January 2014 Grocery Challenge

K9sandFelines

Spends of £2.99 in C*-*p on 39p Campbells condensed soups and YS bread.

£5.72 in Morrisons on Muller light choc mint dessert, choc (not needed immediately; but Boost and Bournville are rareities, so will put them away), cotton wool and tissues (full of a cold ).

£8.78 total

Plans today (off work), catch up on washing, make coleslaw, tartare sauce and a big pan of veg soup so my daughter can take during the week to school.

xmillyx

Just been for the weekly shop £25.00 exactly spent - total spend for this month: £50.23. A fraction over half the budget... Not too bad!

mooomin

lushlifesaver wrote: »

If anyone has any very simple recipes for similar fish dishes I would be most grateful :-)

I made home-made fish fingers with pollock the other week that were lovely.

Cut your fillet in to strips. Whizz up a few slices of bread in your food processor to make breadcrumbs. Put a couple of lightly beaten eggs in a bowl.

Dip the fish strips in the bread first, then the egg, then the bread again until they're coated. Grill for ten minutes, turning once. Lovely fish fingers that actually taste of fish

happytails

Feeling annoyed with myself. I forgot to do the egg mayo for the husbands lunch so he's bought lunch with all the other employees at a local sandwich place. I expect it will be £2.50-3 :eek: will be making sure its done today ready for tomorrow!!

Not planning a shop today. Having a freezer tea with a friend and the kids as husband is working late. friend is bringing dessert, winner

Sarah x

First_Trouble

Islandmaid wrote: »

SOWORRIED - good plan, think I will drawn out remaining GC money in cash then stick debit card in a bag of water in the freezer

I do this with my credit card so it is not so readily available in my purse.

Suzexxx

Hi all

Haven't been online for a few days now, so a few updates here and i'll need to sit down and add up all my receipts.

Did a big shop yesterday spent £35.01 in Ald! and £25.50 in Mr A, so literally only a few pennies over what I hoped to spend for the week. This should hopefully last until a week Monday now as DP is only working Mon-Fri this week and then we're away for the weekend.

DP has been on a long weekend this week and we've had a few extra treats as he normally works 5/7 weekends. Friday i spent £7 ish (will add up) in Mr S on junk food for our movie night in. We got a 14'' pizza, chunky chips, pudding and a dvd, so much cheaper than if we'd gone out.

Saturday night DP spent £19 in our local CO-OP as we had a night out Saturday he decided we needed sausages/bacon etc for a Sunday fry up. The rest of that money was spent on baby milk and a few top up bits, so money I would have spent anyway.

I'm off to catch up with the thread and add up my receipts. I'm sure the total should be around £150 now meaning i'll have £100 left til the end of the month.

Suze

2childmum

I'm not doing too well this month - more bits of spend towards the end of last week. I discovered a place selling fruit and veg a bit cheaper - so I bought 4 peppers for a £1 and 2 butternut squash for £1. i didn't really need either but we like peppers and they are usually much more expensive than this, ditto butternut squash, which will keep. Unfortunately it's a bit out of the way to go back there too often, but I may be able to combine it with trips to Mr M. Spent £2.57 in Mr M on red onions, ryvita and ys bacon I need for a meal later in the month. Made a big pan of pepper and red onion pasta sauce which we ate on Saturday and there was enough left for another meal for us all at a later date (although I need to add yogurt to it)



So on to this week - spend of £61.88 in Lidl! Bought some tins etc for the cupboard, meat for at least 7 meals (although I'm hoping to bulk out some of it to make more than this.) Some fruit and veg, couple of bags of frozen veg, 3 different cheeses, ham, yog and various other things. Was surprised when it came to so much, and so decided not to go to Mr S to buy the couple of things I couldn't get, cos I would probably spend even more. I can defrost some of my milk and the other things we can live without until Thursday.

The freezer and the cupboards are fairly full now so I MUST NOT BUY MORE STUFF TO STOCKPILE! (Repeat to self several times over)


Dinner tonight of butternut squash pasta sauce - eating rather a lot of pasta at the moment. This is a new recipe from the Jaimie 15 mins meal book DH bought me for Christmas ( now adapted due to Lidl not selling fennel seeds) but I won't be doing the salad to go with it. Bet it takes more than 15 mins too!

Have a good week everyone

Coxy11

happytails wrote: »

Think I'm going to start working my way through recipes in my cookbooks and actually try and see what they're like. A) taste b) cost per portion and c) prep time and create a little folder of sorts so I have say 20 regular meals, 20 meals for guests over/days with more time and 10 expensive meals that would be a rarity. Then I can get rid of the countless books that I only cook 1 or 2 meals from that clutter my kitchen space lol. That might be my challenge for 2014 actually!

Sarah x

Love this idea - I too am guilty of cooking favourites from my (many) cookbooks when there's probably loads of other recipes I could have a stab at.

Went to A!di straight from school. Nice and quiet (apart from annoying man walking around whistling - I hate whistling :mad::mad:). Got everything on my list apart from celery soup. Couple of extra bits added - cotton buds, egg noodles and a packet of jellies for DD to take to the theatre later this week. Total of £68.31.

Then went to M&S to return an item and popped into the food hall to see what the meat offers were. Got 40 sausages and a pack of pork shoulder steaks on the 3 for £10 deal, plus some rtc breaded chicken goujons. Total of £12.80.

Meal plan for this week :
Monday - N!gella Express macaroni cheese, with lo gammon, stringless beans
Tuesday - (kids only as DH and I on a 'date' night) - chicken goujons, mini roasties, peas and sweetcorn
Wednesday - SC pork loin steaks in apple juice, mash, savoy cabbage, cauli cheese
Thursday - Chicken curry, rice
Friday - (kids only as we are at the theatre) hm pizzas with mozz and pepperoni
Saturday - Cottage pie and veg
Sunday - Roast pork, yorkshires, roasties, veg

Sorry for the mammoth post! Off to update my sig.
Coxy

First_Trouble

Just scraped receipts together from last week for lunch item shop for DH £6.99 and mushrooms from stall £1.40. Ran out of time to have my breakfast this morning and forgot my lunch so picked up a croissant and YS pasta from Mr T on way to work £2.55. Still eating out of the cupboard/freezer this week meal plans are

Tonight: Cottage Pie and Brussels Sprouts (from freezer)
Tues: HM Pizza and GB (cupboard/fridge and freezer)
Wed: Beef and Mushroom Pie and Chips (Freezer)
Thurs: Bolognaise and GB (freezer)
Fri: Egg and Chips (cupboard/fridge)
Sat: Pizza (Freezer)
Sun: Liver, Mash & Mushroom Sauce (freezer/cupboard)

My £10 Mr T voucher arrived over the weekend from The Sun+ promotion have put it away for use next month. Will still need to buy milk and some sandwich fillers but hoping to stretch current stores as much as possible.

mouche

Big spends this weekend made bigger by OH who insisted on having cashews for a curry. £51.86 in total. However, spent £51 something in Morrisons (including a clothing item) and thought I had £40 vouchers but turned out I had £50! Not a big deal except that I get discounted vouchers and try to avoid spending cash as much as possible.