February 2018 Grocery Challenge

elsiepac

ma-ri-ella wrote: »

can i have a recipe please

This is what I did:
• Saut! 1 diced onion in water until translucent
• Add 3 cloves garlic minced, 5 sticks of celery sliced, and 2 very large or 3 regular carrots sliced
• Saut! a couple of minutes more and then add 1/2 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp black pepper, 1 tsp dried thyme and 1 tsp Reduced Salt Season All
• Mix well then add 2 tins chickpeas with their water, 2 vegetable stock pots, and 750ml water
• Bring to a boil then simmer for about 20 minutes, until the celery and carrot are nice and soft
• Meanwhile cook your wholewheat noodles - when they are done, drain and rinse in cold water until they are cold (this is only necessary if you want to keep some for another day like I did as they would go mushy in the soup)
• When ready to serve, squeeze in the juice of a lemon
• Finely chop some fresh parsley (I did about 4 tbsps once chopped) and add half to the soup and save the other half
• To serve put a portion of noodles in each bowl and dish up soup over the top! Top with some of the reserved parsley

XSpender

£4.95 to add for bin liners, 4xbaked beans and a lip balm for DS.

I usually buy Branston beans but couldn't find any on offer so have down shifted to Sainsbury own which are 50% less. If we like them (which we should do as we used to eat them before) we will save over £25 p.a. just on beans :rotfl:

£168.75/£344 - 3 Friday shopping trips to go :eek:

We have visitors this weekend and I am not sure if they will want to eat out or not as they are travelling and staying at different people's houses at the moment. They may be sick of eating out. I have planned AGCJ chicken in a mustard sauce with new potatoes and veg and will do something easy for pudding maybe AGCJ little lemon puddings with ice cream or custard. I don't want to buy in lots of extras that wont get eaten if we do go out. Breakfast will be cereal, toast, yogurt and fruit or a bacon sandwich.

elsiepac

Chloris wrote: »

Hi All. I'm still in the January thread till the bitter end but want to sign up ready to go on Thursday. Family of 5, all food, cleaning and toiletries. I aim for £100 a week, so £400 for February please.

I have been trying to bake more but I need to tweak my family baking to all vegan, easy to cook, no fancy ingredients which will blow a budget! Anyone help me out? I have a couple of recipes already. Ideally I could do with cupcakes and microwave sponge pudding. Xxx

Have you got the Ms Cupcake book? She has a very good basic vanilla cupcake recipe in there as well as the fancier stuff x

Tales17 wrote: »

I use an app on my phone called Out of Milk. It is pretty cool and probably has features that I don't use on it but I have set up various "pantry lists" on it to keep track of what I have and I try to update it at the end of every day on what has been used.

I have then written a sentence in the notes of each item that I want to keep a stock of "Minimum of ..., Currently have...". The minimum number is the minimum number I want in my stock cupboard before I look for offers on it - this is usually 1 or 2 months supply. I update the "Currently have" section and when these numbers match I then add it to my shopping list as "look for offers".

Most of these items will be on offer during the period between then and me actually running out and I will then stock up 3 or 4 months worth when it is on offer!! Means I very rarely buy household cleaning items, toiletries and tin food etc. at full price!

It was a pain to set up originally and time consuming but makes it so much easier now, I just check the boxes I want and they are added to the shopping list. I also have a "checking list" for all other items that I don't stock pile such as fridge items, fruit and veg etc. Just means I can create my shopping list on my phone very quickly and easily by nipping round the kitchen and ticking the boxes I need!

Hope the info helps!

Thanks for the tip! I'll take a look and see if I can make it work for me

Totally broke my fruit only plans for the rest of the week - got freuit yesterday but also a couple of other bits including unplanned squash and also a carton of the Alpr0 I always use as I had a voucher that expired on that day.

And it doesn't end there - I remembered I have a taster at slimming world on thursday, and hadn't really thought about to realise I'd need to cook on Wednesday.. therefore being in this weeks budget! Doh! So bought quite a lot of tofu at lunch which will also cover my food too, as I'm going to try and make tofu frittata type things with veggies in them - tonight will be experiment night and hopefully they'll be edible for tea tonight andf lucnh tomorrow with salad! And tomorrow night I'll make more for group. In theory. LOL

Chloris

elsiepac wrote: »

Have you got the Ms Cupcake book? She has a very good basic vanilla cupcake recipe in there as well as the fancier stuff x

Thank you, I'll check that recipe. X

cw18

Please can I sign up for February with a budget of £80

I was worried that this might be a bit tight, as I've currently got an offer with Icel@nd that means spending £8 four times during February to get a free £5 spend in the early part of March. However a quick look though my January spends (£112.15) has shown that after I deduct the £43.72 of a specific stock-up and the staggering £24.54 I've spend on 'junk' (cakes, biscuits, sweets, puddings and crisps) I've only spent £43.89 on 'real' groceries. So I'm hoping that means £80 isn't going to be too restrictive - I'll just need to plan our "Valentines meal" (which will be the weekend before) around something I can get from Icel@nd

thriftwizard

Ooops! And I'm off to a flying start, a day early! I could count it as an overspend in January - sorry, another overspend - but it's stuff I'd intended to buy later this week anyway. I do have an excuse:

DD1 is a new and fairly anxious driver. She saved up & bought herself a little car, which she's been tootling around in for a few weeks now, mostly short local journeys on minor roads, usually with one or other of us or her younger sister with her. But last week she went up to visit a friend in the next county, on her own, and came back very shaken; basically she'd been "pushed" into going too fast round a bend on a rather-dangerous rural road by an impatient driver. (Sadly there are all too many of them round here, who think 60 mph ought to be the minimum, on a twisty, high-hedged narrow road full of potholes, in grey drizzle.) No harm came of it as there was nothing coming the other way, but there might easily have been; two small local children lost their lives on that corner last year. Anyway, it shook her up, but she was determined to drive up to our local stately home today to admire the snowdrops on her day off, so I went with her. Before we'd left our town, I could see that she was actually shaking, so I suggested we should drive up to the next town & visit L!dls, as that's a nice easy route and far enough that she could start to relax.

So we did, and I bought loo roll, washing supplies, tinned tomatoes, and a few other bits, all of which I was going to get on Friday afternoon. We didn't really need them yet, but she did need the practice. Then we went for a lovely stroll around the stately home gardens, and I could see her unwinding and starting to chatter normally, so IMHO - a bit early, but money well-spent!

K9sandFelines

armchairexpert wrote: »

Hiya.

$900 for February for me please. This is the lowest I've aimed for yet, partly because it's a short month but partly because I am trying out a plan of meal planning for the entire month and being ruthless about snacks.

Care to share? Always looking for new ideas.

klbooth

Thanks for the mention of "Out of Milk". I seem to remember it mentioned as a good tool from years ago but never downloaded it. Have looked tonight and it looks awesome and suspect will work better for me then just a printed list. I like how it can be used on PC as well as phone as I hate typing much on phone but obviously having the information on phone is crucial for success. Looking forward to getting it all set up and pantry stocktaked and then will be good to go!

tighteningthebelt

22.82/57.18
February shopping done early as I was near the shop. Hoping for a NSD today.

Ginmonster

I'm going for £100 again please starting on the 1st. I have absolutely tons of stuff in my cupboards that needs using up so this month I'm really aiming to clear some of that backlog.