February 2017 Grocery Challenge

Doom_and_Gloom

Flat Eric - we don't bother with the meal deals.
We'll be having chinese. He has duck in plum sauce with egg fried rice and spring rolls in the freezer, both bought reduced with Valentine's day in mind.
I have a portion of tofu in the freezer from a block I knew I wouldn't finish all of and a pack of crispy seaweed I bought for 36p also in the freezer. Make rice in the rice cooker on the day. Use some of the frozen mixed vegetables in the freezer (basic pack) and some frozen sweet corn. So tofu and vegetable stir fry (maybe sweet and sour), rice and crispy seaweed.
We have a bottle of wine we bought on offer a while ago. Price wise it probably does come to around £10 all in but we'll enjoy it more (that and as I'm vegan the meal deals don't cater for that to what I know).

Lunch: Cheese on toast (OH). Vegetable stew (me).
Dinner : Stir fry with egg noodles (OH). Vegetable curry and quinoa (me).

£5.20 spent today.

£64.02/£140.
£75.98 left.

just_trying

Spent far to much, nearly £100 today.

Islandmaid, have you a home bargains near by, they do 2 packs of steak for £5, (2steaks), there better than any supermarket ones I think anyway.

Good luck everyone.

Last thing Lidl had eco products priced very reasonably, worth a look if you're in, I think they came in during there organic week. Worth a look.

*Margaret*

Just popped to Aldi a day or so early as there is snow expected here and I wanted to avoid carrying heavy bags through snow. I spent £8.01 so that takes me up to £26.15 so far - I think I will be over budget but hopefully not drastically. The one upside of being ill is I ended up with 4 NSDs without any effort so every cloud has a silver lining!

JensFeet

lynnejk thank you for your helpful thoughts on shopping and your system sounds fab - especially how well your DH responds to shopping 'crises'.... That would be an open invitation for mine to say 'stuff the list let's have fish and chips' if something on the list wasn't in the shop!! I don't actually enjoy shopping either - just the idea that I could save money if I went and found x,y,z on YS etc...

I'm one of those people that had a 'free' car from MrT in 2008 when Motorpoint was on the @lubcard deals - a £13k pre-registered but new Megane Sports Tourer which probably cost us about £600 all together although am happy with this as we were still using toiletries from the deals until we moved house in summer 2016!! I think that was what triggered my OCD (diagnosed) and food hoarding. I had therapy for two years to sort myself out and it worked but after being critically ill last year it crept back in somewhat. My posting on these two Old Style threads has really helped me to clear my head and approach this all rationally and I am so very grateful for that.

You also make an excellent point about keeping busy. I've not been able to work since July last year with being so ill however I am currently awaiting occupational health clearance for my new job - so hope to be starting back at that very soon too. Also I'm well enough this year to look at starting my new veg garden at the house we moved to in June last year. I've had vegetable patches / allotments since 2005 and have loved the inner peace I gained from getting my fingers mucky and my muscles weary. I think once working and gardening are back in full swing the lure of the shops will be much tempered and there's this board to keep me in check before then!

Flat Eric no valentine meal deal for us and sticking to our meal plan which was done from the freezer stock. Some of the meal deals sound so tempting but I am sure I would likely be disappointed if we bought one. Although Fruittea's idea of getting the expensive bits and bobs together would make me appreciate the deal much more!!

Planned spend of £28.08 today - £18 on top up items and £10 on beer for the OH. Takes me to £139 spend for the month so far (out of £300) but realistically this should take us to 14th or 15th Feb and has included a whole month's household goods etc. I'm hoping to be under budget by a good amount BUT this was always a guesstimated amount for my first GC month. I am convinced it's much, much less than we normally spend. Only small-ish top up shop required mid- next week before I plan and reassess the stores for the last week of the month. Signature updated this evening.

Hope you all have a lovely weekend and thanks for all of the top tips x

Islandmaid

Just trying - I wish, we haven't got a lot of shops here, Aldi only opened a couple of years ago - they are building an Asda which opens this spring, at least that's a start

just_trying

Sorry islandmaid, bit like my closest town. Never mind, the steak is still a good price.

[Deleted User]

Franalamadingdong wrote: »

It's ok to feel disappointed save dosh.

JensFeet wrote: »

Sorry to read you're feeling down about your shopping Save Dosh but some really sound suggestion from Franalanadingdong

Thank you I am fine now - not usually one to get down.

just_trying wrote: »

Last thing Lidl had eco products priced very reasonably, worth a look if you're in, I think they came in during there organic week. Worth a look.

I might check these out, looking for wash liquid etc.

pamsdish

Spend of 95p yesterday, can`t believe nearly half way through month and spent so little, decorator starting tomorrow so might get through my hoard of frozen leftovers, will need a decent shop next week as need dogs chicken by Tuesday.

XSpender

£26.50 spent in sains yesterday mainly on items I cant get at Aldi such as 2 packs of chicken sausages and 2 of turkey bacon and some GF bread. Some snacks and crème eggs dell in my trolley.

Also spent £50.40 on a protein powder order.

However I wont be eating much over the next couple of days due to mo appetite as I have done a stupid, stupid thing. I was so tired on Thursday after a six hour drive I picked up 2 Pixxa Expre55 YS pizzas for our tea, one GF for me and one not for DH. I remarked to DH that the pizza was lovely, thinking it was because we hadn't had one for a while. After feeling ill all day yesterday, like I had eaten gluten (I am celiac) and even cancelling my PT session I checked the pizza box and realised the reason the pizza was so nice was because it was a normal one and not GF!! Same colour box but missing the massive 'gluten free' written across it! What an idiot!

I still need to pick up a few bits today for next weeks meal plan and as DH wants to pop to a3da to look at a game will go there or Ald1 across the road.

thriftwizard

£80 spent at yesterday's market on fresh meat, fish, fruit, veg & cheese... we have guests for most of the coming week, one of them with strict dietary requirements (potentially fatal nut & seed allergies) so it's another time when I can't cut corners & make substitutions. But we're not too far away from where I'd like to be, so I'm not downhearted.