 soy yogs and 4 cod fish cakes for £1.46 total
Tomorrow I'm making 2 portions of veg spag bol and 4 portions of beef mince spag bol for the freezer, fish cakes have already gone straight in the freezer.
They're really nice when they do the reductions at my local budgens; a member of staff was half way through reducing everything again when a guy picked up a pack of pork chops and he offered to put the next reduction on them for him You'd think they'd get less stock as so much ends up being reduced, but everything on the reduced shelf sells.

guccigoo

just popping in to update, £12.41 spent in mr t today although i did get a couple of whoopsies :jAm now going to do my online shop for the week, shouldnt need much (i hope)

Friday were doing fireworks for the kids and my mum and dad are coming over so im going to do a big pot of chilli (SC) with rice or jackets

Sunnyday hope your situation improves soon ((hugs))

meanmarie

Spent €97.20 to-day....seemed to need it all, freezer and cupboards full so may not spend much more for the next couple of weeks.

Marie