Grocery Challenge - February 2012

Suffolk_lass

DundeeDoll wrote: »

After long illness, FIL died this morning in nursing home. OH had gone down again Thursday knowing death was imminent. Left me a bit numb. MIL not eating properly so OH buying food for her. Don't know when the funeral is. Will try to keep to budget this month.

I'm so sorry for your loss. I do hope your MIL picks up but your OH will need your strong support whatever happens. It sounds as though they are a way away and that's not easy. Many of us will understand what you are going through. Very best wishes to all of you.

rising_from_the_ashes

DundeeDoll wrote: »

After long illness, FIL died this morning in nursing home. OH had gone down again Thursday knowing death was imminent. Left me a bit numb. MIL not eating properly so OH buying food for her. Don't know when the funeral is. Will try to keep to budget this month.

So sorry to hear this DD - thoughts with all the family ((((hugs)))).

JARUS wrote: »

Never ordered cat food online before let's hope it arrives.

I buy all my pet food online now - from several different suppliers - and can say I've never had a problem (yet!).

I used to get stuff from PAH all the time but they've recently changed their courier & you now need to sign for it which means I can't get anything from them anymore:mad: (the old courier was happy to leave in a "safe" place if you took responsibility for it).

I have made my feelings on the subject known to PAH - especially as there was nothing to say they'd changed when ordering that you must now be in to sign for the delivery.

rising_from_the_ashes

Ohhhhh, forgot to add - just back from getting new tyres on the car ... that's nearly £450 spent on it in the last week :eek: - but it has now been serviced, taxed, breakdown cover renewed and new tyres - so that better be it for the year! It will put my sig totals a bit off kilter for a while tho':(...

Anyway, horrible out (heavy rain & wind - not snow as predicted (yet) - so came straight home rather than going to the sm & stopped at the Co*op for a couple of essentials - £8.89. Hoping that will keep me going until Weds when I can get to the sm.

Enjoy the rest of your weekend & hope the weather's not too bad wherever you are!:)

Ninno820

tracey12 wrote: »

I freeze all sorts into ice cube trays and then when frozen I bag up cubes so that I can use the tray for something else. I freeze pesto, cream, chopped herbs with some water, wine, passata, tomato puree and probably some more but can't think of at the moment.

This way nothing is wasted and you can just get out as many cubes as you need

Tracey

I freeze lemon and orange juice, from the fruit when I just need the zest, in the ice cube trays. Then - when I need a splash of either I just add the ice cube - lemon in risotto etc.

Didnt need to shop , other than I had a voucher that runs out today, but went to M&S and bought a photo frame (for a wedding gift0, 2 swiss rolls, 3 spagehtti carbonaras, 2 packs of fish cakes and 4 tins of chucky chicken (my secret pleasure) for £1.79:rotfl:(Used remains of a gift card, 10% off voucher, £2 off a £20 shop and free guft for home up to value of £10 voucher). Fully appreacite that I would not normally buy such un-os meals but am rather please with my bargains! However do not need them until after 23rd Feb - meals planned up until then.

Spiggle

DundeeDoll wrote: »

After long illness, FIL died this morning in nursing home. OH had gone down again Thursday knowing death was imminent. Left me a bit numb. MIL not eating properly so OH buying food for her. Don't know when the funeral is. Will try to keep to budget this month.

Going to Lidl later with mum as OH has car (getting perilously low on cat food and bread - will dust down bread maker maybe next month but I think cooking cat food would turn out more expensive!). Menu for week planned (lots of fish cos OH not so keen on fish), freezer audited, very last of the Christmas turkey to be finished this lunch time. At last am getting to the end of UFOs - unidentified frying objects - you know, those bits of meat in unlabeled plastic bags whose identity only becomes clear on defrosting (and sometimes not even then lol). Love you all, you're the best xxx

Ahh, DundeeDoll, I'm so sorry for your loss and the difficult circumstances, so painful. I will keep you and family in my thoughts and please do come on here if you want to let off steam, have a rant or have a cry. We'll be here for you. Sending virtual hugs to you.

JARUS wrote: »

For all you cat lovers out there who use H*lls just order chicken online 5kg bag (+20% free therefore 6kg) usually £31.99 for £24 - so I ordered 2 no P&P and huge saving - altought will have to use 2nd purse as will blow February budget - well we can eat cat food. It was from P**s at H*me.

Never ordered cat food online before let's hope it arrives.

Jarus x

Thanks for that Jarus, I got all excited as mine have H*lls but only the Hairball variety which isn't included in the offer. I've been buying online for a while now and have never had difficulty with the product arriving. For your future reference, I buy online and use quidco for the cashback BUT I have bought from Z**plus twice and am still awaiting the cashback from August the first order! :mad: By contrast, I bought another couple of bags last month from P*tMeds through Quidco and I've already recieved the cashback in my bank account! :T It's worth checking out the various companies to be honest.

tigerfeet2006 wrote: »

Welcome to the newbies. This is a fantastic thread and the folks on here are very supportive.

This is Spiggles excellent post that is recommended reading.

Thanks tigerfeet for posting my tips up for the newbies. :A I've actually decided to take my own advice. :rotfl:

A couple of days ago I got the paper purely for the £6 wys £40 at MrM. Having gone on the site and then looked at what we really need to buy, we're going to take the 30p loss on the paper and not bother going to MrM as we really don't need £40 worth of shopping. :cool:

The only thing I could see that was a really good buy was the Typh** tea at £1.04 for 80 bags. We don't need these at the moment but I do always have a stock as I can't run out of my favourite tipple now can I? I'll pop to the MrM near work next week to see if it's still on offer then get some of the teabags and some bread flour and use the £5 Miles voucher instead. 4 bags of flour will be £2.40 and 3 packs of tea will be £3.12 so it should only cost me 52p to get some really good stocks in. :j

I read that some challengers have been shopping to get to totals that trigger a moc or get so much off petrol but end up spending more than required. Do try to price up your list from the relevant website before you go shopping as this will hopefully keep your total spent down provided, of course, you stick to your list!

By the way, it's snowing here and has been since about 10.30am. Started light and has got heavier but OH just said it's getting to be a wetter type of snow so it'll probably be all gone by this evening. The forecast did not look so cheery for the midlands last night and so I hope everyone there is ok, keeping warm and staying indoors as much as possible.

Anyway, that's my little ramble of the day. I'll see you all later.

Take care,
Spigs

Suffolk_lass

rising - I know how you feel! £1300 service which included tyres and brakes last month and new windscreen yesterday (£75 excess). Had put some aside but not enough. Raiding available pots and resorted to interest free cc for the transaction - they did waive the 2% cc fee at the garage as we had to take a motobility car home, and they reimbursed the fuel we had to put in their car with thanks to us (nice touch; the thx, I mean!).

Done my spend for the week, including chicken from 2nd purse larder (repaid in total). Also used the Sainsbobs coupons for price match £7.15 and £10 off £70 all in my sig. Seemed a lot this week but DH had bought light bulbs for MIL (£8.99) and have now reduced by this as she won't let him pay. Not sure I'll do a big shop next week as is half term and DH and DS both home - they will only eat everything if I buy it so we might have a freezer week and HM bread and cake (let them eat cake...):rotfl:

rising_from_the_ashes

Spiggle wrote: »

I read that some challengers have been shopping to get to totals that trigger a moc or get so much off petrol but end up spending more than required. Do try to price up your list from the relevant website before you go shopping as this will hopefully keep your total spent down provided, of course, you stick to your list!

I've finally got wise to them and this latest con .... let's see - spend £40 and get £5 off your next £40 spend - so really, you have to spend £80 to get £5 off ..... that's a lot of money and, for me certainly, I rarely need to spend that much.

I don't mind the ones such as the A*ldi one where I think it was £5 off a £30 spend - but the ones where you've got to spend £x to get money off the next £x .... mmmmm not really a good deal IMHO and I won't be falling for them again!:)

SpagBol

For the first time EVER I have done a proper monthly shop, enough meat and veg to last two weeks. I tried our refurbed farm shop locally and got £25kg maris pipers for £5 which I think is very cheap indeed, normally I pay almost £2 for 2.5 kg of the same variety, my favourite!! I bought loads of veg for soups, very good value FR eggs and lots of fruit for lunches. We then went to Mr S and spent £94 :eek: but this got me all my washing powder, dishwasher tabs, loo and kitchen roll, apple juice, cereal, honey etc which are my big spends for the month. Almost all of my shop is now value brands, my latest discovery is that MrS value dishwasher tabs are excellent at £1.50 for 30.

We even bought a reasonable amount of chocolate and lots of baking ingredients (and two bottles of red *ahem*) in case it snows.

totallybored

Up to £39.91 so far this month which isn't too bad!

Decided to get public transport this morning rather than use the car and this definitely saved us money as we couldn't carry too much. Went to Mr Moz and spent £11 on half price cheese and marg which should last 2 months. Then £19 at L1dl which included salad stuff, beer and wine, juice and huge 1lt bottles of shower gel for £1.30 which is excellent value. Had to then pop in Mr Ts for plastic burger cheese and value baby bath to use as hand soap.

I think I might do this again next weekend.

sistercas

i find the MOC the SM offer dont generally work for me , i spend alot but i spread it around several shops ( to get the best value) so rarely meet the requirements of the coupon

snowing here in Sheffield and its settling :cool:

Dundeedoll (((hugs))) so sorry to hear your news xx