August 2012 Grocery Challenge

Soworried

Morning
Today I have pulled out a pack of chicken portions to make in to southern fried chicken. I will serve it with home made garlic and cheese balls and salad.
Breakfast has been cereal, lunch will be left over curry on a jacket potato.

No shopping here today but I did get a lot of bargins last night. I'll update my spends in my signature.

I can't wait for the blackberries to ripen either.

Caterina

Thank you for your very informative post MoneyQueen, the sort of actions you list are the same as the ones I did when I was buying mostly organic. I am needing to save a bit more for a while as we had a few major spends, but as soon as I save enough to take us back to the normal saving levels, then I am planning to go back to more organic food and your suggestions will come useful! Am going to check ouT Wholefoods next time I am in central London, too.

Got to update yesterday spend, around £12 but will do after today shop as I still need a few bits. Back later with correct figures!

savesummore

NickJW wrote: »

Of course - it was in Mr S - saw it in my Local shop this morning. £3 each - not sure if you would count that as good, but I have a self imposed £3 max limit per jar on coffee Should have grabbed a cheaper jar in Lidl to try out when I went a few weeks back.

If it's not a good deal, out of curiosity, what sort of prices do you generally aim for? I'm a bit slow picking up the offers and only tend to buy a jar when I see the coffee is running out.

Katsu curry was AMAZING tonight, but the kitchen looks like a bombs hit it! :rotfl: Shame it's not something I will do for a long time as well, because I only did it because the things needed using up. Also the ingredients are sourced from the Japan Centre, and I have lots of other spices and herbs to construct other meals with.

Anyway - enough of my rambling - I had best clean the kitchen!

Hi, Id say £3 a jar is a good deal these days- I have to have 'branded' coffee as I cant stand any own brand I have ever tried

With washing powder if I can get it at 10p a wash im very happy , tea also about 10p a bag and loo roll for about 25p-30p a roll i would consider good

Thanks for your info :T

sonastin

Spend £7-ish at Mr T on Friday on bits we forgot to take with us on the weekend's camping and then £17-ish at Ald! last night on gawd-knows-what. Pretty sure I only went in for sandwich filling, mushrooms and pesto but somehow came out with a trolley full of stuff. Didn't take any bags with me so did an interesting bit of jenga to carry it all in from the car!

Current total is £111.71 / £180 - a bit high but OH is away for the rest of the month & I can quite happily live on those creative concoctions that you wouldn't feed another human being so hopefully I won't need to do much more shopping. Might have to take the occasional food parcel to OH though so that he doesn't have to live off takeaways. I'll try to make those up from what is already in stock but might need the odd bits&pieces.

sneakyspender

Welcome dfs. I have found the best way for us is shopping every week and a bit (8-10 daysish). The troops do start to moan towards the end,but I wont go shopping until I can't make adays food from what we have left.
Another cheap day out today. Before this challenge I might have bought lunch,but I used up some wraps (bb7th july but seemed fine) and packed us up a picnic. Total spent £3 on a coffee for me and an ice cream for the dcs.:)

NickJW

Possession wrote: »

I often make katsu curry just using frozen breaded chicken fillets, saving the faff of the panko and making it all a lot quicker and less messy. It's not authentic but still tastes good. Actually in Japan people buy the chicken ready done so in way it is quite authentic, LOL.

Where were you last night! Haha :rotfl:. Could have saved a LOT of time, but having said that, the recipe I did was lovely. It was from the Japan Centre so quite specialist ingredients, but not expensive once bought: http://japancentre.com/recipes/japanese-chicken-katsu-curry

savesummore wrote: »

Hi, Id say £3 a jar is a good deal these days- I have to have 'branded' coffee as I cant stand any own brand I have ever tried.

Mrs_Addicted_to_Spending wrote: »

On subject of coffee, we try to keep to £3 per jar as well although we've now tried the organic fairtrade coffee from Lid1 which is about £2.29 and no complaints from DH yet so it must be OK.

Good to know I'm on the right page with pricing. That was the coffee I saw in Lidl a few weeks back. Didn't buy at the time because I had another jar in the cupboard, but I'll get some next time I go there.

No cooking for me tonight - Housemate is doing Quick brown sugar and spring onion chicken teriyaki from Lorraine Pascales cookbook. I think her cookbook is one of the best...everything is with minimal ingredients and quick!

sneakyspender

Sorry for multiple posts. Just wanted to say with teenage dsc. Do you meal plan snacks ? I have recently started doing this and it makes a huge difference. Then when the call "I'm hungrey" comes. You have already decided what is going to be offered. Examples of cheap and easy snacks are flapjacks,cheese slices and oat cakes, rice crispy cakes,popcorn. Hope this helps

NickJW

MoneyQueen wrote: »

Hi NickJW/ Caterina,
................

- Wholefoods eggs are almost the same price as other supermarkets but medium eggs in WF are the same size as the large ones in Tesco etc.
.......
- Some veg/ Fruit is cheaper in WF than say Tesco/ Sainsburys such as banana, apple, pears, grapefruits, mango, lettuce, pepper, fresh beetroot, tomatoes which are all staples in my house and I buy them weekly as dinner in this house is mixed salad with home made dressing (We try to have lunch as the biggest meal of the day)
.......
MQ

Hi MoneyQueen - thanks for that. The points I quoted I was very surprised about. I'll look out for those items next time.

Doing Indian food will definitely save you money as well, because you have so many spices (which I presume you buy in bulk if you use them a lot) and flavours so you don't need meat.

Possession

NickJW wrote: »

Where were you last night! Haha :rotfl:. Could have saved a LOT of time, but having said that, the recipe I did was lovely. It was from the Japan Centre so quite specialist ingredients, but not expensive once bought: http://japancentre.com/recipes/japanese-chicken-katsu-curry

My office - not that I'm ever in it - is just over the road from the Japan Centre. I used to live in Japan so I need my fix, LOL. Proper panko breaded chicken is nicer as the crumbs are much harder, but for easiness you can't beat buying some M&S breaded chicken, however un-MSE it is. I'll go and wash my mouth out now.

Debt_free_soon_2

Sneaky spender - thanks for the response. At least by going regularly you can get the whoopsie items & you have a better idea what you might want to eat that week to 10 days.

Yes i Meal plan snacks, bread sticks, crackers with just a bit of marg and fruit are the main ones. So all nice & cheap! DS has a dairy & egg allergy so it's hard to find cheap things for him & baking in't easy without eggs! It's like a chemistry lesson trying to get it to work!

I did a stock take today much to mr dfs ammusement, it was worth doing though as i found all sorts i'd forgotten about!