June Grocery Challenge

spendaholic

Awe shucks - you recognised me!

Rage_in_Eden

well done on bringing forward your overdraft free date by the way. wish i could get mine down but once hubby's business starts getting some money.... as the saying goes "this time next year rodney we'll be millionaires!" mmmmmmmmmmmmm :rotfl:

scruffy

Hi
I've just started to try & cut back our food spending, it's a bit difficult at the moment trying to work out exactly what we spend as my mum's shopping is included in ours. But this week so far I have made a chicken last for 5 meals for the 2 of us. It started as roast chicken on Sat, Chicken & left over ham pie on Sun & Mon, Sauce with pasta on Tues & today it is going to be chicken soup surprise( the surprise being it will have more veg than chicken).I've also still made stock from the carcass.
We also often have Leek & Potato Soup Surprise ( sometimes the surprise is that it is actually leek & potato, but I usually use whatever I can as a substitute.)

Mango

This is my first month officially doing this challenge - I've been having 'trial runs' the past couple of months, trying out the different supermarkets/shops/markets near me to see where I can get the best deals. I have set a budget of £60 per month (I've been spending a bit more that that per month so far) to cover all food/drink/household items. It is just for me as I live alone. The biggest problem I have though is that I only have a tiny freezer compartment in my fridge (I rent and there isn't space for a larger fridge/freezer even if the landlord would get one) so I find it hard to cook in bulk and freeze stuff. It gets really annoying when I get home late and don't have time to cook from scratch, yet can't just whip something out the freezer My month started on the 28th May and so far I've spent £24 - did a big shop this Monday and bought enough to last me this week and next so just have to get milk & bread top ups for a while.

Chipps

The biggest problem I have though is that I only have a tiny freezer compartment in my fridge (I rent and there isn't space for a larger fridge/freezer even if the landlord would get one) so I find it hard to cook in bulk and freeze stuff

Hi Mango, just a suggestion. If you are freezing stuff like spagbog sauce or stew you can freeze it in ziplock bags, then you get little square, flat packages of food which stack really well. And they don't take long to defrost, either.

Galtizz

Yep, put chilli, spag bol, soup etc. in 2 freezer bags or 1 ziplock one then you can shove and cram it into the smallest of spaces whilst it is still fresh (my freezer is a small but perfect jigsaw puzzle after a big cook-up for the freezer)

squeaky

Speaking of cook-ins... I'm going to have to have a mega cook-in tomorrow to use up all my new organic box. Rhubarb and strawberry crumble BIG SIZE to start with... and a large casserole with lots of veggies in it Then there'll be all the waste pastry that I'll have to make jam tarts with... :whistle:

gemmaj

Things are going..... disasterously. If thats even a word.

I did my weekly shop, and made myself stick dutifully to the shopping list, never departing from it.

Unfortunately due to bad shopping-list compilation on my part and a lack of some vital ingrediants on the shops part, I spent about £25 and returned home with out the necessary ingrediants to make ONE SINGLE MEAL. Now I must find time to go a different shop and try to do a better job this time!

Thankfully I scraped together a meal from the very-depleted store cupboard. Mind you, my meals seem to be getting stranger and stranger - I have no idea what my hubbie-to-be thinks! He'll be cancelling the wedding at this rate!

rchddap1

I have days like that. Only my big shop last weekend was even worse than yours. We made a list by going through all the cupboards....but what did we do with the list. Yup, left it at home. Found it later by the bed of all places. Ended up spending £55 when I was hoping to spend around £30. But I did buy some whisky as a pressie, so its not all bad.

squeaky

Oh dear!

There's actually a thread somwhere (I'll see if I can find it again) that lists various store cupboard basics... once bought, many of them last for ages, so you could always split the cost of a pure basics shop across several months...

..failing that - pick any combination of two foods you like and then search the recipe board thread and the slow cooker recipe thread using those as key words. I'll bet most times you find something

Edit: This Thread is the one I was thinking of.