Trying to reduce my grocery bill, any advice please

sitcom321

thank you to everyone who has posted on here for me I have got some great tips and I am going to use them. starting today i have taken the chicken legs out the freezer and i will make a chicken casserole for tea tomorrow. today will be risky as I am making a corned beef hash, potatoes, onions, carrots and corned beef. he has gone to a football match this afternoon and its freezing so my thinking is he will be freezing and hungry when he gets home and eat it. I know he likes that meal and we have not had it in over 12 months

sitcom321

Result!!! everyone loved the corned beef hash I made a big pan of mushy peas too as i found a box of dried peas in the cupboard when doing my "stocktake" this morning. and he didnt notice anything wrong with the corned beef and I used smartprice!!

chicken casserole with chicken legs tomorrow. I will see how that goes, just done my shop online at tesco and with the special offers, value stuff people have mentioned and a £6 voucher off a £40 spend my total shop for today including delivery was £37 I got loads of value stuff plus I still included meat, fish, fruit, plus 3 bottles of wine.

phizzimum

Woohoo! Well done! So glad the family liked the corn beef hash - once you have a few cheap meals that you all enjoy it should really make a difference. And well done for doing such a bargainous shop for the week!

Herbyme

I'd advise subscribing to the Grocery Challenge thread each month - there's a ton of useful advice on there and reading it keeps me motivated and on track. I've already started to shave money off without feeling the pinch and my OH is massively foody and fussy too. People are always popping up with recipes and tips and I've found lots that my fussy eaters love. I've also found neat things like my fishmonger selling cod trimmings for £3 a kilo - not just good for fish pie but also Thai fish cakes etc, which seem like a treat, not a punishment.

My total includes everything, food, wine (rather less this year since we started 2 dry days a week ;-), toiletries, cleaning stuff for 4 people and 4 pets. I've found I can stockpile stuff like loo rolls, ketchup etc so that all that sort of stuff is only ever bought when on a good offer. That makes a big difference. There is so much support available on the GC forum, you'll find you can make changes fairly painlessly once you start thinking differently about it all.
Best of luck!

SmlSave

Hi sitcom, theres loads of great tips on this thread :-) thank you for starting it

I would def recommend keeping your oh in the dark about some things like using cheaper brands and streching meat with veg/lentils. My oh is clueless bout half the things he eats!

Mayflower10cat

How to make Chapatties - sorry, didn't check this thread sooner!
Take 300g of chapatti flour (bigger Tescos sell it) add just enough cold water to make a stiff dough. Knead dough for a few minutes then leave covered in the fridge for half an hour. Divide teh dough into four or five portions, roll out into rounds of about 2-4mm. Heat your Tava/heavy frying pan to hot. Add a just a little oil to the tava then stick your first chapatti on. Turn over several times, they will bubble up with little golden brown spots. Keep warm, wrapped up in a parcel, in the oven until you've made all of them. Really, really tasty.

phizzimum

Mmm sounds yum mayflower! I use self raising flour and sunflower oil (2 cups to 2 tablespoons, plus little water) and then grill them. But I'm sure yours are better!

PipneyJane

Mayflower10cat wrote: »

How to make Chapatties - sorry, didn't check this thread sooner!
Take 300g of chapatti flour (bigger Tescos sell it) add just enough cold water to make a stiff dough. Knead dough for a few minutes then leave covered in the fridge for half an hour. Divide teh dough into four or five portions, roll out into rounds of about 2-4mm. Heat your Tava/heavy frying pan to hot. Add a just a little oil to the tava then stick your first chapatti on. Turn over several times, they will bubble up with little golden brown spots. Keep warm, wrapped up in a parcel, in the oven until you've made all of them. Really, really tasty.

Great recipe Do you add a leavening agent? (Baking powder, yeast?) Or just make them "as is"?

Sounds a lot like Damper but that's made with self-raising flour. (Rough recipe: Self raising flour, pinch of salt, mix with water to form a dough. Fry over a campfire to cook.)

BitterAndTwisted

If you can find wholemeal flour cheaper than special chapatti flour, use that. One of the pound shops near here has chapatti flour in big plastic bags at the moment and that's a lot cheaper than the local supermarkets. I haven't actually made chapattis with it yet, I've thrown it in the bread-maker.

No leavening agent in chapattis: I think it's the heat that makes them puff up a bit but the ones I had in India were pretty flat once they got to the table. As long as they haven't been left to go cold they're good.

Talking of a home-made soup and pudding-night: that's precisely what I had for my dinner last night. I'd made an upside-down cake with some YS plums I snatched up for a song and had the last slice of that with custard. Yummy. Got a banana-cake in reserve in the tin which I made yesterday afternoon.

About the fish-mongers trimmings: I discovered the local stalls which I'd overlooked for a long time who are selling trimmings for £2 a kilo. A pound of that once skinned and boned made a fish-pie which would have served four. I quite like the "pot-luck" aspect as my life currently is a bit short of excitement and this was all good white fish. My mother would have been proud of me.

icecreamdogpark

Good food website do a section on cheap meals all obv cooked from scratch and can be tweeked to suit you ,they also get ratings and people give other advice on the recipe ie using other meats/fish/spices I love that website