March 2013 Grocery Challenge

craigywv

meant to say also got a blueberry and another raspberry cane in poundshop as i find from expierience they are very good they gave me soooo much fruitlast year so if your debating if you should give it a go .GO FOR IT!!!

Kitchenbunny

I'll be back properly on March the 1st, but wanted to say welcome back to Helen

KB xx

MrsCautious

Hi, thank you for running this thread. I'd like to join in for the first time, for March, with a budget of £200.

This is for me and two teens and our rescue jack russell. I've £75 of Waitrose vouchers to spend which came to me through work, I had some wonderful and thoughtful suggestions on how to use them from the lovely people here. Originally I had £100 worth but have given £25 to my mother in law as she is a big Waitrose fan.

I should have around six meals available into March from my freezer/fridge/cupboards and after that comes my much anticipated trip to Waitrose, to stock up on meat which will be on offer as much as I can work it that way. I'm not counting the £75 in my £200. The £200 is to cover everything including all household stuff and is for Mar 1 until Mar 31.

I'm going to meal plan, batch cook, cut
back on snacks and soft drinks, as well as buying the cheapest/questioning whether I need something. I'm going to shop local and at Aldi for fresh stuff. I will also go to Sainsbury's and make good use of offers/basics/nectar points/cashback credit card/Brand match.

I spent £300 on all groceries for the three of us this month which is an improvement on old spending habits but in the long run I'd like to permanently have a total of around £240. I know it can be done with more effort and planning on my part.

I looked at Approved Foods for the first time yesterday and couldn't see much to tempt me away from juggling offers locally but will keep an eye out now, could be interesting.

I have a work connection with a certain discount store (twice the range and a penny change ) so I'm going to go there too, lots of bargains to be had, I hope.

And I want to empty the bathroom cupboard before buying shampoo/bubble bath etc. If I do buy toiletries I will shop around and/or head to Boots to use card which has better value points than Nectar, but best to get cheaper isn't it than opt for points.

I've never been to Lidl so need to go and have a look!


Hope you don't mind the rambly post, wanted to set out my plans.

Good luck all xxx

lucylollipop

Hi all.

I completely lost track of February, so am already planning this month. Got menu's and shopping list written, ready for payday and the start of my grocery month tomorrow. I'm going to try for a budget of £140, to include 2 nights out that are happening this month. Fingers crosses, being a short month, it should be fully manageable

Lucy x

Suffolk_lass

helen_jelly wrote: »

Hi Ladies [and Gents]
I'm returning to the fold
Thank you to Zippy, Rosieben and Coxy for the thread:T

I need to be ultra mega tight with spends in March as DH was off work for 2 weeks in Feb and didn't get paid for the time off :mad: so we are exeptionally skintarooney this forthcoming month, thank goodness its only for 4 weeks:eek:

My budget will have to be for £200

Hopefully do-able, well it will have to be as we won't have any money from anywhere else to up the budget!!

Payday is Monday so I'll be visiting Aldi, Lidl and MrA [given up on MrT as we were spending too much in there:mad:]
I'll be trying to get as much as poss for as little as poss and in 1 go so avoiding several expensive small trips!

Anyway, thats enough waffle for now, lovely to be back on here :T

Helen

meg72 wrote: »

Nice to see you back Helen good luck with the challenge.

Kitchenbunny wrote: »

I'll be back properly on March the 1st, but wanted to say welcome back to Helen

KB xx

Me too. Welcome back Helen and best of luck. And I just want to thank you again for all your work on the thread when I first joined. I was really reticent but you are one of the welcoming people that make this thread such a pleaseure.

Best of luck everyone
SL

Guineapigsqueaks

Hello

I would like to join the March challenge please, my challenge month will run from 25th February to 24th March as pay day is 25th. So, setting my challenge at a monthly amount:
£300.

This is for all food/drink and kitchen supplies, toiletries and loo rolls, laundry/cleaning stuff and guinea pig/garden bird supplies.

I kept (most) of my receipts last month and think I spent about £350, so my target may be a bit optimistic, but time will tell.

Most of my shopping done at Ald* and H. B*rgains so hopefully already keeping costs low, but hopefully room for improvement in this area of my spending

Thank you!

JellyBox

I'll stick at our £160 for March as we will be over in Feb. Also planning to keep a lot closer eye on the pennies in March as I rounded everything up last time, to account for some of OH's spends which he "couldn't remember" the totals of. This will include everything we buy in the supermarket, with the only exceptions being clothing or homewares. All toiletries, cleaning products etc will count. This is just the two of us mind, and I know it should be easy, but Feb was harder than expected - especially towards the end! Anyway, will be over properly from Feb 28th, as that's payday

lbnblbnb

My March challenge would have begun on the 19th as it was payday, but we were away. I bought food but it came from the holiday pot. I am sticking with £150 as it is a short month and I STILL have lots of cupboard and freezer stock.
Meal plan:
Su: veg stew and HM Italian herb bread.
Mon: baked potatoes with cheese or possibly sausages for the carnivores.
Tu: leek risotto
Wed: HM pizza
Thurs: pasta and HM tomato sauce from the freezer.

I will plan again on Thurs as our veg box arrives then.
I need to get a few things tomorrow, mainly for packed lunches, but should get away with about £16, and I have a coinstar voucher (NEVER again, I didn't realise they charged you:mad:) and some nectar points so should cost me no real money.

I need ideas to use up those packets of country soup mix - I have 3 even after using half of one in our soup for tonight. I am thinking os a sort of spicy dal type dish?

On our return last night I thought I would defrost some dal. I took it out of the microwave and realised it must have been cookie dough:eek:. I made something else for tea, but didn't want to waste the cookie dough ( it must have been a posh recipe I made for gifts in Christmas 2011; I vaguely remember deciding it was far too much and freezing it). So the Morrisons basic vanilla ice cream is now cookie dough ice cream. Hope the kids like it. I am supposed to be losing weight.

Honey_Bear

Thanks for the March Thread everyone who makes it happen. I'd like to set March for £117.68, which is a completely ridiculous figure but it's £135 minutes the February overspend of £17.32, pretty much all of which went on Bran$ton beans on special offer absolutely everywhere it seems. Each local supermarket I go into has discounted them even more heavily than the last one, so what's not to like? OH eats them by the bucketload, so it's worth going over for them.

I'd go over just for He11man's Mayo, and that seems to be on offer every time I need to stock up in Lid1. Excellent. And, since I started doing the GC, OH has started being more cost-concious, noticing last week that Sainsbobs T-bags were cheaper if you bought two packs individually than if you bought one pack containing two packages if you get my drift.

I've cut my budget from £250 month on food and wine right down to £135, and that hasn't been anywhere near as hard as it should have been. I'm hoping it'll be going down to £100/month pretty soon, so a HUGE thank you to everyone who contributes to the thread for all of the tips and the discipline it's helped me develop.

MrsCautious

lbnblbnb wrote: »

So the Morrisons basic vanilla ice cream is now cookie dough ice cream. Hope the kids like it. I am supposed to be losing weight.

This made me laugh after my attempts with cookie dough today. I decided to take a step in the right direction of making some homemade cookies today while a casserole was cooking and they were a disaster, from guessing the amounts, I ended up thinking it was a good idea to invent a version of a peach cobbler where I basically crushed overcooked cookie dough in a cooked tin of peaches. It was disgusting and got thrown away as we all hated it. So the good news was I tried and the even better news was it made us laugh quite a lot. Not since my bombay potatoes were more like curried mash has something I have flopped at in the kitchen had such a response x