January 2013 Grocery Challenge

Coxy11

Hi everyone,

Budgets done to here

Hello to:
ButterflyBee and january_23

Paid 2nd purse back today for items used this week - needed coffee plus two packs of DR meat from the freezer (pay a nominal £5 per pack), plus other bits and bobs - £25.90 total.

Went to B!uewater this morning to return my staff t-shirt, staff card, badge and locker key to B00ts (I was a Christmas temp). Got £5 deposit back for the locker key There's an A$da just up the road and I knew they had our dog food for £8/bag rather than the usual £10.50. Only managed to get one bag as it was on a really high shelf (either than or I'm shrinking....). Whilst there I got some rtc bakery and meat goods, plus Y0ugs frozen fish fillets, 2 for £1 for tonights tea, plus 8 pints of milk. Total spend of £28.64 although £8 is from 2nd purse.

Sorry for the ramble - off to update sig
Coxy

Tales17

FBG85 wrote: »

Hi, have you tried Aldi nappies? They are quite cheap and IMO are very good, I paid 4.99 for 44 in a size 4+ today, smaller sizes you get more per pack HTH

Thanks for that, haven't tried them but will do next time I need to get some! Went to Mr T for top up today so just bought some on offer there at the moment x

Tales17

Lost a voucher for 25p off on the way round Tesco today as I was trying to push a trolley while my daughter was asleep on my shoulder! Was annoyed until I just noticed they only scanned one set of bread rolls saving me 45p!

sjprmc01

£15.50 in Iceland

£2.75 in lidl

And £14.50 in morrisons

I used to tnk I didn't really spend too much on groceries as of late I've stopped doing a 'big' shop so don't notice large amounts being spent but it all just adds up to about the same

elizabunny

:)Planning to stretch a pack of Lamb Mince today, have a few recipes in mind but depends which stretches the furthest. Looks like we're all getting a cold snap -3 weeks has been mentioned so I'll need to get some more HM soup on to warm us up. Hoping for a NSD as not planning to go out.
Have a good day everyone!

Tales17

Just noticed she put the pack of parsnips that cost £1 through as loose ones weighing in at only 41p, bargain!

Shortie

Afternoon all

Our budget is now officially all spent up - we have 13p left in the purse :rotfl:

Mr Shortie started getting tetchy about the bad weather we're due, and as we're not in walking distance to any supermarkets if we did get snowed in, coupled with the fact I've been running our stocks down, we'd have no food for next week - I can kinda see where he's coming from.

That said, I shot from going shopping on Saturday or Monday next week, to knowing we were going shopping on my way home from work stuck on a train <sigh>. I felt sooooo disorganised.

Still, we managed to scrape in just under budget. I did comment to Mr Shortie how it's harder than I expected keeping to a budget of £40 per week (2 adults, 2 kids, cats and small dogs) but he was still seeing the point of keeping going as he sees now that we need to be careful with having just my wage and a lot of debt to plough through... <phew>

However, when we got home I suddenly felt quite a bit better.. we spent £17 of the budget on meat - 3 lots of mince that were on offer for £3 a pack, 2 packs of YS pork loins for £3 for the both, and a YS large cooked chicken for £2. When I seperated it all up into portions I realised just how much meat there was: 6 bags of mince (each bag does two dinners, bulked out with lots of veg to be fair), 4 bags of pork loin (2 loin in each bag and they were thick loins - we tend to shred these for meals anyway and not eat them as a loin) and the chicken hasn't yet been stripped and bagged up.

So actually, this week's shop got us 2 days worth of mince dinners for the next 6 weeks, 4 weeks of single day pork dinners, and at least 4 single days of chicken-something dinners (I can see the chook will get us at least 4 portions) - that made me feel nowhere near as bad suddenly. Okay, if we had only stuck to one pack of £3 mince for next week's meal plan, we would have had more spare for treats, but hey - less meat to buy in other weeks I suppose

Shortie

Tales17 wrote: »

Just noticed she put the pack of parsnips that cost £1 through as loose ones weighing in at only 41p, bargain!

Blimey - gos to show how much is added to the price if they are bagged - an extra 59p for packaging!

In_it_not_to_giveitaway

Mrs_T_M wrote: »

We had a few things in, but not much, and nothing specifically from Christmas.

Thank you very much for the informative detail.

I have looked at the budget from every angle and find it difficult to drop the budget below £25 per week.

BTW my wife is from Hong Kong and my BIL is the head chef for his family that own 3 restaurants in Cambridgeshire/Suffolk. If you need any recipies for Chinese dishes you need only ask. Of course, it may be that you are unable to get some of the ingredients, in which case I will suggest more commonly available substitutes.

Hope everyone comes in under budget.

missmucksmum

Hi everyone updated signature had to get rabbit food -4kgs of wagg from the range for £2.74=bargain, loo rolls £1.09, hay 99p, sawdust 98p, crisps £1.40 and sweets 60p for kids and some juice £1 could of done a lot worse but was really good so am happy even treated myself to a yankee candle sampler £1.27 fluffy towels mmm, actually slept last night so m feeling a bit more positive today x