Grocery Challenge - February 2012

bupster

Just wanted to say thank you to Florenceem for the tip about the veg. I've just tried layering sweetheart cabbage, mushrooms and courgettes in some tupperware and sprinkling each layer with a bit of salt and pepper, then bunging it in the microwave for four minutes. It tastes amazing and all the veg still look green and fresh. Wanted to up my intake but steaming can be a pain in the backside - doing all my veg like this from now on!

Also, can't remember who was moaning about shop bought granola but I make my own. 300 gms mixed flakes (porridge oats are fine but I bung in wheat and rye flakes), 50g each of sunflower and pumpkin seeds, same of sesame, 100g flaked almonds and some sultanas, a handful of hazelnuts, and some walnuts I crumble in. Mix up with a couple of tablespoons of oil, the same of honey, and 125ml of maple syrup. Based on a Good Food recipe. Bake for 20 mins, (I spread foil over a baking tray) stirring it around halfway through. I generally leave the sultanas out until the last five mins. Leave to cool completely before picking up the foil and sort of funnelling the lot into some tupperware.

Very filling but by the sounds of your lot you might want to bulk up with cheap oats as much as possible. Can you persuade him to try porridge? Cooked with apple juice it's really sweet and lovely and much, much cheaper.

ms_night_ryder

Went to lidl yesterday and spent £2.13 on a pack of chicken drumsticks and a punnet of strawberrys, so about 50p to kadt until Tuesday and I don't need anything so i will finally be underbudget for once

Flat_Eric

Have had a rubbish couple of months grocery shopping wise. A combination of bad planning, changing my mind, OH deciding he wants to cook from his pie cookbook and needs 101 ingredients, the cat being fussy or not being self sufficient , being too lazy to go to the proper shop (so buying at the corner shop instead at inflated prices), Home food shops when I could probably make do and have trouble finding a home for everything when it arrives. Anyway, March should be a quiet month so hope to sort myself out and have already started to get a system in place which involves writing meal ideas for breakfast (blue cards) lunch (yellow cards) and tea (green cards). Hey presto I mix them all up and lay out seven cards of each colour and lo and behold, I have my meal plan. Can obviously tweak cards to foods I have in the cupboard but hoping this will work better and that I can stop buying stuff just because I like it when I have other similar items in the fridge/freezer/cupboards that will suffice.

Can't wait for the March thread :j

freyasmum

I'll posts this, update the sig and then go and catch up!

More spends:


£16.30 in Morrisons on Friday, a tenner of which was lightbulbs _pale_ I seriously think there must be some sort of fault in the fittings cos I'm having to replace all the bulbs far too regularly


And £5.87 in Tesco today. I picked up my daughter from her father today (public place as usual *rolleyes*) and when I asked her what she would like for her dinner, she asked for a pork chop. I went into the shops and found a pack of lamb steaks reduced to £2.59 so she had them instead (when I went into the car I said I'd gotten lamb and, bless her, her face lit up and she said 'oh mammy, that's even better than pork!'). She had lamb with an egg and scoffed the lot (well, actually she called me up while she was in the bath when I was cooking her egg so it was cooked a bit more than I'd have liked. When she sat down to it, she asked why there was no yolk in her egg so I made her another one. It's my own fault for getting her used to decent food! :rotfl: **) I always like to make sure she's fed a decent meal especially on a Sunday as she's been away for the weekend and her dad's idea of a balanced meal is one piece of junk in each hand and his new girlfriend gave her... two fish fingers for dinner and that was it? :undecided


Anyhoo, £22.17 to add to the budget. Still three days left in the month and I'm not sure I need to buy anything else. Perhaps milk so I won't declare now.

ragz wrote: »

£39.51 Spent in Lidl and £16.38 in Asda. Asda had the Belvita Breakfast biscuits on offer for £1 (from £2.48, yeah right, who would pay that?) and discovered DD loves them so may have to go back for some more. Linda MC Sausages were £1 a pack. Not much else on offer that I wanted, it always seems to be junk food in Asda even more than the others...

I don't mean this to sound bad so I apologise if anyone is offended, but that's what Asda's clientele seem to demand


** I would like to point out no eggs were wasted in the process of this dinner.


Also, Helen Jelly - I don't need to be on the front page if it saves you any typing. Though I'm on an annual budget so I don't know how you work those?

Long_tall_sally

I have declared OH as officially the worst shopper! He went to A*gos this morning as we needed to get a new hoover so I asked him to pop into Mr T next door with a list of things to get ONLY if they were on offer. He came back with not a lot & had managed to spend £20. £7 on some bin bags, £3.19 on Hein* soup, a large jar of Lloyd Grossman sauce (which I had asked for) and a smaller one of the same thing because it was on offer! The bin bags (for 50) he thought were half price and weren't, neither were the Hein* soup, it was Te*co's own that were half price and he looked a bit puzzled when I asked him why he hadn't bought two of the smaller Lloyd Grossman sauces as they were on a good offer instead of buying the large jar which wasn't on offer. I took them all back this afternoon and also found the chicken breasts that I had requested that were on a half price offer which he couldn't find! Honestly, men!

Tigerfeet - I made the peanut butter cookies yesterday. I don't understand why but DS (who is the one with Coeliacs) didn't like them & he does like peanut butter. Never mind Me & DD thought they were lovely so thankyou!

blackandwhitebunny

Helen Jelly, I'm quite happy not to hae an amount on the front pages and just to update my signature.
Once again I've lost track:o I think next month my aim is oing to be just to spend as little as possible and keep track properly and see how it goes. Any extra to the holiday fund:D

freyasmum

elsiepac wrote: »

Then I was charged 3p for the privilege of a carrier bag. So a total of £1.20 spent. Next time I will take my own bags if I remember, stingy creature that I am (Although it was a very good quality carrier bag for 3p, I must say, much better than the carppy thin things in Mr T!)

Hey, it's better in your pocket than in theirs

Suffolk_lass

Freyasmum - Our lightbulbs used to blow all the time too; we do get power cuts from time to time but it seemed that when a bulb went it also blew the fuse. I got an electrician in and he found a dead mouse in the powerpoint in the garden shed (it had crept in where the cable entered and been electrocuted) he then fitted a separate spur to isolate the outdoor points (garage too). That and long-life bulbs seems to have helped a lot.

NSD here Today. Hopeful for target on Wednesday.
Busy week in prospect, have a good one everyone
SL

Barbeduk

Hi all, popped over to !id! yesterday for their weekend specials and spent £13.42 which included 3 packets of mince and 10 bars of the chocolate they had reduced to 17p. So tempted to buy more but I'd only eat it all! I'd die happy though!

£8.15 to last til Fri, but I only need to buy some macaroni, cornflour and ham in Mr M. Famous last words!!:)

Someone said way back in this thread that they had a price in their head that they were willing to pay for things. Wow, that's me now! DH laughs because I know the price of everything and where I can get it cheapest! And it's all down to you guys :T

FrugalLina

Another no-spend day for me, in fact I have been generating cash by uploading books to Zapper and going around photographing things to put on Ebay. I feel rather virtuous.

I spent several hours in the kitchen doing some batch cooking and my teeny freezer is now groaning from a huge veggie shepherdless pie, a ginormous dish of tuna pasta bake and some delish leftover mincemeat (mince pie ingredients from Christmas) muffins. Bearing in mind that I am just A Single Lady here, that lot will last for ages.

I spent quite a bit more time washing up afterwards!

My cupboards look most healthy so I am reasonably certain I won't need to shop until later on in the week and that will be mostly for veggies.

Thanks everyone for the great recipes and cooking tips, BTW!

(I am so happy, I am on holiday next week and apart from some painting to do, I am looking forward to some spring cleaning and playing, er, I mean walking my neighbours adorable dogs this week).