February 2011 Grocery Challenge

fedupandskint

I decided to bake a cake for my mum's birthday meal instead of buying one. I used the domestic goddess' recipe for coffee and walnut and have just taken it out of the oven and it looks great! Just need to buttercream it tomorrow. Meaning it cost me 98p for butter and £1 for walnut pieces. Pleased with this result and only £2 out of the budget from this morning's spends

TheBees

Hi everyone

Just did the first real shopping of the month today - spent over £100 :eek:in MrT but had a £7 off a £70 shop voucher which helped. I was accompanied by DS17 who needed the driving practice in my car and who has also been causing problems refusing to eat the food we put in his packed lunch and buying pizza from the school canteen instead. I told him he had to come shopping to show me what he WOULD eat as I'm fed up him wasting food! He also wastes £1 a day on drinks from a machine so we stocked up on cans that worked out at less than 30p each. I know fizzy drinks are not great but if he's going to buy them anyway then he may as well take one from home.

In the slow cooker at the moment I have a chicken cooking which will be pulled apart and used for a)sandwiches next week b)risotto or chicken pie one day next week. Also managed to get some reduced sea bass (down to £2 something instead of £8) which was put in a special sealed pack that you simply throw in the oven with the herb butter/lemon/parsley to cook. We don't eat a lot of fish but DS17 persuaded me to buy it and we'll have it with some new potatoes and veg.

I think I have enough food for the next 10 days and the fridge and freezer are absolutely full.

Good luck everyone. Off to work out exactly how much has been spent and re jig the meal plan.

martafdz

minnie2 wrote: »

hi where do i go for recipes? would like to make/create some new dishes as i seem to do the same old thing!! and any suggestions about what to do with mince pork or turkey please let me know! i do savoury mince and chilli con carne and bolognese etc.

I sometimes do wraps. I fry the mince meat with some onion and garlic. Then add 1/3 of a Fajita seasoning satchet when it's almost done, stir, leave for a minute and put on wraps or tortillas with a bit of salad. 250g of mince meat make around 6 wraps for me.
I have somewhere a Spanish recipe for a flat pastry pie (it's called empanada) that has onion, mince meat, tomato and peppers inside. If I find the recipe I will post it. You can also make individual ones. Photos below:

Ilona wrote: »

I used to get So Good soya milk for my cereals, but I have changed to supermarket own brand, which is acceptable. I think one company must make it for all the supermarkets because it tastes the same wherever you get it from.

There is a thread around this forum where people were posting who made some "supermarket own brand" items. It turned out that in some cases some popular brands were making different versions of the same product for different supermarkets, sometimes changing very little like a bit more of this or that and less or more cooking time. You are quite right in there, supermarkets just ask some brand to make their own unbranded stuff. I am trying the basics of pretty much everything to see if I like it and keeping my mind open. most of the times is the packaging that is unappealing. The other day I bought MrM Chocolate Digestives for 60p or so, I think they were slightly thicker than the original ones but I could not find any difference in taste, not even in the chocolate!

TheBees

Oh and I forgot to say - tonight we had chinese stir fry. Mr T were selling ready cooked noodles on BOGOF and stir fry veg on BOGOF. We made our own stir fry sauce with 2 dessert spoons of soy sauce, sweet chilli sauce and peanut butter with a bit of water. (A recipe from the Waitrose weekend magazine). DH turned his nose up at the fact that I hadn't bought any meat of any sort to go with it but in fact it was really filling and we didn't really miss the meat. I bought two packs of each and there's enough left over to have it again on Monday! Can't leave it any longer or the veg will be feeling a bit sorry for itself.:rotfl:

PennyGrabber

Went to Morr. today as dd loves the cheapo noodles as a weekend lunch, but doesn't like the carroty bits you get in the a@da ones!! They're only 10p each, bought 5, and ended up spending £9.37, although got all things I'll use fairly quickly, including lots of packup stuff. They also had the condensed soups on half price, 37p each. Also went to pet shop and got food for guineas, 20% off, so another £6.87. Takes my total up to nearly half way, is that possible?!! Do have shedloads in though, and I'm actually using stuff up now, so this is less than I guess I would've spent.

My mum is coming to visit tomorrow, so have made a cheesecake and some ginger biscuits, and we'll have hm pizzas for lunch. How good is that?! Not made the biccies b4, but I'm sure they'll be nice... Then it'll be mac cheese with lo ham for dinner, It always feels good going to bed knowing what you're having to eat the next day! I do a monthly meal plan, but for tom it said picnic-style lunch and fish pie for dinner!! Think I need to have a little think about my planning strategies!! May just list 28/30/31 meals, then cross them off when I've had them. Hmm...

PG x

Missus_Aka

Not an NSD me for today but i didnt spend anything grocery wise, will have to pick up the few bits and pieces i was supposed to buy today possibly tomorrow/maybe monday
£90/£135 still,
The rest will cover though not needed yet:
£8 of breast chicken fillets, £8 veg, £3 fruit, £1.50 bread x 2, salam x3 £8.37, £1.50 binbags, £1.39 spread cheese, £4.00 cheddar cheese, £? saffron powder and some pitta bread £1. Will be about just less then a tenner left for anything else i might need

The dolmas i made ended up costing £15 but made 10 dinners plus 3 for my DS3 it could have easily bulked it out with more rice if i wanted to make more and would still have tasted good.

quintwins

need to add £34.01, that was £8 in the farm shop on 20 clemintines 10 apples and a 20kg bag of spuds, then went to lidl and got 16 2lter bottles of diet coke and 8 bottles of coke at 89p each, and 2 blocks of 400g cheese and cause i spent my hubby is he added 3 6packs of golden wonder in lol so that was £26.01, altho i'm expecting the coke to last a good wee while

Long_tall_sally

quintwins wrote: »

need to add £34.01, that was £8 in the farm shop on 20 clemintines 10 apples and a 20kg bag of spuds, then went to lidl and got 16 2lter bottles of diet coke and 8 bottles of coke at 89p each, and 2 blocks of 400g cheese and cause i spent my hubby is he added 3 6packs of golden wonder in lol so that was £26.01, altho i'm expecting the coke to last a good wee while

ooh, I am a Coke drinker. Do you know if that is just a weekend offer or whether it will still be on next week aswell?

WelshWoofer

No more spends to report but am feeling quite smug as I used up very sprouty potatoes, soft tomatoes, an aging onion and a bit of hardening cheese to make a cheese and potato pie for tea - and very nice it was too!
Usually, it would have all ended up in the bin:o

Surprising how virtuous you can be when you're skint:A

quintwins

Long_tall_sally wrote: »

ooh, I am a Coke drinker. Do you know if that is just a weekend offer or whether it will still be on next week aswell?

no it's a weekend deal and i'm in n.ireland so the offers are different,but i know iceland do 3liters for £1.60 ish, i drink coke and my hubby drinks diet coke he drinks alot more than me even tho he works all day and i'm here all day so he got twice as much, shud last us ages tho