February 2017 Grocery Challenge

meg72

Mrs_Cheshire wrote: »

Thank you, already have sultana's and sugar in as well as custard powder that needs using. Will give it a go.
How long should I cook it for? Would I put it in a pudding bowl, like Christmas pudding comes in and cover with cling film?



We don't eat minced based dishes as the kids don't eat them, we only have pork meatballs ready made from aldi, although the lentils might work as a thickener to the sauce. I'll give it a go with a handful next time I make it.
I'll look into the suet crust, hubby loves steak and kidney puddings, I wonder if I could use it to make those?

Ooh never made panna cotta, fortunately my budget allows me to buy full priced cream, what sort would I need?

I just roll the dough into dumplings its difficult to say how long to cook for as microwaves vary so much, I usually give them a quick zap for 2 mins and then have a look, if they still look a bit wet give a few seconds more.

meg72

purpleybat wrote: »

oh what a horrid few days i'm having. managed to give myself a mega black eye and spent 4 hours in Barnet A&E being checked over for concussion and xrays for a possible eye socket fracture (I think they were trying to find my brain) to be told 'we're concerned about your eye health so sending you to the Royal Free for an appt tomorrow''. took 2 hours to get there, another 4 hours there and then another 2 hours to get home. luckily all is okay and all the staff were lovely but it meant I lost 2 days work I now look like if I've been in a fight and everytime I lean forward it feels like my brain is trying to escape throo my eye socket.


but back to groceries a small spend of £6.02 in lidles (noticed when filling in my budget book yesterday they've over-charged me) on the 31st and yesterday afternoon spent £26.25 in morries, tho I think a lot of that was comfort food cos was feeling decidedly sorry for myself.


I too bought a HUGE pack of off-cuts bacon but mine was from morries and a bit more expensive at £1.18, . ive split it into 6 packs to freeze, might have to make the bacon and onion roly-poly I mentioned earlier now

OUCH hope better soon.

I love mooching among the packs of cooking bacon to find the leanest I get mine in Heron Foods 2kg for 1.49.

K9sandFelines

Back in for Feb. £4,000 yearly target rounded down from actual total, to include.bulk buys, as some months alot different than others; but it's roughly £333 a month. Hoping to halve this this month, as doing the eating out of of freezer and cupboards challenge. So far spent about £13. Definitely a spend of £3.07.Then a spend on a few bits yesterday in Morrisons, but will have to seperate the bill as some items were reduced bits of clothing for grandaughter. Will check up later.

thriftwizard

£96 spent this morning, at the market and at the supermarket. Much more than I would have wanted, but I can go lighter for the next few weeks. There were a couple of unmissable bargains for the freezer - smoked chicken, 6 breasts for £3.33, and venison steaks, 4 for £3.33 - and they absolutely WILL get used over the next few months. Each breast/steak will form the basis of a stir-fry meal for 3, so that's <£1 for the main ingredient for each of 10 meals. (DD2, pescatarian, will have the same veg & noodles but with a handful of cashews instead.)

I also bought a massive hunk of cooking cheddar for £4, which we'll probably still be using up at the end of the month now I've removed it from the shrink-wrap and wrapped it in greaseproof paper instead. In fact I spent about half an hour this morning transferring stuff from plastic wrappers to paper bags or greaseproof wrappers; you'd think they wanted stuff to go off too quickly. Oh! Maybe they do...

JensFeet

Oops... Stay out of the shops was my plan so instead I went to A$da and BandM on my way home today... Had my list with me but went severely off list and got a few extras which are all useful and had been requested etc... This challenge isn't meant to be a punishment or for the family to go without so although I'm mad at myself I'm quite forgiving too... £28.60 spent over the 2 shops.

Salad and milk topped up. Bread already in the house so that should be me on a few successive NSD's now though... Hopefully x

PipneyJane

Flat_Eric wrote: »

£50 February is a thought provoking idea and probably worthy of its own thread. That's £12.50 a week which isn't a lot but from my perspective would pay for things like milk, bananas and bread with a bit leftover to buy extras. I'm sure if I really tried, I could spend very little this month.

You know, I debated for a while whether I'd start a separate thread for £50 February. Eventually, I decided it'd probably get merged with this one.

The whole thing is inspired by a really tough February back in the early 1990's. It was my first February living with the long-unlamented-and-expensive-ex a.k.a. "Dumbo". We belonged to a national organisation that had its annual conference in a resort somewhere at the end of January each year. Being the responsible one, I picked up the tab for the conference, which meant that I had a little over £20 left in my purse to pay for groceries for the entire month. Naturally, Dumbo didn't contribute a penny to anything if I could pay for it - I'm not even sure he'd paid for his bar bill at the hotel at conference. :eek: (Yes, I was a mug and I have learnt my lesson.).

What I had was a collection of odd stuff in the pantry, some essentials such as flour and rice and not much else. I did a "big shop" at Mr T's and spent about £18 on eggs, a 2kg bag of frozen mince, a bag of frozen mushrooms, bread, a bottle of squashes several tins of tomatoes, pasta and 1lb of cheddar for £1.60/lb. I must have purchased some breakfast cereal too. I remember stopping at the green-grocer beside the station and buying 5lb of onions and 10lb of potatoes from him for about £3. (That sticks with me because I had to lug the entire 15lb a mile to get it home.). I also bought some pot-scrapings coffee from Londis for 25p. It was vile, but it was all I could afford and we were out.

Milk wasn't included in the shop; it was delivered by the milkman twice a week. I think I just ran up that bill for the month and paid it off on payday. Also, I got fed at work - they bought lunch for us every day - so that was one less meal I had to worry about.

Anyway, when money got tight for a lot of us earlier in this decade, I remembered that February and was inspired to try "£50 February".

I haven't been keeping tally of my food spends for a long time so to add up the figures and to see what I was spending was a shock. Then I added up the sums according to my credit card statement (mid December to mid January). and I was even more :eek: because clearly I'm overspending in a big way. I haven't yet added up my spends for the rest of the year but will do this if I get chance. (I'm almost too frightened to do so however)

Don't beat yourself up too much. The past is done; you can't change it. You can only deal with the consequences and start over.

If it wasn't for the cameras and being on TV - I would almost want to go on Eat well for less.

I love that show and watch it religiously. We joke about applying but I reckon there's not much for them to trim. Our usual monthly budget is £120 for groceries, £40 set aside for the butcher (we shop there every 3-4 months) and £40 for "Bulk" items (e.g. 10kg bags of flour and rice), so £200. Not everything is spent every month and sometimes we'll blow the Bulk money on filling the car with wine and whiskey on a day trip to France. (Bulk accumulates in its own bank account.)

So far this month, my spend is:

£4.45 - Mr T's for 4 big Yeo Valley yoghurts and a tub of plain
£4.18 - Lidl - 200g sunflower seeds and 10 rolls of recycled toilet paper

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£8.63 which leaves £41.37.
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Dinner last night was a "tuna" lasagne - using up an open packet of bacon, the tub of plain yoghurt, and some excess milk as well as a tin of tuna.

Dinner tonight will be Rose Elliott's carrot and hazelnut roast, accompanied by some roast potatoes and some roasted sweet potatoes. That will deplete the veg drawer and the potato basket. Tomorrow, we have a football match at mid-day, so will have cheese toasties for a late breakfast, skip lunch and come home to a Cuban black bean stew in the slow cooker (into which I'll throw a packet of cooking bacon from the freezer). There's some paneer to use up, so we may have Chole Paneer on Sunday (paneer curried with chick peas). That should clear out most of the fresh food, so a shop is on the cards at some point soon...

PipneyJane

MissOrganised1972 wrote: »

Forgot to say that the other bargain I bought this week was the 'cooking bacon' in Tesco for 60p for 500g. I always examine the pack to make sure I'm not picking up a chunk! This time I managed to split it into a 1 x 200g & 1 x 160g chopped pack each of which will be used to add to pasta or breakfast muffins and the remainder was in 1/2 sized slices which we'll have for brunch tomorrow. Not bad for 60p!
Have a good day all

It seems to me that Mr T, S'bugs and A$da take it in turns to have the best/cheapest cooking bacon. My hubby watches out for it like a hawk and bought 4 packets at Mr T's last month. Since I often use it as a substitute for ham, we like it in chunks but without a lot of fat. I'll do you a deal - you can have the slices and I'll have your chunks. :beer:

K9sandFelines

K9sandFelines wrote: »

Back in for Feb. £4,000 yearly target rounded down from actual total, to include.bulk buys, as some months alot different than others; but it's roughly £333 a month. Hoping to halve this this month, as doing the eating out of of freezer and cupboards challenge. So far spent about £13. Definitely a spend of £3.07.Then a spend on a few bits yesterday in Morrisons, but will have to seperate the bill as some items were reduced bits of clothing for grandaughter. Will check up later.

I found a few more spends from last month, so was over by about £13 in the end.
NSD today.

JingsMyBucket

Howdy all! I've been organizing an event that just finally went off without too many hitches last night. I am totally spent energy-wise though.

I spent about €15.80 yesterday buying snacks for the team to eat throughout the day. At first I was going to expense it back to my client but since I ended up keeping almost all of it, I'll just count it as groceries against my spend. Today I spent €25.46 at Lidl that includes toilet paper and a 2-for-1 on all purpose cleaner that we needed to top up as well. Combining the two shops, that's my budget for this week gone and for the next week half gone then.

€41.26 for the past couple of days but I don't think we'll need anything else for the rest of this first calendar week of Feb 1 - 7. I'll update my sig. This weekend is going to be spent shifting between cooking, cleaning, laundry, client work and laying in bed staring at the ceiling. Our house is a mess right now because I've been running around like a madwoman the past week.

Caterina

Another grocery NSD under the belt! Updating sig.