January 2017 Grocery Challenge. NEW BEGINNINGS!

CRANKY40

£38.05 spent on an online Asda order delivered yesterday. Signature updated. No further plans for spending this week but we may need some fresh fruit towards the weekend.

The freezer is full, cupboards and fridge the same so I'll try and stay out of the shops. I've just rearranged all my recipe books into one bookcase too, instead of various places around the house. Now if I want to make something I won't have to hunt for the right book first.

Art_Deco

4/300
Hello apoligies if ive done anything wrong so far!! Can I join you lovely lot, please as my food shopping is getting completely out of control, there are 4 of us all adults now and 1 very fussy cat Aiming to spend £300 a month only topped up with bread and milk so far will be going to the supermarket at 2pm for our first main shop of the year , wish me luck!!

Art_Deco

4/300 cant seem to get it in red!!

foxyloxy11

Just made a vegetable soup so I can have it for packing up all week. so no spending there. determined to use up all food that I have so only spent £40 this week at Mr T's for myself, dh and 2 dd's.
I have a budget of £80 a week so pleased with the saving this week

pavlovs_dog

I am trying to change my mindset with regards to food shopping. My mother was bordering on obsessed with having well stocked cupboards and freezers. This saved our bacon many times growing up as money was always in short supply. She had learnt the habit from her mother, who grew with WW2 rationing.

I was terrible for doing a big shop even though we had plenty in. Invariably this would lead to waste. Very little food waste is thrown away because it has gone off in this house, but we do get more than is acceptable dying in storage.

This needs to change, and I need to find a more workable balance between having enough in the stores that we can knock up a few extra days worth of easy meals if illness strikes and neither of us want to leave the house, and not having so much in that food goes to waste because it dies in storage.

I am trying to be much more disciplined about only buying the things on the list. Unless something is a genuine billy bargain, I don't need to stuff the cupboards to the gills with spares of x,y and z. If I am checking my cupboards weekly and shopping from stores, I'll see when things are running low and can buy replacements as the one in use comes to the end of its lifespan. In an 'emergency' I have 5 supermarkets within a 10 minute drive of the house.

One thing that is proving quite an eyeopener is reading the receipts from the last few shops before going shopping to see just how much of what I've recently bought has not yet been used. This makes it much easier to walk past those aisle end offers without feeling like I'm missing out on bargains.

My main aim for January is to run the freezers down. They are pretty full at the mo, but with meal accompaniments (e.g. veg) and odds and sods rather than meal building blocks (meat). By using up the things that have been taking up space for for too long, I'll have room to re-stock properly at the end of the month. I want to try doing a big shop at Aldi at the start of the month for the tinned and frozen stuff, and then just top it up with fresh bits from A$da, which is nearer.

thriftwizard

£4 spent at the market close-down just now, which bought me 4 x punnets of Moroccan strawberries, which are tastier than usual for this time of year, 3 x punnets of Spanish raspberries, a celeriac root and a big bag of slightly-squishy tomatoes. They're already roasting, along with half a pepper from the fridge and a couple of shallots, (and DD2's lunch on another rack) and will go into the slow-cooker (plus the celeriac & some veg. stock) to make a very tasty soup for this evening and lunches in the early part of the week. The strawberries will be eaten with the yogurt I bought yesterday, and the raspberries either with yogurt or in my breakfast pancakes. Luckily we have a big larder fridge...

medsdemon

First shop of this month on here. £22.87 in Sains mostly fresh stuff to see me through the week. From Tuesday-Saturday will be just me and the cat so shouldn't need to shop except maybe top up with cat food ( hopefully not).

Trying to be healthy and eat plenty of fruit and veg and also take my lunch to work instead of having to buy it.

Also had to include £6.50 on takeaway lunch for us when we dropped DD back at Uni.

Duck taken out of freezer for dinner, will update sig now.

Suffolk_lass

pavlovs_dog wrote: »

One thing that is proving quite an eyeopener is reading the receipts from the last few shops before going shopping to see just how much of what I've recently bought has not yet been used. This makes it much easier to walk past those aisle end offers without feeling like I'm missing out on bargains.

Ooh, I like this idea. I'm going to try this. I bought baked beans (pack of 4), two tins of tomatoes and two jars of ready-made curry sauce (all on offer) yesterday for my store cupboard. Let's see how long I have them for.

Thank you
SL

maria3104

Saturday top up shop 12.00. Rather more than I hoped for but it could have been so much worse.

Must go and check my sheep. Have a good day all.

M

WantToBeSE

Yay, had a NSD today

The boys seem to be coping reasonably well with not having as much junk food in the house. Thanks again for all of your advice about that.

I'm making a nut roast for dinner tonight (the boys have chicken). I've finally found one that uses only ingredients that i already have. Except breadcrumbs...so i am hoping that whizzing some bread up in the processor is OK...i am sure it needs to be stale bread though