December 2014 Grocery Challenge

Bobarella

£1.77 spent today on butter & cat food. Already had some coppers etc to put towards it (roadkill) hence low total. 10 days to go & I need to average £9.36 per day to keep on target!

NewShadow

Damn - No home delivery.

Meal plan for this week: Mon, Tues, Wed, Thurs

Breakfast - Porridge - Oats, Milk, Cinnamon, Dried fruit, Banana, Blueberries

Lunch - Spicy Couscous (Tomatoes, Onion, Sultanas, Couscous, Mustard, Curry powder, Chilli flakes, Honey, Green beans), Hard boiled egg, Gherkin, GoAhead biscuits or pot of popcorn.

Dinner - I've got a small gammon, pack of mackerel, and a pack of bacon defrosted.

I'm having gammon and bacon this weekend, so leftovers =

• Gammon, mash & green beans
• Grilled mackerel and potatobake - (flaked mackerel, sliced pots, tomatoes, onions, peppers)
• Bacon and onion spaghetti (bacon, onions, peppers, tomato, spaghetti)
• parmesan spaghetti (onions, parmesan, blackpepper, spaghetti)

Friday is the christmas dinner at work. I likely won't eat beforehand as the meal is booked for 3pm. It's all paid for (bar the drinky-poos :beer:). Even the 10% service charge - we're just that organised.

It's steak, lemon roast potatoes, peppered cauli, braised cabbage, and salad - shouldn't (hopefully) trash the diet too badly.

I'm starting to be a little worried that my secret santa gift won't arrive on time - I ordered it from fleaBay a while back and it should have been with me on wednesday

Worst comes to worst I'll have to find something else mid week.

Airthrey

Just updated my signature for recent spends of £57.52, which takes me to £114.72 for the month so far. Includes 3 bottles of wine; our favourite white was reduced in Mr S and 2 bottles of cheap red from A*di for 'cooking with'.:) Managed to find reduced price bread, rolls, apples, lemons, potatoes and steak.

Looking at my receipts, I went to T*sco four times, Mr S twice and W8rose and A*di once each. It makes sense, given how far I live from each of them, so I don't know why I was surprised. But I'm never going to be able to take advantage of some of the money-off vouchers I get unless I amalgamate lots of little shooping trips into one or two bigger ones. The best I managed this week was £2.25 off a £15 spend in Mr S. I hardly ever spend the £30 I need to spend in one go to use some of the others I've got.

Smoosh

More spends today on YS things as well as a few necessary bits, oops.

£22.57 on a big pack of roast chicken (YS), a bacon & stilton sandwich (YS), an American pizza (YS), a pack of diced beef (YS), a chicken madeira with rice meal (YS), a ham & mushroom tagliatelle meal (YS), a chicken roast meal containing chicken wrapped in bacon & chipolata sausages & gravy & stuffing (YS), southern fried chicken pasta (YS), duck spring rolls with hoisin dip (YS), breaded prawns (YS), 2x muller rice corner pots (YS), 3 yoghurts (YS), a pack of chicken fillets (YS), a southern fried chicken sub (YS), 4 onion & chive bagels (YS), a box of spicy rice (YS), a box of boil in the bag rice, 6 eggs, 1kg spread, a little piece of chorizo (YS), 3x chorizo & pepper tortillas (YS), 4 salted caramel cookies (YS), a jar of Chinese curry sauce, 2x tubs of tomato pasta (YS), a chilli noodle salad tub (YS), 2 litres of lemonade & 4 rolls of kitchen paper.

Pretty pricey but I think we got a good deal with all the meat No more freezer shopping for a while now because it's absolutely stuffed, but we'll probably have to get bits and pieces to meal plan around the YS bits.

lynnejk

carbootcrazy wrote: »

I love it when OH is away (though hardly ever happens these days:() because I can live on value pasta without much else with it
whereas OH can't stand pasta in any shape or form regardless of whatever I add to it:eek:. I can save a fortune if I don't have to cater for him.

Have to agree ! Think I could easily go for the 'eat well on £1-a-day challenge' if I lived on my own. When I was single I used to make something like a curry or chilli and eat it all week :rotfl:


Had another NSD and an absolutely lovely lunch with some friends today. Haven't laughed so much for ages :laugh:


Must get some essentials tomorrow though


Hope you all have a super Sunday
Lx


:xmassign:

Kerfuffle

Hi everybody,

Just a top-up shop today of eggs, cheese, bread, yoghurts, lemons and creamer, total spend $ 57.77

$93.07 / $300.00

CRANKY40

£10.79 spent on bread, milk, mushrooms and cat biscuits last Friday. That leaves £91.35 for the rest of the month with an online shop of about £60 ordered that will come out of that too. That should leave £30 ish for bread, milk and mushrooms from the co-op. I like mushrooms a lot, can you tell

Happygreen

carbootcrazy wrote: »

I love it when OH is away (though hardly ever happens these days:() because I can live on value pasta without much else with it
whereas OH can't stand pasta in any shape or form regardless of whatever I add to it:eek:. I can save a fortune if I don't have to cater for him.

Same here, you are not alone! I'd happily go for more veggie dishes, just salads or pasta but OH doesn't consider that a proper meal...I love the nights where I don't have to "cook" and DD2 and I just have a cosy girlie pesto pasta eve :rotfl:

peaceandfreedom

carbootcrazy wrote: »

I love it when OH is away (though hardly ever happens these days:() because I can live on value pasta without much else with it
whereas OH can't stand pasta in any shape or form regardless of whatever I add to it:eek:. I can save a fortune if I don't have to cater for him.

I'm with your OH on that one - I am not as fan of pasta. Especially the dried non-egg stuff - I might as well eat cardboard and while it is filling, it offers little in the way of nutrition.

But I know what you mean about your OH being away - when mine is away we eat a lot more frugally. Mainly because me and the DDs are happy with a veggie meal, DH doesn't consider it to be a meal at all if it doesn't have meat.

peaceandfreedom

Well, when I joined this thread, I knew my grocery spend was excessive. I continue to be amazed at how well you can all eat for so little - sadly, so far I have not done much to emulate you all.

Grocery spend for December so far is £201.80. :eek: However, as our usual spend is around £475, this is no worse than usual and I have bought in some bulk supplies. For January, I have a new plan which I will work on over the Christmas break so hopefully I will start to reduce our spend a bit. I know we won't ever get down to the £200 mark that a lot of you manage for a family our size but I would be happy to arrive at something between £350 - £400 by April.

Meanwhile, thank you all so much for providing so much inspiration and by showing how it SHOULD be done. :T