July 2014 Grocery Challenge

kboss2010

Last month's total came to just under £40 for the month so I'm aiming for the same.

So today I bought:

Basics honey £1
Gammon £3.31
Bacon £1.50
Skinless sausages £1
Custard creams 20p
Choc digestives 50p
Walkers cheese and onion crisps multipack £1
Frozen roast potatoes £1 (same price as the cheapest fresh ones I could get and saves me having to buy goose fat)
YS kingsmill rolls x6 10p
YS snack sized sausage rolls 39p

= £10 exactly!

I also got a "13p to spend on your next shop" coupon and I forgot the milk so I went back and got 1L unsweetened skimmed soya milk for 52p inc. coupon!

Grand total of £10.52/£40

Make-it-3

Recovering Spendaholic - that is horrifying - I'm feeling sick just imagining it. I would have been making a lot more noise with the store, reckon you should have got way more than £20 for that.

I have also been thinking of Florenceem - she's just a prolific poster and I have been missing her dinner pictures.

Nappies, bananas and milk spend today - will update my figures once I have dug out the receipt.

x_raphael_xx

recovering_spendaholic wrote: »

The other night I made baked potatoes and when I cut into one really large potato, I was horrified to find a whole mouse entombed in the middle of the spud!

Wasn't there a hole where it had burrowed in?!?! How did it get in! :eek:

lynnejk

Solstice_3 wrote: »

Thank lynnejk for the slow cooker timings Typically I am not cooking it now but useful for when I do.

I messed up a bit I didn't realise my first hello fresh box was coming today and I had a meat box from Abel and Cole today, plus a fruit and veg box from Riverford coming tomorrow! I wouldn't normally have that many boxes coming in one week! Luckily the hello fresh box was paid for in June but I am including it in my budget as we are using it this week and my Riverford box is free ^_^ Total so far is £51.09.

No probs with the s/c stuff.


I was just wondering about these 'boxes' that suddenly seem to be the rage. I saw some advertised for a 'special price' of £33 for three meals for 2 people (so £11 for dinner for 2).


Now I am down to trying a budget of £200 for the month (£6.66 a day) which includes ALL household spending. I don't understand how these can be MSE ??

Gracie_1827 wrote: »

NSD for me and I'm gagging for a cup of tea. Will be out and about tomorrow so may be tempted into Mollys to get a box of Red Label....I've down graded from Yorkshire tea:( ......but only until there's a soooperdoooper offer on the best tea in the world

Have you tried looking in the discounters and £ shops - sure I see it sometimes but I like English Breakfast and Al*i do that :money:

kboss2010 wrote: »

Last month's total came to just under £40 for the month so I'm aiming for the same.

So today I bought:

Basics honey £1
Gammon £3.31
Bacon £1.50
Skinless sausages £1
Custard creams 20p
Choc digestives 50p
Walkers cheese and onion crisps multipack £1
Frozen roast potatoes £1 (same price as the cheapest fresh ones I could get and saves me having to buy goose fat)
YS kingsmill rolls x6 10p
YS snack sized sausage rolls 39p
= £10 exactly!

Do you grow your own veggies and what about fruit ? I find I spend loads on these especially atm with all the summer fruit coming into season :eek:


Yesterday we had YS salmon, croquettes, peas, sweetcorn (all freezer) with Hollandaise sauce.


Today was baked Spag Bol with Garlic bread and Salad. Followed by fresh fruit and HM yoghurt


Had a small spend, mainly f & v, of £12.56 today and I've put on siggie.


Hope you all have a super Saturday
Lx

cw18

lynnejk wrote: »

I was just wondering about these 'boxes' that suddenly seem to be the rage. I saw some advertised for a 'special price' of £33 for three meals for 2 people (so £11 for dinner for 2).

They CLAIM to be cheaper than shopping in the supermarkets - but that's based on (mainly) organic produce. I don't think they are very MSE especially after the first one with introductory discount, and actually still need to be convinced that they're cheaper than supermarkets etc. For me it's all about trying new things - be that new ingredients, new combinations of ingredients, or new ways of cooking ingredients. We really are stuck in a rut here (and not just because of what I've overfilled my freezers with), and I'm fed up of it :mad: I was just starting to look through recipe books with the intention of trying new things when DS1 moved back in, and there's sooooo much he won't eat that I had to scrap the idea. He moved back 'for a year while I sort out my debts', and 2 years on is still here and still hasn't sorted all his debts - so I've decided it's time for the worm to turn, and am going to make him try new things or go hungry

I'm also starting to reintroduce things he likes that's I've been skipping due to cost - such as as steak (which he likes best as a huge slab) with all the trimmings - in the hope this will make him more open to trying the new things, but only time will tell if that works.

My first was through one of the voucher sites, and cost me £14 for 3 meals for 2 which wasn't bad (especially for what I got). My second (a different firm) was £22 for 3 meals for 2 after using an introductory discount code. I've referred OH to the first I used, which means he's got £20 off the box that's arriving for us on holiday this coming week and I get £12 off a future box (taking a 3 for 2 down to £27). He's ordered a 5 meals for 2 which has cost him £29 - and he thinks £3 per person per meal is very good for what you get (based on what he's seen of mine - he had one meal from each box as DS1 won't eat fish). I actually budget £3 per head for a main meal, although some come in at considerably less while others are a fair bit more as we like to try the more exotic meats - so I'll just see these as having to be balanced out with cheaper meals on other days. You also have to take into account that you don't get left with hardly touched tubs of spices lurking in the back of a cupboard because you didn't like them.

The schemes that I use are set up to deliver weekly, but you can pause/suspend deliveries to suit - the first company I have to keep logging into in order to suspend (which is a bit of a pain), but the second you pause the account until further notice so don't have to worry about keeping track of it (much my preferred way of working). I'm planning on one box every 4-6 weeks just to spice up the meal plan, but will be picking which company to have when very carefully so as to minimise waste whilst still trying things I wouldn't otherwise have considered making.

meg72

x_raphael_xx wrote: »

Wasn't there a hole where it had burrowed in?!?! How did it get in! :eek:

I am puzzling over that too.

mrssnowy_2

Hi everyone, I think I should re-join.
I was last here in October 2010 and lots of stuff has happened since then.
DH died earlier this year after a long illness, plus a very dense stroke in October last year ,and in and out of hospital then he went into a lovely nursing home. Bless him.
Anyway I have decided that I will definitely retire next year. Had my hip replaced in 2011,interesting experience as it wasn't quite straight forward and I was off work for 9 months.
Just bought a new car, Ford Focus Ecoboost, as the Motability one has gone back. Now waiting for DH pensions to be sorted so will I know how much I will have to live on.
The mortgage is due to finish in November, so that will free up more money but I intend to save the same amount in my NISA allowance .
Unfortunately I shopped yesterday so fridge is FULL, must find the receipts and then only buy milk for the rest of the month. So I really really need to get my mind into the saving gear and set a budget.
Very strange cooking for one as the quantities that you buy are different and then it isn't worth putting the oven on. Hooray for s/c and freezers but I often eat similar things for a few days, or did when the freezer was rammed full. I have now eaten one shelf empty.
Having said all that I am now off shopping for an outfit for nieces wedding next month!


mrss

Nicki_Sue

£47.23 out of my £60 weekly budget spent (Thurs-Thursday) and I'm pretty much all stocked up. I should only need a couple of fresh bits in couple of days. That's the idea anyway

VickyV

Welcome Mrss. You'll find this board good company, if a bit manic!

2 more NSDs to report for Thurs and Fri so total of 9/15. Off to do the shop today but hoping for a cheap one!

Have a great Saturday everyone.

Vicky x

cw18

mrssnowy wrote: »

Very strange cooking for one as the quantities that you buy are different and then it isn't worth putting the oven on.

I begrudge turning on my cooker's oven even to feed 2... all I can say is Hurray for my combi oven :T When one gave out on me a few years back it was 'suggested' that I could save money by buying a microwave rather then a combi, but I wasn't having any of it. I rarely use it as a microwave, but on a pre-programmed combination setting I get brilliant jackets for 2-3 people in 12-15 minutes, and I reckon that at least 3 days a week it's in use as an oven (preheats much quicker than my cooker's oven, and can't be more than half the capacity so I'm sure it must also use less electricity to keep it at temperature). I can't actually remember the last time I used my cooker's oven for anything other than storing baking trays and saucepans :rotfl: (But it's quite possibly when I cooked a huuuuge turkey crown at the end of 2012/start of 2013.)