February 2015 Grocery Challenge

Bobarella

Evening All
Managed to make a chicken curry with leftover chicken frozen veg, & red lentils which means I've stretched my Grocery spending successfully for another 2 NSDs days. If I get tommorow as well I will celebrate. Don't think I've ever had 3 in a row
Bob

onewhoasks

Saw this today which I found inspiring - I don't see £20 per week being sustainable long term, but there's some good meal ideas here...

http://www.goodtoknow.co.uk/recipes/541223/how-to-feed-a-family-of-4-for-20-a-week

Zed42

Evening all

Last month's aim didn't quite go to plan, due to 'flu throwing us all asunder, DH encouraging us to go out for an awful pizza and me being away from home for a couple of nights incurring extra food costs.

This month I'm in for £800

This includes: 2 adults, 1 tween, 2 cats, cleaning, dining out, takeaways, cleaning products and toiletries.


So far, I've bought a joint of gammon, slow cooked it and sliced it for lunches (did buy a meat slicer from Lakeland, which I'm not including in the budget, but will soon recoup costs) .... we like marmalade ham from Wa*tr&se, which is £26.90 per kg, the gammon joint was £9.99 per kg .... and is free range to boot.

Made lentil soup with the juices from the gammon.

I've made DD some "ready meals", fusilli with tomato sauce topped with grated mozzarella (what I call "pingables")

I've been experimenting with popcorn, after looking at the cost of microwave popcorn (used the last sachet on Saturday) .... not quite got it right (understatement ... I burnt it and it was horrible!)

And finally for the moment, I bought DD some "instant" porridge last month, but then when I woke up ... realised what a flipping rip off they truly are, so we've been experimenting with some leftover oats,dried skimmed milk and caster sugar which I had, and her verdict ... she prefers it (The aim here, is something she can make with a kettle safely on her own, to give her a sense of independence (she's 11) .. and not bankrupt me!)

wealthygirl

Hello everyone.

Had to buy some plain flour & a 4 pint of milk so £1.34 spent.:)

NSD yesterday, and hopefully the rest of the week fingers crossed.

CRANKY40

I've had to order my shopping to be delivered tomorrow, sigh, as I have a small boy off school with a sore throat and a cold. Depending on what is or isn't available it should come in at £50 ish. Last weeks great discovery was Makway curry powder at £1 a tub from Asda. It makes a perfect replica of my all time favourite takeaway chip shop curry. I don't have many takeaways anyway but this could kill them off completely. I just sauteed some chopped onion, added a few strips of beef and some mushrooms, added the powder and the water and hey presto! I ate it with boiled rice and some chips done in the oven by parboiling a chipped potato then spreading the chips on a baking tray and giving them a spray of oil. I made Master Cranky's dinner in the oven at the same time too (he is not a fan of curry).

This month's grocery challenge is proving a little trickier than last months as a lot of the pre Christmas stocks have been used up. I found myself deleting some stuff I didn't really need on my order to add in some other more useful stuff. On the plus side I sorted the cupboard under the sink which I haven't really looked in since we moved here last May and we won't be needing washing up liquid any time soon

buddiebabe

Hey

Can I join again this month going to stick to £10 a day so £280 for the month

I found myself buying lots of different herbs and spices in January which cost me a small fortune but I won't need to do that for a while. I also bought lots of bottles of juice so am hoping I won't need to buy this for a while. I think I have a fear of running out if things, the intention was to use up lots of the things I had in the house and I've not done that so the aim is to buy fruit, milk, vegetables, eggs and bread and try and use everything else.

Spends today £1.00 on ten packs of cheese and onion crisps (reduced as they go out of date in the middle of the month).

Buddiebabe x

JustStartingOut

I've decided this, my first month, that I will just see what I spend and then create a budget from that going forward. No point picking a number at random and disappoint myself because it was unrealistic!

I've had a NSD, so a good start I reckon

Also I cancelled my Graze boxes. :T I love them, but at £3.99 a week it is better elsewhere!

debbym

JustStartingOut wrote: »

I've decided this, my first month, that I will just see what I spend and then create a budget from that going forward. No point picking a number at random and disappoint myself because it was unrealistic!

That's the way most of us start as we are all so different. Don't forget that Feb is a short month so if you are going for a calendar month (rather then pay-day to pay-day) your spend is for 28 days rather than 31; depending on when weekends are that makes a big difference for us as the big shop can be the day before or day after and therefore make the budget look (unrealistically) good or bad. I work out how many weekends there are in the month when I do my budget to compensate for this.
Also be honest with yourself, if you have made changes this month to reduce your bill let them "bed in" or you may find yourself going off the rails next month. Small changes that you can sustain are better than yo-yo moneysaving for morale;)

BrassicWoman

skintmum2012 wrote: »

I have managed a nsd here starting to panic that all my budgets already gone and I still have 3 weeks 3 days to get through.

You'll be fine. You're just breaking an addicition of popping to the shops. Panic is normal; just ignore it!

debbym

Yesterday was a top-up shop that went a bit over due entirely to a emergency dental appointment to replace a missing filling that turned into an extraction due to cracks in the tooth itself - may think twice about eating DD's HM flapjacks ever again!

Instead of the chicken vindaloo planned bought some stewing beef on the 3 for £10 offer at Morrisons- some to go into the freezer, the rest for beef stew today. Need more milk today so off to Lidl - never buy it in Morrisons personally as even on multibuy its 11p more expensive for each 4 pint container...