January 2012 Grocery Challenge

Long_tall_sally

Phew, it's taken me a while to catch up!

Spent about £55 yesterday mostly in Mr A as that was the nearest to where we were plus some g/f sausages from M & S. Felt a bit guilty as we had a McD's for lunch again - we only had one last week.

I have so many things to do, including a stock take of the freezer & had wanted to do some baking with the kids but DD is busy reading on her bed & DS playing on his new x-box game that maybe just taking down the xmas decs & having a good tidy up will be all I actually achieve today.

Tigerfeet2006 - thank you so much for those g/free recipes that you posted! I nearly bought a g/f recipe book yesterday but decided against it in the end as there were so many dishes in it that I just knew DS wouldn't eat. Do you make pizza by the way? DS doesn't like the pizza that I make him at home with the pizza base that I get on prescription, although he will eat it if we take it to Pi**a Hut so it must be the tomato passata that I put on that he doesn't like plus it is a deep pan base & he said he would prefer it thinner. However we went to Bella Italia the other night with my converted Mr T vouchers & he ordered a g/f pizza there that was thin & he didn't like that either. Mind you it was like cardboard! Who is it in your family that is G/f by the way?

Redouble

Feeling really about having spent some money.
Spent £16 in Coop (had to get some more meat as my MIL has broken her ankle so is coming to stay with me for a bit)
Then £2 on lunch - bad, bad Redouble! And £14.50 on 30ltr of cat litter!
So that's £32.50. And frankly that sucks! Must. Do. Better!

prepareathome

Had my first spend of the month last night - after starting at Slimming World and spent £19.40, forgot milk so as I don't feel up to going out today will give hubby a list of things I want to stick to my healthy eating plan to tide me over till proper shop at weekend, as well as the milk. So will go and update sig now and must remember to put the NSD in.

LondonDreamer

NSD yesterday, but need milk and fresh sandwich stuff which I will pick up on the way home tonight. Will update later with a new spend.

carolinerunner wrote: »

Hi all,
Is there somewhere that has tips on getting good whoopsies? Time, place, where to look in the store etc? I'm not getting anything like the depth of discounts that some are managing and I want to find out how I can do that!
many thanks in advance!

It really depends on your local store. If you have time and it's not out of the way, try going in at various times to see what's on offer. As an example, I live in a posh but tourist heavy part of London. So our local (which is tiny) tends to clear out early in the morning to make room for fresh stock to sell that day. But an hour or two before closing is more typical in standard stores. For 24 hour stores, I've heard that they'll start discounting around 6pm with the deep discounts closer to 9pm but I don't live near one so someone else may have a better idea.

The main supermarkets tend to have a section for whoopsies, mine is labelled quite clearly with yellow "clearance" shelf labels. Bigger stores tend to have multiple sections around the store, e.g. one in meat, one in bakery, etc. The more upmarket stores such as M&S and Waitrose tend to just reduce items in their usual location, although I noticed my local M&S had it's post-Christmas clearance items all on an ailse end so they may start doing this as standard behaviour.

I never get the discounts that others manage by the way, about 60% off is the lowest our local goes and usually it's more like 30% off. So don't get disheartened if you don't get the really good bargains - any money off something you would buy anyway is better than paying full price!

mummybearx

Afternoon everyone!

Just spend £11.08 in MrA, £5 for 9 dog food's and £3.99 on OvenPride, the rest on lunch for today for me and my boss. Her turn to buy lunch tomorrow, so hopefully a NSD tomorrow.

Dinner from the stores tonight, I know there is chorizo in the fridge so will make that into an italian style soup with lots of other cupboard things :-)

x

tracey12_2

Thought I would share this with you all. I have a magazine delivered called Easy Food (the original budget recipe magazine) and it is available for £10 Mr T vouchers that covers an annual subscription.

There are loads of budget recipes, they give you loads of ideas for entertaining and have a great section each time on special diets such as diabetic, coeliac, egg free, high fibre etc.

I have 2 recipes which may be of interest especially to Tigerfeet2006 and Long Tall Sally for gluten-free, egg-free and diary-free banana bread and flourless chocolate raspberry cake. If you want the recipes just let me know.

HTH

Tracey

Pixie_Fairydust

Right have finally caught up with all the posts :j

Love the spaghetti pie idea!

Just had 2 x £3 off a £30 spend for Iceland vouchers in the post, so will use them over the next couple of weeks and top up with fresh f&v from Ald!

Mr T have large boxes of Bold for £6 at the moment, half price, hth.

Off to work on my recipe card index box, looks like it could be quite time consuming

Have a good day, Pixie

LondonDreamer

tracey12 wrote: »

Thought I would share this with you all. I have a magazine delivered called Easy Food (the original budget recipe magazine) and it is available for £10 Mr T vouchers that covers an annual subscription.

There are loads of budget recipes, they give you loads of ideas for entertaining and have a great section each time on special diets such as diabetic, coeliac, egg free, high fibre etc.

I have 2 recipes which may be of interest especially to Tigerfeet2006 and Long Tall Sally for gluten-free, egg-free and diary-free banana bread and flourless chocolate raspberry cake. If you want the recipes just let me know.

HTH

Tracey

I would love to see the banana bread recipe. My usual one has milk so I can't eat it. Not entirely a bad thing, but it would be nice to indulge sometimes! :j

kit77

After having 3 NSD in a row I had to spend money today as needed to do a shop for DH and I going back to work today. I do nights and he does days.

Asda £15.35
M&S £12.70 (should have been £17.67 but less with the deals) all this was fruit apart from £4 which was a reduced chicken.
Waitrose £21.64 (should have been £24.58 but again less with deals)
Farmfoods £7.97

Total £57.66

House is full of food so this little lot should last at least a week if not more. I know some people would think it daft do go to different shops but I am reallty lucky to have an Asda, Tesco, Morrisons, Sainsbury, Lidil, Aldi, Farmfoods, M&S and a Waitrose all withing a 10 minute drive and most are in a circle so it doesn't take much time or petrol to shop in more than one. Have to say though I don't do Tesco or Sainsbury very much.

TheThriftyScrumpers

Brassic_Park wrote: »

I brown off a pack of diced casserole steak (normally cut off the gristly bits first though doesn't matter too much in SC) and add to a tin of chopped tomatoes, 1/3 bottle port (or any red wine will do), plus a dissolved beef stock cube and a touch of water. Season with pepper and balsamic vinegar. I added what Stilton I had leftover from Christmas, but you need a fairly good amount, depending on what you have in/how strong you want it, diced into cubes and stirred through (it'll melt through pretty quickly). I cook on high for about 5 hours and the beef is like butter, so soft. I normally also add an onion, maybe some carrots or whatever's left in the fridge really. This normally does me and OH 2 dinners, sometimes with a spare lunch portion too. Goes nice with rice or mash. Hope that helps!

Thank you, this sounds lovely. I will definitely be making this