Resourcefulness: The budgeter's friend

marionmgcars

Makingabobor2 said:

wow, that's brilliant for £3.30!  So this in on the Too Good to Go app? Or in store?   Think I must take a look…. 

This was on the app,  we are tying a Greggs magic bag tomorrow.  Will not be as good for menu planning,  but maybe a fun teatime.  

marionmgcars

The loaf looks amazing.  Something to add to my list to try one day x 

joedenise

We got a couple of TGTG bags from our local chippie last night.  DH will eat most of the stuff as I don't eat much in the way of fried foods!  There were 2 very large bags of chips (double their normal large portion) - most of which are in the freezer to be open frozen and will then be bagged up so that they're free flow.  Loads of sausages - both plain and battered; 3 steak and kidney pies, a chicken pie and a beef and mince pie - DH ate the chicken pie and the rest are in the freezer.  There was fish cake but DH had a small bite and binned it!  apparently not very nice!  There were a couple of pots of curry sauce, a pot of gravy and a pot of mushy peas, all of which are currently in the fridge.

Thought they were good value at £4 a bag but don't think we'll bother again.  They'd have been ideal for a family but rather too much for 2 of us.

foxgloves

No spending today. Instead a gardening day. Mr F already busy making bacon sarnies & has asked me to prioritise the most important jobs on the garden job list he asked for. This is already sounding like a result!
F

Suffolk_lass

@joedenise thank you! Your mention of TGTG nudged me and I picked up a Morries bag last night when I went to collect my click and collect order (order £70, get £15 off) - with the unavailable things (chocolate that was on offer, to gift for Easter, OB ginger nuts and iceberg lettuce) it was £46 instead of £55. My TGTG was lots of veg with loads of tender-stem broccoli, potatoes, courgettes, carrots, cauliflower, calabrese and leeks, along with some easy peelers

joedenise

Nice TGTG bag @Suffolk_lass - much better than mine last Sunday - we're still trying to eat all the apples and oranges and still have 2 cabbages and a small cauliflower left as well!

Was going to try and get one last night for collection today but decided to give it a miss this week.  We prefer to order on a Saturday night to collect Sunday as it's an afternoon collection rather than night time and living on an unmade road it's much easier to see the potholes during the day!!!

EssexHebridean

Ahh I really wish we had a Morries nearby with TGTG bags! I have just checked and the store we occasionally use for shopping in a nearby town DOES list bags on there, so it might be practical to tie in a slightly "unusually timed" weekly shop there with collecting a bag at some stage...Hmmm, that's worth a thought! 

foxgloves

Hello Campers!
I haven't put in much of an appearance over the weekend, so need to catch up with the two stories I meant to tell you last week.
Firstly, Mr F & the shopping: He said he'd call into the supermarket (which was the Waitbloom one) on his way past on route home from work, so he took the list with him. It wasn't a very long list & I had written it with full attention to meal plans, plus checking ingredients to make sure we did actually need the various items. This was the final shop of this month's budget cycle & I wrote at the top of the list that we had £77-53 left in our grocery budget. Well, he arrived home with the shopping & he was chuffing about the cost of everything before he'd barely even got in the front door. He kept saying '"OMG, the prices!!", "You would not believe what things cost now!", "Unbelievable!!!" & so on. He kept this up all the time he was getting his coat off & putting stuff away in the fridge. I got on with packing pantry goods away & daren't ask how much he'd spent. I said that the shop in question has just reduced the prices of loads of the products in its essentials range, which we like because it's both wide-ranging & good quality. He said "Oh those were alright, it was the other stuff, brands & that". I thought I'd better find out how much over budget he'd gone, so I asked how much he'd spent & the receipt was duly produced. Now, he hadn't been winding me up, the puffing & chuffing was all perfectly genuine ......but he had spent the grand total of £36-60 !! For the bulk of our week's shopping, I was delighted with that. We only had a couple of additional cat pouches to buy, peppers & a couple of bottles of beer for the weekend. I think the kick-off had been sparked by the price of his favourite up-market brand of big yoghurts, which to be fair, have risen a lot......so much so that he refuses to buy them. Although I don't like cheap yoghurt, particularly any containing aspartame, I'm not as fussy as him regarding flavours, so I am usually happy to have a pot of whatever if on offer. 
Honestly though, I stood there thinking "Oh my days, if that very unassuming list has come in at pushing £80, I don't know where it's all going to end with this scary food price inflation".....whereas. he'd actually done a very good shop, grrrrr. He does get a bee in his bonnet about things, sometimes.
There is actually a Chapter 2 to the grocery story, but next is the bra incident......
On Thursday, my bra (admittedly my oldest one) had felt weird all day. I kept finding myself fiddling with it, trying to put right the strangely undefinable oddness, but didn't actually have a look to see what was going on. When I got undressed later on, I discovered that one cup had actually split right across the middle. The Foxgloves boobs (or 50% of them), always a law unto themselves, had, had a field day & staged an escape. Instantly wrote 'new bra' on my list for our next shopping trip, then later found one I'd forgotten about in the bottom of my drawer, where it was consigned when I had to sew a wire back in, despite it being fairly new. I shall still enjoy choosing a new one, but at least it isn't as urgent as I thought it was going to be! The only shop in our local town which sells bras is a little indie lingerie shop. It's lovely, but too expensive for an everyday purchase to be funded by the clothing pot.
I like the support & shape from underwired bras, but they are such a waste of money when the wires poke through the casing so quickly, a malfunction which really annoys me.
F x

foxgloves

Grocery Shopping Chapter 2: The Peppers.
Our meal plan required 4 peppers - 2 yellow & 2 red ones. There weren't any at the aforementioned supermarket. No problem, we went to our usual market stall, but they were out of them too, except a couple of very small red ones & a few green ones. I know this is very much a first world problem, but I'd got the meal plan done, didn't want to have to start changing it on the hoof in the middle of the market square & was determined to buy some. Went to a different stall. The red & yellow peppers were enormous (no green ones, so maybe there's been a bit of a pepper shortage? It certainly must be costing the growers atm to heat those huge glasshouses) I selected 2 of each, & paid ..........£6. Yes, £6 for FOUR PEPPERS & I was so shocked that I paid it! We visited the charity bookshop, then on the way out, Mr F suddenly said, "Have I got this right? Have we just paid £6 for 4 peppers?" I said that indeed we had & I now wished that I'd said I wasn't paying that much, & had walked across town to see if Mr M's could do any better.......though I'd have felt like a narna if they hadn't any either & I'd had to go back to the stall & say I'd changed my mind. Decided we'd go back & query the price, then realised that without a receipt & the market being busy, there was no guarantee that we'd be remembered. So we decided we'd chalk it up to experience & took our expensive peppers home with us. Now, it has to be said that I'm always very economical with peppers. I always top & tail them & dice those sections for freezing ready for when I make a pizza or veggie couscous, & so I am planning to divvy these up to get as much use from them as possible. I weighed them & the four fruits come to over a kilo, so they are very large. I can defo get away with using only half in one of this week's recipes, so will slice & freeze the other half for something else & I can see that I will get at least 2 pots of diced to freeze. You can see that I'm determined to make them stretch, having paid for the bloody things! And it'll teach me to be yakking so much while I'm shopping that I didn't query the price at the time. Mr F thinks the stallholder made an error, but I have a feeling that given the size of them & the very lush quality, that was probably genuinely the price of over a kilo of humungous peppers  - not our regular stall, but he's a longstanding trader & I've never heard anyone complaining about overcharging.
By the evening, I had to issue a threat to Mr F that if he uttered the words "Bloody hell, £6 for 4 peppers" again, I wouldn't be held responsible for my actions! He hasn't mentioned them again, lol.
F 

foxgloves

I'm like buses aren't I? Nothing all weekend, then you can't shut the damn woman up!
Today's small money saving wins:
*Resumed weight loss plans so this generally has the knock-on effect of our food supplies lasting longer.
*Finished Mr F's socks for the presents stash.
*Did two loads of laundry (that's it for this week) - all pegged out. Shall be fetching it in soon. Windy day so it's had a great blow around & I'm really hoping no heated airer required.....or of it is, just for a really minimal time.
*Did rubber chicken duties - it did us roast dinner yesterday, will be providing cold chicken & spicy couscous tonight & fajhitas on Wednesday. Also a container in the fridge for making soup - gribbly bits have been in the slow cooker all day for stock, so that will also go towards a batch of soup.
*Baked a batch of bread rolls.
*Did my regular Monday morning budgets updates & a small amount of financial admin.
*Did a survey.
*Entered a competition.
*Decided to sew a little piece of strong fabric over the weak mended point in casing of aforementioned bra, as I have had success with this method in the past. So I think that counts as a 'Make do & mend'.
Must go & get the laundry in before things get too crepuscular out there.
F x