November 2012 Grocery Challenge

Nicky_Noo_Na

Another £8 spent today despite my NSD pledge!

£2 on toilet roll which is what we needed and then £6 on selection boxes and advent calendars while good offers were on. At least its only £2 to add to grocery spends the others are xmas budget.

Still need fruit and bread which I'll get tomorrow - how these little shops add up!

Bluegreen143

keepcalmanddrinktea - it's not too late! You might find that you'll need to move to the December thread while you're still in your 'November', but you can keep track in your signature and there are others who do it too!

I count all groceries, cleaning products/household stuff and basic toiletries for me and my OH, and cat food/litter for our cat, but not eating out, alcohol or takeaways - but you can count whatever you want and whatever makes sense to you.

If you don't know how much to allocate, why not spend your first month just tracking without a target, making sure you keep all receipts or record all spends straight away? Then the next month you can aim to reduce it by a wee bit. HTH!

No spend day today Had the Nigerian red kidney bean stew that I made yesterday for dinner, with rice & Greek yoghurt (meant to make greens as well but plenty of veg in the stew and couldn't be bothered - I had some marinaded cucumber I'd made at the weekend instead which was yum!).



Added lemon zest to vodka to begin making limoncello for Christmas hampers, had 5 lemons worth of juice to use up so in true :money: style I made lemon curd with three eggs I had in the fridge about to hit their sell by date. Took ages to thicken up compared to what the recipe said but looks really good now

EDIT apologies about the pic above, I had begun eating before remembering I wanted to take a picture!!

Honey_Bear

Keep Calm and Drink Tea: There's a wealth of information in the first few posts right at the very beginning of the thread, but the quick answer on what to include is ... whatever you need to include. My £140 budget is just food, not alcohol, and doesn't include eating out or takeaways, or pet food and nothing for the bathroom, but a lot of people do include some or all of those things. (Get her, sounding like she knows what she's talking about!)

I'm really pleased with this month - it just goes to show that you can teach an old dog new tricks. I've managed to keep the spend down to £23.07 so far, which is amazing for me. I'd gone into Sainsbobs for some dog food and just happened to swing by the YS section and found four packs of salmon steaks and a pack of fishcakes reduced, so of course I just had to have them. OH is away this week, so I'm indulging myself on all the food I don't eat while he's around - cheese and onion sandwich for lunch and Lentil Dhal tonight, with which I managed to finally get the precooked packet of rice out of the cupboard. I've absolutely no idea where it came from because I certainly didn't buy it. Probably a lodger, long gone. As is the rice now.

katholicos

Bluegreen143 wrote: »

keepcalmanddrinktea Had the Nigerian red kidney bean stew that I made yesterday for dinner, with rice & Greek yoghurt.





!!

Could you please let us have the recipe for this, it looks yummy!?

Thank you

rosieben

JIL wrote: »

Now apologies to the thread but I just need to ask some advice and I know lots on here use them.
I ordered some red labelled fizzy drinks from @pproved foods ...
Is it usually like this? I have done one of them ticket things but I am so disappointed. ...

There's an approved foods thread here somewhere, will try to find you a link as there will be people on there who may be able to advise you.
I've never had damaged or missing items in any of my deliveries, maybe I've been lucky.

eta - here's the link. I forgot to say that a rep from AP posts on there so may be able to help you

System

Have just updated my signature, doing very well, helped by the fact my wonderful husband passed his driving test and therefore I can stock up now once or twice a month on the store cupboard items and with Tesco, Asda, Sainsburys, Lidl, Co-op and other smaller places all within 2 miles of each other and my home my shopping budget hopefully will go further than ever now!

Thanks for the thread guys, as ever

elly2

Morning all, yesterday turned into a NSD :j was way too cold to go out so DD had pizza,i had chicken pie and the kids had kievs sounds a bit of a faf but i dont mind cooking different things for them. Made the cheese scones and i think they have demolished half of them already. Today will be a spend day still need new pots and coleslaw for DD's gammon combo not too sure what lo's will be having (have plenty stuff in the freezer for them) i have some belly pork in the freezer might have that but not sure if it will defrost in time, can i defrost it in the m/w?. Tomorrow we are having chicken and rice thurs is meatballs (have a huge stockpile of these) and pasta, also took some cheese out of freezer as i used the stuff up in the fridge so the freezers are getting emptied slowly. Have started trying to do a monthly meal plan it is not looking exciting but its using up the food in the freezers (need to start using this) and food i know they will eat.

armchairexpert

Two smug things:

1) My newly invented Curried chicken, brown lentil and vegetable pot pie was such a hit that everyone had seconds. So there goes my plan of saving some for tomorrow's lunch (seriously, I read the Rubber Chicken thread and I am amazed at how little meat people seem to eat! This was the meat from two chicken marylands, plus a can of brown lentils, plus loads of potato, carrot and pastry, and it got polished off between two adults and one small child. How are people making a whole curry from one chicken breast?) but I have a warm glow nonetheless. That is definitely going on the menu rotation!
2) I read today that the average Australian spend for a family of four is $320 a WEEK. $1280 a month. My $700 is feeling very MSE right about now.

elly, if you have time to do this, what I would do is partially defrost in the microwave now and then leave it to thaw the rest of the way naturally - that way you avoid the problem of slightly parboiling the outer bits.

xxlouisexx56

£60 spent this morning between asda and aldi.

We now have lots of meat in the freezer and quite a few of the slimming world bits that I eat. Only I forgot to get gnocchi for Fridays dinner so will have to go back in to the shops at some point. I might pop to morrisons tomorrow, get some coke whilst its in offer, get my gnocchi and a baguette and then have a few serious NSD's until the weekend. We will need milk but I can make OH buy that on his way home

NickJW

Two more spends:

£1.60 yesterday on milk and a lime
£4.45 in Mr W today on cream, cheese and mushrooms.

Have bacon out of the freezer so having Spaghetti Carbonara tonight