June Grocery Challenge

moggins

FIrst shop of the month came in at £28, so my guesstimate of £30 was not far wrong

Unfortunately it's not a 'proper' weeks shop as I took advantage of lots of BOGOF's but I don't have to buy any cat food for the rest of the month now.

squeaky

I'll be doing my monthly shop this evening. I keep meaning to do a serious voucher hunt but I've been having so much fun with Galtizz this week...

..creating our new stickies

GAJ_3

Last month I made a good start at the grocery challenge by myself so now that I have eased myself into it I feel ready to really go for it in June.

There are two of us and a dog (separate budget). I lump in petrol and food together with a monthly budget of £300. I have found in the last month that I have been able to save about £100 although I think that this was perhaps a very good month and I wont be able to match this every month.

One tip I picked up which has worked brilliantly for me was when I lift out my cash at the beginning of the month to divide it into 5 weeks ( I get paid every 4). This really helped me keep a tight control on purchases and how to say no.

We both have f/t and p/t evening jobs but the evening jobs can be good for picking up bargains as they are in sainsburys.

Anyway going to aim to come in at c£220 for the month inc petrol and I am using the extra to start saving for xmas presents and unforeseen expenses.

Chipps

Hi. We did our "big" monthly shop at Lidl on Friday (payday), which came to £69.55. I took £130 out of the bank in cash to see if this would help me keep to under £200 this month.
(oh well, at least I know I have 45p to fall back on in the bank if I run out of cash) :rotfl: :rotfl:

HappySad

cristin wrote:

I bought some soya mince for the first time on Saturday and made a cottage pie with it. Both my very fussy 4 year old and hubby wanted 2nd helpings and said it was great - so that pleased me no end. I am going to make a huge pot of spag bol sauce today with "real" beef mince but am going to pad it out with the soya mince to make it go further!

stupid question but does anybody know if it is ok to freeze something like soya mince? - I bought the dried stuff the other day - thanks

Cristin... I too have just bought some soya mince. What did you do with it to make your wonderful shepards pie?

cristin

Hello Happysad, when I bought the soya mince, the girl in the H&B shop gave me a really good piece of advice, she said to try and get as much flavour into the soya before cooking with it to get better results! So instead of just chucking plain water on it to get it to rehydrate, make sure to add lots of flavours to the water. So in my boiled water (can't remember how much but at least 500ml) I added three of teaspoons of marmite, some lea perrins sauce, some ketchup, some tomato puree and a veg stock cube (but I suppose you could use a beef one) and mixed it all together. I then got a big bowl to put the soya mince in and then added the boiled water and left it to soak in for an hour. I then added 1/2 teaspoon of cinnamon and 1/2 teaspoon of mixed herbs to it.

In a pan I fried a chopped onion added a chopped carrot and then added the soya. No need to cook the soya for very long as it is already brown, so I added a spoon of flour (to make the gravy) and then another 250ml of veg stock. The thing that I wasn't used to was everything cooking so quickly. The other thing that helped was I left the soya mince to go cold in the pan so that it would be easier to spoon the mash on top. I then boiled some potatoes, mashed them, added butter and a little milk, spooned them onto the soya and cooked it in the oven for about 25mins till it went nice and crispy on top. It all sounds long winded but it really didn't involve much prep and since I now know you can freeze soya mince I will make sure that next time I make at least 2 pies!

BTW I made a spag bol for hubby and daughter yesterday and bulked it out with some soya and again it worked really well - they did not know it contained soya!

HTH

Cristin

squeaky

Silly question #51

Is soya much cheaper than mince? A lot? Or just a bit?

cristin

I'm not 100% about this yet Squeaky, but I bought 375g of dried soya mince for £1.25 the other day. Once you add water to it, apparently the dried soya mince swells to 3 times its weight - so that is over a kilo of mince for £1.25! I have cooked with it twice and it has been really good, so am looking forward to making other things like a chilli or curry with it and then maybe move onto the soya chunks that people rave about. I have always stayed away from the dried soya mince/chunks before as I thought it looked like pet food how wrong can you be??????

squeaky

As wrong as a wrong thing?

Well, I'll keep an eye open for the stuff on my next shop. I shan't be too brave, I'll 50/50 it with the real thing

catznine

I use the soya mince from Sainsburys 1 bag at about 69p I think and lasts us for 2 very large or 3 medium meals. Yes you do have to flavour it well when rehydrating but if using in a spicy dish like chilli or a curry it works very well. I haven't bought "real" mince for years! Not veggie but just can't stand the fat on mince and am sure I have saved loads of pennies over the years.