August 2011 Grocery Challenge

ixia

was planning to have a NSD today but went to shops with my friend during my lunch hour spent £1.67.

hope everyone else is keeping within their budget.

KolaKube

Hello all! :T

Need to update sig - another £14 spend in MrT yesterday evening on some essentials - bread, milk, yoghurts, barmbrack, yeast for baking, 2x large pizzas for £5 - we would never normally buy pizzas from the supermarket, normally make our own (cheaper and far nicer!), but it was very late and night and we were starving and it saved a £15 order in from d0minos... - one devoured and one safely deposited in the freezer for another lazy night.

Our GC runs until 26th Aug, and for the first month I don't think we're doing too badly at all. We have a freezer full of bread, veg & meat (definitely enough to last another 9 days), plenty of milk and whoopsie cheese (!) and the tins cupboard is heaving. Will just need eggs & some other little bits and pieces as we go. Been being very good with leftovers - e.g. leftover rice the other evening which would normally have gone in the bin made into some gorgeous chicken fried rice with some leftover roast chicken, an egg and a handful of peas. Yum! Today we toasted 2 rock hard bagels for lunch which were lovely with houmous instead of chucking them... 2 left which we will either toast as well or make into crumbs.

Question: Do breadcrumbs freeze?

We have been being extra good this month so may not be representative but will have to adjust down our target next month.

Kola

Islandmaid

Hi all,

Another NSD for me
Sausage and bean itailian stewy thing for dinner...
Gonna need some spuds tomorrow, but I have a cunning plan, if I ask OH to buy them, he will come home with with the spuds only......... Not the one thousand 'bargins' that would tempt me !

Have al lovely evening x

Gorgeestwo

I'm so disappointed in myself, I've lost track again this month, I know I'm pretty much at budget or over already:eek: I really need to get a grip on this challenge as its where most of our over expenditure goes .
On the upside we've found a lovely farm shop and I've been there a couple of times now and although the food isn't any cheaper than the supermarket, the quality is much better, so I find I'm not wasting things, plus I've been sticking to a meal plan more, which I guess is a step in the right direction.
So anyway going to start keeping count properly come september when the kids are at school again, I think just checking on this thread daily will help keep me on the straight and narrow too, I'm going to just use the last couple of weeks in August to try and stick to some good habits (fingerscrossed)

166million

166million wrote: »

another £21.35 to declare for this week. Good news though, I dug up quite a few potatoes in the garden today and I used up some frozen mashed potato that I'd had in the freezer for ages.

So my new total £45.45 for August so far. Hope everyone is doing well. x

Hello again. £20.23 spend today so new total £65.68/ £115

slbhill

Hippeechiq wrote: »

I need to stop buying meat and use what I already have. Real life has somewhat knocked the stuffing out of me lately, subsequently - among other things - my menu plan ran out 2 weeks ago and I've yet to do another. I just can't get motivated....I'm sure you've all been there, but nothing runs away with my budget quicker than a couple of weeks worth of non planned meals.

Can you recycle the last week or 2 of the previous plan? Probably doesn't fit with what you have in stock but it might be better than nothing? Hope you find your motivation, please do send some around when you do!!

quintwins

just back from my few days away with hubby we spent a fortune but it was well worth it just spent £2.04 on milk bread and yogurts to do us til the weekend

ButterflyBee

Off to Mr T today to do a grocery shop and as expected went totally over budget already. Had to buy School files and odds and ends, may have cost only £8.50 but did make me blow the budget. Cost of livin is "mad" how can we survive with a 2% salary increase if everything is costing more. Was even overcharged on reduced goods and no DD is paid back for the inconveniance!

seductivesmile

Evening all,
Looking for a little advice, i have been making jams, and have sold them to raise funds for a local charity, all well an good, however, i went away for the weekend so i set some damsons to boild to stone them ready to jam them, but have put in the freezer so they were ok for when i came back, however i had the idea of leaving them their for a little while and making jam for rels at xmas, will the damsons be ok until the start of december?
Thanks
SS
x

JayJay14

seductivesmile wrote: »

Evening all,
Looking for a little advice, i have been making jams, and have sold them to raise funds for a local charity, all well an good, however, i went away for the weekend so i set some damsons to boild to stone them ready to jam them, but have put in the freezer so they were ok for when i came back, however i had the idea of leaving them their for a little while and making jam for rels at xmas, will the damsons be ok until the start of december?
Thanks
SS
x

Shouldn't be a problem at all - I made blackberry jelly in the spring from my frozen ones when the freezer broke down and everything defrosted.

GC not going as well as I'd hoped this month - will update sig when I have calculated the damage.