January 2013 Grocery Challenge

meanmarie

Couldn't resist some meat bargains to-day in our local SM...never buy anything there but meat as quality is excellent and prices good....but it brings my January declared total to::: €231.15

[Marie COLOR="Black"][/COLOR]

Hollygym

Had a NSD yesterday and inspired by the recipe index I made twinkles hob nob biscuits and for tea the bacon and veg risotto:T. Both fantastic - all biscuits finished after swimming lessons tonight!! DS2's birthday party tomorrow so had to go to Mr A's for party food. Will update sig later.. Definatly well over budget-I should be able to make a more realistic one next month...will check APG later, here's hoping for a voucher!!! :rotfl:

cornishchick

just sat and totaled up all my receipts, sitting here racking my brains incase I have forgotten somethings, so far,
spent £50.27 in SMs
£40 in mr T on stocking the new freezer with meat bargins,
and a fair few NSD,
off to re check my maths ect. then as its only 3 days till payday and they will be NSD I will be back with my monthly total...

katholicos

she_who_can_not_cook wrote: »

can i ask what do you batch cook?
i find that i look in the cooker and think can i fit two in? and do this with cottage pie and other pies . i do the same with the crockpot as well

Of course you can ask

I make lots of slow cooker meals because my cooker doesn't work. I do have a combi microwave but it isn't that great nor ideal for cooking family meals. I have a 6 litre slow cooker so When i use it i try to fill it up and thereby always try to have a home made ready-meal in the freezer.


Today for example i chopped up loads of veggies...carrots/peppers/onions/ potatoes/sweet potatoes. I put them, along with a tin of tomatoes, about 3 cups of red lentils, some garlic cloves, curry powder, coriander seeds, celery sticks, salt and pepper and a big knob of butter....and left it for about 5-7 hours. Nice vegetable curry the easy peasy way.

So tonight i scooped all that out of the slow cooker and there was still a good half pint of sauce at the bottom, so i added more hot water, another load of lentils and some chopped onion and a tin of tomatoes and this has now been simmering for a couple of hours and this is now becoming a hearty lentil soup. I will whizz it with the stick blender later and season it to taste.

We might have it for tomorrows main meal with some crusty bread, or it might get bunged in the freezer for another day.

Edited to add: i make a massive batch of pasta sauce up with onions, garlic, basil, tinned tomatoes, tomato puree, oregano, salt. I let it simmer all day and when it is nice and thickened many hours later, i batch it up in empty margarine tubs and bung them in the freezer.

Another meal i make is chickpea curry: put chickpeas in the slow cooker and cover with tinned tomatoes, and add curry powder, onions some coconut milk, frsh tomatoes if i have them, spinach if i have it, or alternatively chard.

I think the key thing for me is to leave it as long as i possibly can. I like nice rich, flavoursome sauces. These kind of meals are so very easy. I really really like my slow cooker

cornishchick

:j ok Don't know what I did but, so far the total is * insert drum roll smiley) £106.22 ........

now, we did buy the freezer, we had planned to use any saving from the food budget to pay for it, but... the solicitors sent us some money,they owed us. out of the blue, so along with an Argosssy voucher we brought it early and used some of the budget to buy some bargins and stock it up.

so with meal plans act we are £73.78 better off then i thought we would be this month,.

things I will continue to do next month,
with drawing the food budget in cash and keeping this in a seperate purse.
putting all the reciepts in a single place,
meal planning and basing the shopping around what is needed and WHERE i am working.
for example I drive past a lidls once a week so pop in there to buy milk for the week. only £1 for 4 pints.
things i will do better on next month is, trying to keep track of the budget weekly. getting a recipt for every thing. and try and beat the £100.00 mark.:T

Gorgeestwo

Hi everyone, I'm so sorry I haven't posted much I'd like to declare my total for Jan as £316.12, I'm going to do things bit differently in feb, but I'm pleased with how well we've done, this is a massive improvement on the last few mths of 2012, where I'm embarrassed to admit we spent between £650 & £900 a mth on food . So onwards to feb, see you all over there!

Florenceem

I have just started to post on MSE again after a gap time - lost Mil and time flew.
I have just until Sunday of January left so will start on February GC on Monday.
I am aiming to spend less than £100 - 4 weeks - pension so 4 weeks works for me.

Sue14

One good thing about the snow is I've not been able to go shopping until yesterday, not that I needed to as we had plenty of food in anyway.

Spent £2.75 in c00p yesterday (mind you I only went in for a newspaper, lol!), then today I spent £4 in i*eland, £1 in £ shop, £1.99 in savers, and £5.24 in 1id1.

DanielleNic87

£8.17 added today. That included £3.59 on olive oil from the C*op :eek::eek:

lushlifesaver

A Chinese take away (£11) and 2 bottles of coke (£1) will be the only spends today, NSD tomorrow (we don't plan on leaving the house ) and next week I'm hoping that the only spend is on milk and ham (£1 each) as we don't need anything else prior to pay day so that will be £14. Can't be too eager and declare that just yet though!

I think I'm going to do a meal plan for each of the four weeks of Feb later today - our weeks are pretty standard with the same meals on Mondays, Wednesdays and Sundays and meals flexing on the other days - one small mercy of having a fussy bf I think