April 2014 Grocery Challenge

Florenceem

Spend of £1.69 - needed milk and a new vinegar bottle - smashed mine.
Last night we had HM Smoked Mackerel Quiche + HM wedges + assorted roasted veggies.

Bluegreen143

Spent £34.23 in Mr Ms on the big shop on Sunday, then had to pop back for sugar, milk and kitchen roll on Monday (£3.10) and two bottles of cola and some savers plain flour (£1.65) today, bringing my total to £146.85 - going be tight for my last shop on Sunday, fingers crossed I can do it!

Mealplan as follows:

Sun 13 - roast chicken legs with roast potatoes, sage and chestnut stuffing, cabbage, carrots, sweetcorn and gravy

Mon 14 - cashew and carrot nut cutlets with salad and couscous

Tues 15 - [STRIKE]lemongrass pork and vegetable stir-fry with sticky rice[/STRIKE] soup, homemade bread and apple pancakes

Wed 16 - [STRIKE]soup, homemade bread and apple crumble[/STRIKE] I'm off to visit my mum now, hence the mealplan change

Thurs 18 - [STRIKE]hot smoked salmon with salad, rice and roasted veg[/STRIKE] lemongrass pork and vegetable stir-fry with sticky rice

Fri 19 - out for dinner with family

Sat 20 - black bean mole with chickpea pancakes and yoghurt

Lunches - cream of parsnip soup with bread or couscous salad for me; tuna or ham sandwiches for DH

Made a lovely dinner last night - carrot & cashew nut cutlets (like a veggie burger made with nuts rather than the usual beans) with couscous, salad and raita - was amazing! Definitely be making that again

PennyGrabber

Managed my nsd today, despite walking around ffoods. I did end up taking the children there for an icecream, and it cost a whole £1 for the four of us to have an icecream. It was hilarious, listening to my two explaining the rules to their friend! "Well, we all say what we don't like, then we choose from what we do like, but we have to all choose the same thing, and it has to be a pack of four as four of us are having one..." The child we looked after today is used to getting her icecreams from the ice cream van, so this was an education for her - that all four of us could have an icecream for less than one from the van!

Anyway, nsd as that came from my pocket/entertainment money.

Had a lovely tith today, and fish finger and waffles for dinner tomorrow. I hardly ever give them stuff like that, but they asked for it when we did our meal plan, and we have a busy day, so that'll be nice and easy!

Night all,
PG x

lynnejk

PennyGrabber wrote: »

dinner is tith. I use a smart price mix, as you only need one egg for that. Does anyone have a recipe that only uses one egg? Least I can find is three! I'm not using three eggs!!
PG x

I was scanning some cooking tips a few months ago and it said two eggs minimum to get a good rise. I had always used just one so tried two and it is much better. I do use half/half plain and sr flour though.

just_the_two_of_us wrote: »

PennyGrabber Chicken Casserols for Sc recipe

Can be frozen - but leave out garlic if want to freeze it.
Enjoy!

Thanks for recipe - WHY leave out garlic if you freeze it ??


Just wondering about washing powder and softener ? Over the years I have slowly done an MSE brand swap and now buy the cheapest of both I can find. To be honest I haven't noticed any difference except in the budget :money: What do you all think/do ?


Had an NSD today. Roast Beef (freezer lo), roasties and steamed veg. Love doing these as it only takes 75 mins


Hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday
Lx

joedenise

Was hoping for a NSD today but DH has asked me to get a crusty loaf so means I need to pop to the local bakers. Their bread is lovely but pricey! So will be £1.50 for that - won't buy anything else as I don't buy cakes when I go on my own, usually end up having to buy one (or two) when DH is with me. Will add to sig shortly.

Denise

smokies

was hoping for a few NSD at the beginning of the week but no, don't know what's wrong with me at the moment - just like money is slipping thought my fingers this month...... I have got the rest of the month to pull things back on track - I feel little ashamed about the amount of money I have spend.......I don't even want to update my sig...... I have all the receipts and just looking at them its nearly all junk food!!!


Any ideas most welcome how to stop this spending spree

Mrs_T_M

lynnejk wrote: »

Just wondering about washing powder and softener ? Over the years I have slowly done an MSE brand swap and now buy the cheapest of both I can find. To be honest I haven't noticed any difference except in the budget :money: What do you all think/do ?

I have extreme skin allergies (still recovering from a bout with Bold 2 in 1 that I was given to try for a survey 5 months ago!), so we typically use surcare. I use half a capful for a full load with cheap vinegar in the softener tray. We don't have a dryer, and this works for us. I have found out that I'm ok with Surf surprisingly, so I use that on anything that's really icky. The bold and surf are from doing surveys, so they were free! I still use the bold, but only on the bunnies towels and old shirts that I use to cover bits of the carpet that they enjoy peeing on.

I also only run the washer when it's full (unless it's bunny stuff, then it's a very quick cold wash) and once per month I run a 90 degree bleach wash to kill germs that may be in our washer. Using the vinegar in the rinse keeps the hard water from building up too bad, so that keeps us from needing to buy washer cleaners.

Use half (or less) of the amount called for on the package and see if you can tell a difference. I cannot tell a difference with what I've used so far. Manufacturers want you to buy more, more often, so they all recommend to use far too much.

purplesheila

Hello - I did this challange last year and need to get going with it again. As we only have 2 weeks left I would like to put £160 for the rest of April thanks

Franigan

Good morning everyone!

..it's been a while..

I have to confess I have lost my way..I've lost it way back at the end of March when I didnt even bother to declare going over budget by £3.00. I have been updating my signature for April but always avoided to write as I thought I never had anything interesting to say..
Between the 10th and 15th of April I had 3 guests staying over and I lost it even more. We paid a bit, they paid a bit..anyway, I have no idea what was spent!! I should think it was in the region of £50-60.
I was meant to count ours and their spending (hence me increasing my monthly budget) but I simply didnt do it.

Now, 15 days to the end of the month I would like to consider £100 left until the 1st of May. This is probably pretty close to what should be left anyway, but I hate to be so inaccurate!

Now I need to be on the ball more than ever: our landlord wants to sell and we have decided the best thing for us is to buy our current flat. We knew about our LL's plan, we just thought this would have happened this time next year..:eek: So it's all a bit sudden!

Hopefully you'll have me back. Apologies (and my hat off) to Coxy11 who is so diligent with keeping track of everything just to have people dropping out!!

Will go to the shop tonight so I will update then!

Have a good day!

cw18

spends of £3.03 in A1di on Monday (milk for DS1 plus a bit more veg) and £4.66 in A1di yesterday (more milk for DS1, more veg, and rather too much 'junk' for me ) to be added to signature in the next minute or two.

Still well within target for the month, but (although hindered by the junk food bits - mainly biscuits!) this has been greatly helped by concentrating on trying to use up as much as possible from the freezers (meaning the only meat/fish purchase so far has been one pack of YS fish that's earmarked for a week on Saturday).

Need to do a full stock take of my cupboards and do likewise with those now.. I'm sure DS1 would be grateful for even one shelf of one narrow cupboard to store his bits (currently has tins of soup on top of the cupboards)