June Grocery Challenge

catznine

Nearly forgot! I should start the June challenge now as oh paid on the 15th of the month. Need to cut down as holiday approaching and we need to save for some pocket money. This is not going to be easy as dd is now home from uni so one more to feed! I normally allow £250 a month for everything. We spend £10.90 a week (£43.60 a month) on organic fruit and veg box and organic/free range eggs so about £50 a week left. If I could cut that down to £30 or less a week and save £20 a week I would be on cloud 9.

I have lots of tinned tuna in larder as that has been on offer recently and lots of soya mince and tinned tomatoes, also pasta and rice. So spag bog and tuna pasta bakes galore I feel!

Rage_in_Eden

Well, this is my first post and my first challenge. Got paid this morning and by (.30 a.m. all my bills for the month had been paid leaving me with the money for food etc. Slashing my budget to £100 this month from £200 - yes, i know some of you are gasping at the braveness of it all! My hubby and I used to manage quite well on £30 per week and then it just sort of grew - time for me to start baking and making more meals from scratch AND to dig out the breadmaker from the back of the cupboard too. Wish me luck!!!

moggins

Rage_in_Eden wrote:

Well, this is my first post and my first challenge. Got paid this morning and by (.30 a.m. all my bills for the month had been paid leaving me with the money for food etc. Slashing my budget to £100 this month from £200 - yes, i know some of you are gasping at the braveness of it all! My hubby and I used to manage quite well on £30 per week and then it just sort of grew - time for me to start baking and making more meals from scratch AND to dig out the breadmaker from the back of the cupboard too. Wish me luck!!!

Good luck, that's a very big drop, is it just you and your hubby?

Rage_in_Eden

and a budgie with abandonment issues............. Like I said we used to have very small food requirements but these have just gone mad recently and as he has just set up his own business and I am the breadwinner on a medical secretary for a GPs wages he will have to eat what is put infront of him - and no sneaking off to make cheese on toast and thinking I don't notice!!! Actually, he is quite good with money but I do feel that we aren't being strict enough with ourselves and the impulse buy is creeping in on a regular basis. Well, time to plan the meals now......... :eek:

nicki_2

I sat down last week with my file box of recipes and dug out all the ones I haven't tried (those we have tried went into an A4 hardback exercise book I bought, affectionatly named "Purp" :rolleyes::shhh:) then I wrote out all the ingrediants I need for EVERY recipe including loads and loads of baking. Then I did a "swap ingrediants around" like instead of buying Sunflower, vegetable and Olive oil I just bought vegetable oil. I price it all up on the Tesco website then crossed some things off to get it as close to £30 as possible as we recently received 4x£10 off vouchers on shops over £30 :j We went shopping on Saturday and I made the mistake of taking OH & DD in with me :wall: The shop came to £51!!! Okay, so there was a couple of reduced items and things I had forgotten to put on the list but needed but at least I had the £10 off voucher! I also used alot of extra point vouchers so I entered a comp to win a £4k holiday to Australia (wine club offer) and managed to earn 126 points as well.

On Sunday I sat with the remainder of my list and priced it all up, printed it out (after cutting and pasting into notepad the entire list) and then hit Asda on Monday morning on my own (DD in nursery and OH at work). Everything that was cheaper in Asda or I needed to pick this week, like a box of 30 eggs for baking, I bought. Anything that was the same price/cheaper in Tesco I marked on the list. I spent £32.29 in Asda but £4.77 was on things I needed to pick up for this week. So total on groceries was £68.68 plus I bought £5 worth of stuff in the local shops but that also included a few bits (like tissues and fresh fruit) for this week.

When I got home I did something that could be counted as very very silly, I dropped the box of eggs :eek::wall: all but 7 of them were cracked/broken so I spent Monday afternoon baking but I still needed to throw about 5 or 6 out as they were too broken for me to salvage. I now have a freezer full of cakes :drool: and a tin full of flapjacks (1 batch didn't even see midnight Monday!)

I've sat down and entered everything else I need (mostly fruit & veg, milk etc) from Tesco this week and then put a hige packet of toilet tissue on the list to make it over £30. Daughter is going to her nannas for the weekend on Friday afternoon so, although OH doesn't know yet, we'll go shopping on our own atTescos Friday night so I can use another £10 voucher and some of the vouchers I received in the post this morning giving me more points :j (I've already got £5 worth of vouchers for my nannas Xmas pressie so this shopping at Tesco for the next couple of weeks is even more savings for me!). On Sunday morning we're going to "nannas" for a BBQ so I'm going to take a couple of cakes/flapjacks up with us and something for me to eat in the car. Since we're staying over and will be leaving sometime around 2pm Monday I'll save money on meals for Sunday and Monday :dance:

So out of £100 I have £25.07 left. I will get £10 this week and I'm hoping that I will be able to do the rest of the shopping for the month on "change" and not spend a fortune on rubbish in Tescos. If only I had a chest freezer it wouldn't be so bad

fruityslh

Good Luck Rage in Eden,

That's you and me both on the same track this month, however you're much braver than me !!

Fruity

Daisy

June will be my 3rd grocery challenge. I've now got used to menu planning, using a breadmaker, cooking from scratch etc etc.. so I feel I'm ready to cut my budget down by £20 to £60 a month for everything and I'll see how I go. I used to spend a fortune on cleaning products but now just pay 28p occasionally for some bleach. (The 5 litres of white vinegar I bought 2 months ago is still two-thirds full).

I am also going to start wearing my MSE safety pin

One thing I feel I could do better, is use my slow cooker more. I've used it a few times but I've not really got into it. I'll definately have to check out the slow cooker recipes.

Rage_in_Eden

I will let everyone know how I get on - and how soon the desire to run to the chippy kicks in!!!!

calleyw

catznine wrote:

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.

I use to buy the chunks as they seemed bigger. But last time I went they had none only mince. And I find sometimes the bits are are bit small sometimes.

I use a ramkin full before adding water and that does more than enough for me and hubby for spag bog. Suppose I could cut it back a little.

Yours

Calley

Rage_in_Eden

I just had to share this as I am sooo excited. Last night was the first shop of the first grocery challenge. Went to Asda and spent £28.72 - a bit over my "bare bones budget" of £25 per week but I'm sure it will even itself out as there were a lot of things I had run out of on it. BUT, bext buy were packs of two large lamb chump chops marked down as they were "sell by 25.5" to 55p each!! :j Needless to say bought a few (3) and slammed them in the freezer when I got home. Had a good nosey before I bought them as well and they looked fine! As the ad used to say "slam in the lamb"! I am rather pleased with myself. Now, if I can just avoid the Farmer's Market across the road from where I work tomorrow................ :rotfl:

By the way, does anyone have a good recipe for Mushroom Stroganoff? I have loads of mushrooms in the fridge and I'd like to try and put them with something other than pasta! Ta!