August 2011 Grocery Challenge

looie

hi all, just updated my sig with latest spends from yesterday £27.97.

I've been on holiday from work last week and needed yoghurts, coffee, milk and crisps ready for Monday.

Sainsbugs 60p for a baguette
Mr a £16.09 mainly on milk, cheese, biscuits, crisps and yoghurts
Mr t £11.28 2 jars of coffee and bread

Going to have a nsd today as we are going to our allotment. The grass needs cutting and there is some veg we need to get in. Really looking forward to it I just hope it stays fine

teaandcakeaddict

Long_tall_sally wrote: »

Spent another £12 in the Co Op & £7 in Mr T. I wish the spending could stop but I needed wash detergent & fabric conditioner.

I have a big bag of green lentils in the cupboards. Could anyone kindly give me some ideas what to do with them?!

http://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/4382/veggie-shepherds-pie-with-sweet-potato-mash

I make this all the time for my family, they love it!

TheBees

Popped in to MrWaxxxxse (where I work part time) and picked up some sausages for 49p, 4 scones for 30p and some cherries for 10p a pack. :j

After a trip out we also bought some curry readymeals but these are not coming out of the grocery budget as they're an alternative to a takeaway but a quarter of the price.

The fridge an freezer are full to bursting still. Hoping not to have to shop until at least Wednesday for just fruit/veg and milk.

teaandcakeaddict

Just updating my spends for this week...
Friday: Went out to the local shops and spent £10.00, got a big ham hock for 1.99 which make make a massive pan of pea and ham soup, some flavoured syrups for cake making (the ginger syrup was reduced from £5.49 to £1.00, so it was a bargain really, and it means I can make home made gingerbread latte's, no more starbucks!), bought some tahini paste (£2.00) so I can make my own houmous which will work out cheaper in the long run as it lasts agggeeess. And some other bits and bobs.

Saturday: £13.07 in t*sco, I got a lot of marked down fruit, which should last the week, the big expense was a pizza for me and the other half, and a cooked chicken for the kids. I usually make everything from scratch but we'd been out all day and we were all starving. Still cheaper than eating out though. Still got a lot of chicken left, so I might make a risotto with it, or some soup. Then £6.00 (about, other half threw away reciept) in a*da because we forgot milk and nappies.

So that makes my total spends this week £179.19!! Its going to be tough keeping to budget!

franby64

Morning

Already had a T*sco shop and an A*da shop this month so really need to take stock now and put the brakes on.
I'm going to meal-plan today and then try and spend as little as possible before an A*da shop on the 15th.
I'm currently at £179.61/£450 and have quite a few pulses in, chickpeas, black-eyed beans, lentils, barley, so I think I will see what I can do with those and try and stock up the freezer a bit.

Hope everybody is having a good weekend.

highland_fling_2

Good morning everyone,

another £6 out of GC purse yesterday. I am working with cash in seperate purse this month. Used to do this all the time but slipped over last couple of months and was wondering if this contributed to overspending or if it is purely rise in food prices. Anyway back to using GC purse and if nothing else it will make me more aware of each spend.

Will sit in kitchen and make meal plan today. Then I know at a glance if I really have ingredients for meals instead of just thinking I do.

Have also stuck a list of items on door of freezer. As I use them I score them off and then I don't forget what frozen food is available for meal planning. Also good wee reminder when I go shopping what I need to replace.

Hope you all have a fun and frugal day.:)

quintwins

morning all we went to makro yesterday and got soem juice and sweet for the kids we spent £21.50 but here was 2 pc games so i need to work out what the vat was on them then add whats left to my total

went to the cinema lats night aswell so it was an expensive day all round but i never really go out with friends so not too bad, off to mil for sunday dinner then it's gonna be nice nad quiet for the rest of the week, we go away next weekend :j so every penny counts this week

rising_from_the_ashes

highland_fling wrote: »

Have also stuck a list of items on door of freezer. As I use them I score them off and then I don't forget what frozen food is available for meal planning. Also good wee reminder when I go shopping what I need to replace.

This I must do!

DM kindly gave me her old freezer a few months ago so I'm now able to take advantage of whoopsies/multibuys etc (freezer in house is OK for everyday but not very big - used to get really p'd off when there were offers like 3 chickens for £10 and I couldn't get them!).

Have been trying to empty it as it badly needs defrosted (and have loads of veg from garden to put in and blackberry season nearly upon us!).

Finally managed to cram everything into the house freezer last night (full to bursting point) so it's been dripping away overnight.

As the "new" one is in the garage, it's easy to forget what's there.
I did have a list of "raw" meat etc not everything that was in it. I found a pack of chicken burgers that were out of date:mad:. Also discovered some fish that needs used fairly quickly so glad I did it now!

Everything will be "documented" as it's put back in!:D

69chick

Updated sig with yesterdays Al*di spend of £39.. am really getting into shopping there, looking at my receipt everything I got is such good value, ..also popped into T's as we needed cider for dh and I had forgotten to get wine (alcohol is on a diff budget) but I picked up some packs of value baby wipes at 36p each while they were in and the pepsi max cans they have on offer as well as their orange energy type drinks that ds likes which I think are good at 1.25 for 4.....

Not looking too bad for this month so far but early days, only prob is we are away from 17th of the month staying with family in Scotland so not sure how spends are going to go, we will be supermarket shopping while we are there so will just continue to work with the budget....

Hope everyone is having a good weekend, we are sofa shopping at the moment for out new house that we are hoping to be in soon, have decided to go for a company called Nebru who sell online but have a showroom nearby, visited yesterday and they look good/seem comfy and are reasonably priced, have any of you heard of them or used them? just deciding now on colour/fabric....

rosieben

rising_from_the_ashes wrote: »

. ... I found a pack of chicken burgers that were out of date:mad:. Also discovered some fish that needs used fairly quickly so glad I did it now ...

I don't take any notice of use by dates on the stuff in my freezer. I have meat and other things in there from last year - would have been longer but I changed freezers so used it all up. As long as its wrapped properly and the freezer is working properly, food will last indefinitely.

There's a discussion about it here

And a very good thread on Frozen food safety - misconceptions which has an interesting link to the USDA advice about refreezing food.