February 2014 Grocery Challenge

beth2242

Evening everyone! I'm still meal planning - it's harder than I thought given all the food we have in! Spoilt for choice! Too much in really! Plus trying to juggle meals around works days etc.


Tea tonight was whole wheat pasta with home made bolognese that I put in the slow cooker this morning. I bulked it out a bit with celery mushrooms onions tomatoes and it managed to make 2x lasagne portions, my pasta bolognese for tea and my dinner for work tomorrow which will be jacket potato with LO bolognese! H2B is also taking one of the lasagnes for tea to work tomorrow and he had one tonight so that's the bolognese gone! But it was yummy!


At work all day tomorrow for 13 hr shift so having the j.pot for lunch and then ryv!tas and soft cheese and cucumber with a cup of soup for tea- just a few ingredients dotting about the cupboards that's need using! Breakfast will be a cereal bar whilst in a mad rush getting ready for work! So tomorrow will be a NSD for sure!

Leah-Ray

Soworried wrote: »

I am really worried about my spends this month

I have less than £7 a day between now and pay day and I don't feel like I have a lot of stuff in either.

How many of you are you feeding per day? I think you can manage £7 a day. I'm sure we can all help you come up with some surprisingly cheap ideas. Keep going as best as you can!

Today was a NSD and I even got a free cuppa from the cafe at the toddlers group I volunteer at. Haven't claimed it yet but I was pretty pleased about that. Busy day and so I ended up making dinner at 10am today to leave for my husband to put in. We had bacon and broccoli pasta grill. So filling and yummy and not expensive either.

Frozen veg is saving me a small fortune and helping us to minimise waste too.

Just want to recommend resourcefulcook.com to anyone starting out with meal planning or who, like me, hates coming up with meal plans. Well worth checking out. Their cheapest menu plans are really great too - £25 a week for 4 adults and 7 meals. Hope that helps someone!

K9sandFelines

Just added £32.93 to my sig, as I have just done an AF order. I haven't ordered anything since September; so if i go over my total i know why . I am just going to see how i go and if it does mean i go over then will steer clear and only order when i am consistently sticking to budget, as don't want to put myself on a downer. Hopefully after tomorrow, i will be able to have a good run of NSDs. I was even good today and made the salsa for DD's cookery ... hope it does the job ... she is making (vegetarian - with Quorn chicken pieces) Mexican Chicken tarts

norabatty_2

Faete wrote: »

Not a clue - has me puzzled too!

£9.38 on sugar - the marmalade factory starts tomorrow!

Fae xx

Hi,

I never say their proper name so that a search on Google, etc won't help them out. They get enough from us as it is without free advertising too!

Just wondering if you had any recipes for making marmalade? I started making blackberry jam last autumn from ample supplies I discovered near our house. DH goes through a jar of marmalade every 10-14 days and he doesn't like the cheap stuff either so would love to know if I could make it myself for a reasonable cost!

mags50_2

NSD for me

Had a pork sandwich for dinner and cauliflower cheese from the freezer for my tea. It was yummy DH had spag Bol also from the freezer...so it's been a good day.

Been catching up on the ironing....phew, am all hot and bothered now!

Keep safe and warm x

Leah-Ray

norabatty wrote: »

Hi,

I never say their proper name so that a search on Google, etc won't help them out. They get enough from us as it is without free advertising too!

The way google works though...you are only helping out their search engine ranking if you directly link to them. Mentioning their name properly will do the reverse- when people search for something about Tesco - lets say they want to see the price of tesco value chopped tomatoes- if you actually say their name properly on here that person is more likely to see THIS site in their search results because maybe someone had a post that mentioned the quality of "tesco value chopped tomatoes" when that is exactly what that person typed in the search box on google.

If you want to take traffic away from the store website and to real peoples reviews and experiences it's best to use the real name because that's what people search for. Even for searching on this forum it would be better if people used the real names so we can search for "tesco value chopped tomatoes" and not "te$co value chopped tomatoes" (cause who's going to guess that?).

Hope that makes sense. I can see why people do it but it's based on a misunderstanding of how google works and actually creates LESS competition for the supermarkets main websites because no one is using the real names, therefor the pages do not have the keyword (the supermarket name) that is being searched for.

CountingPennies

Yeahh!! Another NSD today. Managed to make the milk stretch that I had in. Will have to get milk tomorrow though, along with beans if i want jacket potatoes and a small block of cheese. Oh, and maybe some bread

CP xx

Soworried

Leah-Ray wrote: »

How many of you are you feeding per day? I think you can manage £7 a day. I'm sure we can all help you come up with some surprisingly cheap ideas. Keep going as best as you can!

Today was a NSD and I even got a free cuppa from the cafe at the toddlers group I volunteer at. Haven't claimed it yet but I was pretty pleased about that. Busy day and so I ended up making dinner at 10am today to leave for my husband to put in. We had bacon and broccoli pasta grill. So filling and yummy and not expensive either.

Frozen veg is saving me a small fortune and helping us to minimise waste too.

Just want to recommend resourcefulcook.com to anyone starting out with meal planning or who, like me, hates coming up with meal plans. Well worth checking out. Their cheapest menu plans are really great too - £25 a week for 4 adults and 7 meals. Hope that helps someone!

It is to feed 4 people, 2 adults and 2 bottomless pit teens. I have planned our meals for the rest of this week so far and will then look at what we have left. We won't starve but we could just be eating turkey curry and rice a lot the last 2 weeks
It just seems as most of my budget has went on staples and toiletries this month. Even our toilet roll and soap powder mountains ran out :eek:
Thank you for your reply,it means a lot and I might take you up on the offer to post when I get stuck at the end of the month if that is alright? :A

Anzac_Biscuit

Hang in there! There are heaps of resources on here for really cheap, filling and yummy meals.

My suggestion would be to bulk up meat dishes with onions, extra veg or pulses (if you add lentils to your mince for cottage pie etc you can get away with using less meat). Also don't forget to use herbs and spices to make the food tasty! Nothing worse than being hungry and strapped for cash and completely uninspired by the boring, bland (but cheap) meal you have available. Use anchovies, olives, sauces etc to jazz up an otherwise ordinary meal (and you don't need much to have an effect!)

BlueMoo

Originally Posted by Soworried


I am really worried about my spends this month


I
have less than £7 a day between now and pay day and I don't feel like I have a
lot of stuff in either.

Please hang on in there. Do post on here your ingredients if you ever get stuck for cooking meals.

You say you might be having lots of turkey curry. Can I suggest other turkey and rice options? (I will be listing the most basic recipes possible)
Turkey tagine - tinned tomatoes, cumin, sultanas, chickpeas. You can serve with rice.
Turkey fried rice - eggs, onions, peas.
Turkey risotto - cream cheese, stock
Turkey stroganoff - cream cheese/cream, mushrooms, stock served with rice
Spanish turkey - tinned tomatoes, cayenne/paprika served with rice
Mexican turkey - tinned tomatoes, peppers, chilli, kidney beans, served with fried rice.


Hope that helps for a bit of variety?

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Kayester - Well done on the Batch cooking - looks fab!

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NSD yesterday.

Dinner was spaghetti with the cheesy leeks mixed with more milk and a bit of veg stock to make it into sauce with chopped gammon. (gammon from the freezer).

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Still trying to run down freezer stocks so able to defrost it! Trouble is a lot of meat, but not much else to go with it. You would think this would save me money, but so far still spending about the same. Don't know whether this was due to trip to costco and first bulk-buys or perhaps new healthy eating plan which has increased fresh food costs.

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Need to save 1k for honeymoon so after this month. Not sure I can cut anything from the GC budget though, without having to change what we eat significantly.