April 2012 Grocery Challenge

Florenceem

Bossy Florenceem here!
Spent £11 today!
Went to Al.. and bought lots of their fruit & veggies plus we needed milk.
We had HM wedges, HM salmon quiche with salad - lettuce, tomato, carrot, celery, cucumber and onion for dinner.

NickJW

Forgot to say zebbeddee - congratulations! :j

Also forgot to say - has anyone noticed that Bo0ts seems to be distinctly bad value at the moment. I'm getting very fed up with the 3 for 2 'offers'. Need to try and pop over to Co-0p - thanks rising_from_the_ashes :beer:

And whilst I am ranting...:p...the Llloyds Grossman green Thai curry sauce, whilst cheap, was so....BLAND! I'll be sticking to cooking it from scratch from now on.

Hope everybody has a good weekend.

S-I_am

meg72 wrote: »

Sounds good, uses more fat than mine though,I always use half fat to flour,dripping fromthe joint is particularly good. I also prefer to freeze mine without the water, no need to defrost, just add water and use.

thanks for the tip Meg. I do that with crumble but have never thought about freezing pastry before i add the water. Will definitely do that next time I make some pastry.

My tip for light flaky shortcrust pastry is to use a ratio of half fat - a mix of butter and lard - to plain flour. I sift the flour into bowl, add a pinch of salt, the cold butter and lard and blitz it in the kenwood until it looks like breadcrumbs. Then I disconnect the mixer, add the cold water and stir lightly with a knife until the mixture comes together in a dough. Then flatten into a flat round, cover with cling film and chill for at least 30 mins. If I use the kenwood to mix in the water then I get a lot tougher pastry - it tends to overwork the gluten. This way I get the benefit of the mixer doing the hardwork, ie, rubbing the fat into the flour, but I get a very light pastry too.

Jumblejack - How's your mum doing? And your dad? Is he coping on his own? Hope she recovers quickly and is home again soon.

Barbededux - thanks for the tip on the filter coffee. Will google it to find our nearest store.

Nite, nite everyone. Sleep well.
Sx

debbym

Just had everything explode on us this week.
My car is in the garage and may not recover (could just get scrap value for a car we bought last year for £8K:mad:), never mind the bill. OH's car just had its MOT. New boiler. Hole in roof which has to be repaired along with repairs to a wall. and I need a new car because we live in a rural area and I can't manage without (can't even get the kids to school).
Luckily I managed to spend yesterday on the phone and persuade at least some of the people to spread the bill (Nigel the plumber is a superstar - he let us spread it over 3 months:T:T) and we also have savings but this will wipe them out and then some. Never had bills for £20K in one month before:eek::eek::
However it does mean that the GC has rather gone out the window and I now want to spend as little as possible.

I've £18 in my purse until the end of the month with 5 of us to feed. I have plenty of pasta, rice and flour but nothing really to go with; off to weezl's website and blog to search for 50p a day styley recipes:o
Any suggestions would be welcome!

tessie_bear

hi...popped into the coop yesterday and got a few bargains..inc a warburton loaf for 19p....also some croissants...the reductions in our local coop are really good but very random...one3 day lots of bakery and nothing else the next lots of fruit and veg and not a bit of bread in sight...i often pop in if im passing

got a pack of chicken thighs for tea....not sure what i am going to make with them...possible curry i think

have a nice day tess

abitofhelp

morning all, just updated sig with small spend (for me) of £16. went to ald1 and got milk, biscuits, cheese, fruit and veggies.as we were out we popped into tesc0 which is over the road and bought the krave cereal as it is 1/2 price and is youngest childs fav cereal.

DundeeDoll

K updated on family trip to edinburgh. £45 so could have been worse (petrol and parking come out of bills budget not GC) But that means by the time we o the SM we're gonna be half way hrough the month's budget. Will need to work harder to get anything into xmas fund!!!

jumblejack

Hi S-I-am,

Thanks so much for asking.

My mum is managing to walk now although she was definitely tripping (in a drugs way, not physically) yesterday. She thought she was in her own home and that dad had had curtains put up around the bed!

Took dad pasties down yesterday as I went there first to clean up before we went to the hospital.

Nipping Lidl in a second for their weekend offer: 6 Cumberland sausages for 70p. Gonna make up a quick sausage casserole to take with me this afternoon. Will make enough so he has some for dinner tomorrow too. Will make mash etc when I am there as they have LIADS of whoopsied potatoes that I took on Tuesday.

A nurse said last night that mum could be home as early as Sunday/Monday as long as she has a bed downstairs.

Will she be able to get bed risers as the bed upstairs that we would bring down is really low?

We could always give her a mattress off ours to put on the top of the existing one to raise it even further?

Have a great day all.

WelshWoofer

Well, in the spirit of economising even further this month to accommodate an extra payment of the car after writing a list of what was in the freezer and cupboards and attempting a meal plan I did a mini shop today spread between Aldi, Mr S and the local shop.
I spent £10.82 in total:T. Was aiming for £10 but I picked up some half price Dove shampoo and conditioner.
£4.96 in Aldi on bagels, cheese triangles, potatoes, passata, strawberries, washing up liquid and crisps....quite good value I thought.
McVities Medley cereal bars (box of 6) are on offer at the moment in the One Stop shops for £1 (and also at Mr T's I think) so I got two to last me for a couple of weeks (I have one for breakfast every dya in work).

Ninno820

Afternoon all - I need to get back on the waggon. The easter holidays have done their damage and I am now limping along until pay day on the 23rd. I have aroud £5 left in my purse which will have to work its magic.