January 2008 Grocery Challenge

Trying_hard_5

hi everyone, I haven't updated for quite a while, as been having a rotter of a month, so many unexpected bills etc coming in... have ended up spending £400 more than budgeted for (boiler broke etc....)
Anyway, only 2 more days until the end of my Jan grocery challenge ( i am working on a pay-day to pay-day month) - and i have 73p left!!! woo-hoo, I can have a big blow out tomorrow on that.....
I seem to have spent a lot this month, but it has included 4 meals out, and cooking every weekend for 2 friends.
I'm sure I can do better this month.
I have already planned to stock up on cheap veg in bulk from the market when I go to the country this weekend - potatoes are about half the price of those in London!!

Well done everyone else on good work!

Skint_Catt

£9.98 on offers in Somerfield. Got 4 salmon steaks and 8 gammon steaks :j

belfastgirl23

Cheers for the kind thoughts guys. Turns out whoever put the new guttering at the side of our house (before we bought it) broke all the slates along that side of the roof to get it fitted on :eek: so they all needed replaced at a cost of £200. Expensive but worth it. Especially since it is really tipping it down outside now.

alibambino welcome....just to say too you can use tesco clubcard for groceries too (sorry if it's obvious but you only mentioned petrol ). I have to say my uses for clubcard points are limited but their magazine subscriptions make good gifts. My biggest tip is to use mysupermarket.com to work out the cost of all of your bogstandard basics and see which supermarket is cheapest for them, esp if you haven't been used to looking at prices for these items. And to see if you can go down to basics/value items. All those 10ps really add up The other thing is to think about cost per meal of different meals and focus a bit more on the low cost meals (yay pasta). Good luck!

I am determined to make today a NSD!! Good luck everyone else.

DdraigGoch

Skint_Catt, I'm very impressed! Take a "well done, that Catt!"

We're coping but having so many NSDs it isn't true - turns out that OH was buying stuff, I was getting it too.... ended up throwing stuff out regularly.

Today I spent:

BOGOF Cheese x1 £3.69
Tray of 18 Free Range medium eggs £1.99 - reduced.

Felt tempted, but resisted

It is the third Friday in the month, apparently! I meet a chum for lunch - usually I can get away with just a cup of tea, not today though. One cheese toastie and a cup of tea [pot, so I get three cups ] comes to £4.10 :eek: So that's my entertainment budget blown....

I've changed my car from a 2.9L to a 1.6L - should be better mileage. I do need a car as we are 6 miles from the nearest [small] town and 17 miles to the railway station [OH works 45 miles away and drives then trains it 5 days a week ... :rolleyes: ] and Mr T's. And he, Mr T, doesn't deliver, nor does Asda, Waitrose or even Iceland, though they used to. Ho hum.

Keep up the good work everyone

DG

ps Belly pork is an excellent buy if you use the Kenneth Lo recipe for Red Cooked pork. Better than higher priced meat and it just goes sooooo far. Pork in Lu sauce is pretty good at stretching meat too. I'll try and find the recipes, copyright permitting, if anyone wants.

tattycath

Hi. I spent almost £5.00 today 2 magazines and some biscuits!!!... But I also made a £5.00. I joined a website-free. and got £5.00 for joining. I have a link if anyone wants to pm me, but i think it is against mse rules to post it.

rosieben

MRSMCAWBER wrote: »

.... its a book from the USA -hence the likes of squirrel, dove, elk, bear and bisson recipes -which strangely enough i haven't tried yet:rotfl:
...

oh Mrs M where's your sense of adventure? :rotfl: Thanks so much for the details of the book, and big thanks for the pie recipe.

I think I'll experiment with different sausage flavours in the meantime - I have a small piece of turkey breast in the freezer so may try that with some stuffing; I used to love beef and tomato sausages from a local butcher (sadly long gone and no one else makes them here) and have some belly pork and thinking of onion and a smidgeon of apple with that. So those are my 3 ideas so far - I'll let you know if they're a success.

rosieben

mrsdoyle1981 wrote: »

Sorry to butt in, do you know what board that is on? I've done a search on the user name but couldn't find it! Would be interesting to have a look at what someone else buys in a month!

Here you go MrsD
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=697339

belfastgirl23

tattycath wrote: »

Hi. I spent almost £5.00 today 2 magazines and some biscuits!!!... But I also made a £5.00. I joined a website-free. and got £5.00 for joining. I have a link if anyone wants to pm me, but i think it is against mse rules to post it.

I think it's only against the rules in signatures But I'm sure someone will correct me if I'm wrong...

mrsdoyle1981

rosieben wrote: »

Here you go MrsD
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.html?t=697339

thank you so much, thats brilliant!! :dance:

cheerfulness4

It makes really interesting reading Mrsdoyle - love to see how others are making their pence go further.