May 2007 Grocery Challenge

southern_chick

aaaarrrrgggghhhh i'm not going to stay in budget this month and i'm totally gutted!!! i spent £25.90 today which leaves me with £3.11 til the end of the month, i really love bbq and pic-nic season but why is it so expensive!! i'm really going to have to try harder over the summer (if we get one) because dd and i go on loads of pic-nic and i do seem to do a lot of bbq's too, oh well looks like it might have to be a store cupboard week in stead of a shop for the last week of the month

SC XX

Lizzieanne

I am determined to do this! I got in last night and really couldn't be bothered to cook...a few weeks ago it would have been takeaway time, but I 'bit the bullet' and cooked instead.

I have a lot of potatoes so I peeled them and cut them into wedges, put in a bowl and mixed them with a spoonful of olive oil and some seasoning, then baked them in the oven. We had the wedges with dry fried eggs, baked beans, mushy peas and some home cooked ham that needed to be used. We were eating within half an hour and I didn't end up throwing food away.

I'm out all day tomorrow as well, so I'm going to prepare some vegetables tonight to stop me going off track tomorrow.

newster

Managed to stay within my £80 limit yesterday, just. Hae about £3.00 for the rest of the week. Don't think I shall be needing much else though, so should stay ok :-)

samsampotts

As you can see from my signature, I'm into overpsend territory. This is my first month on the challenge though and I have been on a freezer stocking mission! Hopefully next month will be better. Also, if I hadn't have spent £25 on stuff I didn't need on my down day, I'd still have about £20 to play with so I must stop comfort shopping!!

Could be better could be worse - report card says 'could do better';)

jo1972

Morning all,

New to posting on this board although been lurking for some time

Been watching this thread for a while now and not confident enough to actually say I'll join in cos I knew I'd fall flat on my face in the first month!! Thinking I might give it a go in June cos we really really need to save a quick bit of money for our holiday in August.

There's 5 of us, 2 adults (OH is trying to lose weight so this is handy :rotfl: ), 3 kids - my 15yr old dd eats mansize portions, 4yr old ds and my youngest dd will be 2 in June. We've got 1 bird who will only eat budgie food and 4 fish.

I have absolutely no idea how much we spend on groceries, I do know that it is far far too much though and we need to cap it seriously. I'll spend the rest of the month monitoring it so I can give myself a budget for June.

My downfall is that we both work fulltime and so have to get home and cook dinner in the evening, my OH is often on an early so has to go to bed early hence, dinner needs to be quick so although i do try to cook from scratch as much as I can I do sometimes end up with convenience crap just for quickness

Anyway, I've rambled on for long enough, look forward to getting to know you all

Jo.

teedy23

morning Jo1972, and welcome. I,m quite new too and trying to get myself motivated bit by bit to get into this challenge. Dont try to rush in all at once, the shock may truamatise you lol. It,s amazing tho how much you can save, when you take a good hard look at what you spend on rubbish it,s quite an eye opener. good luck

jo1972

Thanks Teedy, I did read the bit about not going mad at first but if I'm honest we really are bad with the grocery shopping so I reckon over the next4-6 months I'll be able to half my shopping bill!! Just read some of the slow cooker thread, I'm definately going out today to have a look at some (then buy it online and get cash/points back obviously

Thanks for the welcome!

Jo.

teedy23

Well I barely recognise myself, using up all my stuff, cooking from scratch in bulk, Even putting labels on stuff for freezer! Using moc,s whenever I can, keeping receipts to see what I,m spending, the end of the world is nigh! Off to get my dinner ready to take to work, back-shift nearly over thank goodness, Big dinner for family tomorrow as grandson goes to Italy for 2 weeks with his dad on monday, so spuds all peeled and mashed and frozen so I,m not in the kitchen too long, will miss him, so we have a wee bash before he goes. BFN

chewits

belfastgirl23 wrote: »

Good idea to watch out for what you throw out as well. Meal planning is helping me with this - I'm not very regimented about this kind of thing but I now routinely look in the fridge a couple of times a week to see what's in danger of going off and then try to figure out what to do with it. Meal planning also helps me to realise if something needs to go in the freezer. Now that I am also trying to lose weight it's useful not to have too many leftovers lying around

I'm currently trying to figure out what to do with some feta I impulsively bought for DH. But it's very strong feta (think goat's cheese flavour) so he doesn't like it. Any ideas? It can probably last another few days or so...

As i'm replying a few days later I guess the feta has been eaten/chucked by now. But I like to chop it up into squares and mix it with a three bean salad. M & S do a lovely fresh one which is very expensive, but Mr T does a tinned three bean in viniagrette for about 40p

brummiebabe

Oh..I'm no good at this!! My weekly shopping has increased every week this month:eek: Spent £6.78 topping up on bread, milk etc during week (and a 'ready cooked' chicken - as I'd forgotten to take meat out of the freezer!!) Spent £100.84 in Tesco's today - but didn't do a proper list before I went!! Have been feeling rough and really tired this week - DD getting us up between 4.30am & 5.00am!!!!!!!!!:eek: Didn't really have time (or the motivation) to plan my list properly - plus DS1 came with me!! That extra packet of biscuits etc adds up!!

Anyway...don't know if I'll come in on target this month - may try to avoid doing my 'big' weekly shop until 1st June - I know I've bought more than enough for this week anyway. May just be able to get in on budget - but it will be hard!! I hate these 5 week months!!!!!!!!:mad: