July 2012 Grocery Challenge

jumblejack

Free food hunt results....

Here is lovely sea beet:



I foraged some of this for my pasta bake!!!

Here is some rock samphire. I didn't harvest this though. It's available all year so it can wait:


I found some ramsons by a church graveyard so here it is getting ready for my pasta with the sea beet:



Ready for the oven, my ramson, sea beet and beef pasta bakes with a couple of sun dried tomato breads........


Edit:

Success!!!! The whole family are eating SECONDS... And they even saw me collecting the goodies today so know they are eating foraged ingredients!!!
I feel truly victorious. Yay!:j

Room for afters? Pancakes with foraged wild rose petal jam made last week...

savesummore

2 tsp dried yeast
1 tsp sugar
300ml/ 1/2 pint hand hot water
450g/1lb strong white flour
1tsp salt

stir dried yeast & sugar into the water and leave until yeast has disolved and mixture frothy

Mix the flour and salt in a big bowl and stir in the yeast liquid and mix to a dough

turn onto floured surface and knead- you will have to knead until dough is firm, elestic but not sticky, then put in a greased large bowl and leave to rise (double in size)

Knock back dough and re knead until firm, divide dough into 8 pieces roll into oval shapes, place on greased tray and leave for abut 5 mins

Bake at the top of your oven for 6-8 mins (240c) or until then just begin to colour, then wrap cooked pittas in a damp tea towel to cool

OH always puts rising bread inside a plastic bag- bread in the bowl, bowl in the bag-it seems to help

Good luck with these-they are yummy esp with HM hummus

liz-paul

Can I join for this month please? My month starts today & ends on the 20th as I'm on hols from then (diffferent budget). Last month I did this on my own, set a budget of £450 for myself, Oh & 2 small kids (all food (exc takeaways/eating out), basic toiletries (i.e. not fancy face creams/make up etc), & household items). Came in at just under the £450 so I'm pretty pleased! Especially as we've been spending £500 - £600 per month (closer to £600 most months).
This months target was £275 (as only 3 weeks for us) until I realised that my brother and his wife are visitng us from the US this weekend :eek: meaning we need to buy in booze and some other exta bits & bobs. Therefore setting this months budget at £325 which is a bit higher than I would like but I also want my brother and his wife to have a good time without it meaning we have to live on pasta & beans after they leave :rotfl:

Any tips what I can do with broad beans? Got a massive bag in the freezer & don't know what to do with them.....

meg72

fozziebeartoo wrote: »

Sincerely hoping the floods receed quickly and the lovely people here are not too badly affected, hugs to Meg, and hurrah for the return of Flo!

Still no news re: DD's tests but she is out trying on wedding dresses today so hopefully she wont let the worry spoil her
fun :j

Tomorrow is my birthday (will be 53 :eek:) and I just had delivered a gorgeous huge arrangement of flowers and a cuddly teddy from a new man I have met recently and who I like a lot, so happy Fozziebeartoo here, at least for the next 5 minutes

Flo DID say there were still some nice men out there, but I had just about given up finding one......;)

Thanks for the hug, prayers for your DD, Wow for the new Man,
Happy Birthday Birthday Fozzie, even if its only 5mins, be happy when you can.

katiegirl

This thread is like my conscience! I woke up feeling a little rough after a friend's wedding yesterday and could have really eaten some junk food. Instead I went to the Co-op (needed to go anyway for wraps/bread and yoghurts for dd's lunch box), and did do a bit of uneccesary spending but was way cheaper than going to McD's or something.

Spent £7.96 which was for
Value pittas 21p (the wraps weren't on special offer anymore and I wasn't going to pay £1.89 for the, so we're giving these a go)
Mature cheddar £2 (this was on special offer, normally £3 for 360g, after I picked it up I spent a good few minutes looking at the other cheese and seeing if it actually was cheap, I think it was, but the maths was a challenge to my hungover brain!)
Fromage frais £1 (never pay more than £1 for fromage frais/yoghurts for dd's lunchbox)
Fanta £1.25 (really fancied it, I know a 750ml bottle for this price isn't very money saving but I usually don't drink it so even though I could have got 2x2l for £3 this seemed the more sensible option)
Pizza £2 (easy tea, were going to have fishcakes and veg but that can be saved for another day)
Snickers ice-cream £1.50 (another treat!)

Will update my signature now.

XSpender

DH wanted to go to C0stc0 today to check out the meat now I am eating it too. The FR chickens looked good but don't need one this week but did buy a 6xpack of bacon, 2 cases of branst0n beans that worked out at 20p each and 10 tins of John W3st tuna at 69p each.

I tried the 2nd purse system a while ago but it didn't really work for me but after reading the recent posts I realise I was missing out the 3rd purse bit and trying to do it virtually so I never really had any surplus. I am going to try it again with the beans, tuna and bacon I bought today and anything I earn over £20 is going into the 3rd purse for treats, probably meals out and days out as a family:)

DH also wanted some milk thistle as he is coming off the drink for a month in order to lose a bit ( I hope a big bit:eek:) of his belly! This has been added to my total as I would normally include alcohol costs.

Final spend today was £6.72 on milk, a bag of crisps for me and some final beers for DH to have with the football.

I am also going to add £2 to my total each month to cover the annual c0stc0 membership I paid today.

rising_from_the_ashes

dizzyditzy wrote: »

With all the talk of buying tubs to freeze batch cooking I thought I'd share what I do in case it might save someone money. I cut my 2ltr/4pint milk bottles approx 3inch from the bottom all the way round, recycle top part. Then line with a food bag, put meal in, knot bag and freeze. When frozen I remove the bag from the milk bottle and label with masking tape. The blocks stack nicely in the freezer and to defrost I place them in a cut milk carton in the fridge HTH:D

I use empty butter / margarine tubs:D - I used to line them but gave up. The blocks tips out neatly from frozen (run under hot water for a few seconds to loosen) and can go straight in the pan:)

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

I think the rest of you can relax now as that is the three of us; rising from the ashes, frooglefraggle and me - all with freezer disasters in the last week or two

BTW Thanks for the cat litter link rising; too late for this month but will check it out for next month

Ohhhhh dear - as you say, hopefully now there's been 3 of us, others will escape....... still early days in the testing for the new litter - I've not used clumping for years so .... we'll see! (get it on Tuesday as it was delivered to DPs)

mrs-moneypenny

ive gto to do this weekends reciepts to declare for june but am in again
with £400 to spend in JULY

thank you to everyone on this thread, you really are all such a great help

KatyReed+5

2 NSD's here, nothing out of the GC anyway. We did go to the Aquafest today which is a local river festivals with rides stalls, rafts races, etc, i took £20 from another fund as spending money and didn't even spend all of that, few rides for the kiddies, took a pack up and snacks and juice, and had a lovely day, glad the sun was shining.

Felling better about the split, although very very lonely

wannabe_sybil

wannabe_sybil wrote: »

I hope I will be able to stick to this.

My grocery budget this month is £200 and I really need to start working on this.

@sda delivery so down to £159.41 which is less than normal. I won't be able to get another one for a while due to roadworks.