December 2012 Grocery Challenge!!!!! REALLLY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!

NickJW

Bluegreen143 wrote: »

Hello everyone! I've had a busy weekend putting up my Christmas decorations - definitely getting into the spirit of things now

Got my Mr A delivery today - £49.06 including delivery (£5), but I will be getting £2.99 refunded for some haddock (they substituted smoked haddock) and £1 for a bag of courgettes (one was completely mushy and liquified :mad:).

Meat - 250g casserole beef £2.39, 150g sirloin steak £2.51, 125g ham £1

Fruit & veg - SP peppers £1.25, celery 89p, spring onions 70p, 7 bananas 69p, 6 apples 96p, courgettes (free due to refund), garlic x4 £1, chillies £1, ginger 9p, bean sprouts 50p, salad x2 £1

Dairy - 4 pints milk £1

Bread - SP white loaf 47p

General - discos x6 £1, cashew nuts & almonds £2, SP pasta 24p, basmati rice 1kg £1.48, tuna x4 £2, SP chopped toms x2, 62p, SP kidney beans 27p, pot noodle x4 £3, whole grain mustard 65p, coke x6 £7.50

Cat - SP litter x2 £3.16

Toiletries - shower gel 79p

Made a big batch of carrot, lentil and ginger soup and a loaf of wholemeal bread for my lunches new week (the white bread I bought is for OH, who has tuna or ham sandwiches, Heinz tomato soup or pot noodles - not very healthy but it's what he likes!).

Got a beef casserole in the oven, it's a recipe for Antiguan beef stew on BBc but tweaked to be slow cooked due to the cheapy meat. Not convinced how nice it's going to be but we'll see. Serving with rice and beansprouts and maybe green beans.

Oh - let me know how that goes. I've seen that many a time when browsing for recipes on the bbc good food website and have contemplated making it, but have held off due to the requirement to use rump steaks (and steaks for me only need to be cooked on their own, with chips or potato dauphinoise + veg! ). Would be interested to see if using stewing beef works okay.

ETA: £3.44 spent this weekend on snacks for the train going to and from my parents.

rosieben

Bluegreen143 wrote: »

Rosieben, did you get anyone volunteer to take over the recipe indexing? I thought I saw that you were looking to take a break from it and if you're stuck I don't mind giving it a go? ...

thanks Bluegreen, will pm you

nicolula87

Never ending spending at the moment, spent £21 and pennies tonight stocking up on coffee and toothpaste and buying lunch stuff for this week. Adding to sig.

njk2125

Added up todays grocery spending and between Icld, FF, Mr T and Ali my total so far is £62.10.
We don't need anything more for the next week but can see a few christmas bits and bobs being purchased.

Dreamer80

Sent hubby to the shop for bread and bin liners, he spent £18.58 :eek:

Moral of the story, go myself next time

D80

mrs-moneypenny

cant believe i spent £120 in morrys on saturday!!!
ok mils £22 shop and a couple of dvds and christms drink was in the trolly but still

taking mils and christmas stuff off then adding the fruit and veg (bought elsewhere it was £89.23 so will try for as mny NSD as possible this week

liz-paul

Hi, I'm just wondering what other people do about meal planning. I definately think it helps me to keep on budget if I plan but I'm not sure of the best way to do it. So far I have been planning meals approx a week at a time (I work on a calendar month) but up to the whole month in one go. I don't usually decide what meals to have on any given day too far in advance, just shop for a few meals at a time. But I'm wondering if it wold be cheaper to plan my meals around special offers on things like meat...? In the past (waaayy in the past!) I used to just wader around the sm and pick up stuff which seemed like a good deal and then figure out what to cook with it - I don't want to go back to that as I used to waste a lot. But what way do you meal plan? I want to bring my monthly budget down from £450 pm to £400 pm by the start of April. Then maybe see about reducing it further......

Sorry for waffling - any suggestion much appreicated

nicolula87

liz-paul wrote: »

Hi, I'm just wondering what other people do about meal planning. I definately think it helps me to keep on budget if I plan but I'm not sure of the best way to do it. So far I have been planning meals approx a week at a time (I work on a calendar month) but up to the whole month in one go. I don't usually decide what meals to have on any given day too far in advance, just shop for a few meals at a time. But I'm wondering if it wold be cheaper to plan my meals around special offers on things like meat...? In the past (waaayy in the past!) I used to just wader around the sm and pick up stuff which seemed like a good deal and then figure out what to cook with it - I don't want to go back to that as I used to waste a lot. But what way do you meal plan? I want to bring my monthly budget down from £450 pm to £400 pm by the start of April. Then maybe see about reducing it further......

Sorry for waffling - any suggestion much appreicated

I tend to meal plan a week at a time, and just buy what I need for that. I buy my meat form the butchers most of the time so offers don't really affect it much. But if I see something extra cheap in the supermarket then I will usually buy it and not make one of the basic meals planned - eg jacket potatoes, any freezer food meals etc as they don't mean I end up wasting food. If that makes sense?? Or if I've planned beef stew say but there's pork on offer I might just change the meat.

Reading that back, not sure if it's helpful but I will post it anyway!

PS Found a receipt for £3 this morning in the car from the other day so adding to my sig!

mummybearx

Spent £25.69 in MrT's on Sunday night, £20 of that was on dog food. Some reduced veg and a bag of kale, and some cold meat for DH to make rolls for college.

Spent £7 in Ikea on breakfast and coffee on Saturday morning.

Total so far this month is £113.97

Billie-jo

quick update - Small spend in Morrison's taking me up to £27-18 now. Brought some crusty rolls, salad & salad dressing, some mayo and some breaded garlic mushrooms.