March 2014 Grocery Challenge

JIL

My new month starts today as its payday. I didnt buy the daily mirror the other day so missed the voucher. however my mother did and she keeps the newspapers for me to use when I clean out the pets so I will have it for next week and will do my Aldi shop a day early.

So I spent £53 in Aldi today. Tomorrow the OH will be up early as always and will pop to Lidl to buy six packs of half price mince and some tomatoes so will add a further £7.

So one day in and its £60/£180

Ladyluck1

Thanks for the reminder JIL will send hubby round to lidl (it's a 2 min walk away!) at 8 for the mince!

superrhinos

Am desperately trying to use up what I already have in the freezer and cupboards so only spent £4.66 in Aldi and £4.16 in Waitrose. Hopefully i should be able to maintain spending at this level for the rest of the month.

islandhoppa

£30 spend in Ald! today, on fresh stuff that should last most of week along with stores from freezer and cupboards

dogmom_3

My first shop of March - £25.50 in LIDL. I'm running the freezer down to defrost it this week so hopefully i won't be buying much else until next week's shop.

Florenceem

Mr F went shopping today!
We had HM Fish Pie + sprouts,carrots for dinner.

SarahB1989_2

Bike has flat tyres so no lidl visit for me, walked to town and went to Morrisons instead as someone (forget who, sorry!) said they do cheap meat. Indeed they do - got 600g of pork mince for 2.49!! Overall spent 16.21 but won't be making it my regular shop, the till girl pretty much threw my items down to the bagging area and double-scanned something that I didn't notice til I was home. Aside from the meat it wasn't any cheaper than Tesco anyway.

recovering_spendaholic

I went to Tescos today and spent £47 and then to Asda and spent £52. This bought me enough meat and veggie options for the whole of March, plus loo rolls, dishwasher stuff,tins and packets of pasta, rice and other dry goods. With careful planning I should only need to buy fresh milk, fruit and veg for the rest of March. I am determined not to buy any takeaways or Starbucks either!

The other night I made Weetabix brownies and they were really nice - I didn't put any flour in them - used a recipe from Nigella. Really cheap way to make 12 brownies which were really chocolatey:
4 crushed weetabix ( I used the chocolate ones which I had in and no one liked)
50g sugar
2tbs cocoa
100g melted butter/marg.
1 egg
100g dark chocolate ( used the 30p smart price dark chocolate)

just crush Weetabix and mix with sugar and cocoa, then melt butter and chocolate and mix with Weetabix mixture and beat in the egg.

I put some walnuts in but they weren't in the recipe.

Bake 30 minutes at 180.

They were really fudge and not too sweet.

Timetogrowup

Hi, can I join the GC from tomorrow. Haven't really a clue what we are spending but I know it is too much! 5 of us including rapidly growing boys and fussy girl so food is always a challenge plus I hate cooking! However we do produce some of our own so should be able to rein in the spending. I do like to buy organic though.....

So I will tentatively set a monthly target of £700 to run from tomorrow to March 31st. Hopefully I will be able to spend a lot less than this and reduce it considerably-just being gentle on myself for this first month!

forever_saving

Please can i be put down for £300 for March. I will have to go shopping at some stage over the weekend. Good luck to everyone else.
FS