January 2008 Grocery Challenge

miecherox

Today...
Made my own bread - hooray!! have bid on a dough hook for my retro (old) kenwood mixer and was going to wait to have a go until I got that but decided to do it by hand. Bread was fab!! turned some of it into garlic bread to go with spag bol tonight - yummy!
Also conquered my fear of asking for fresh yeast at asda today - got a good sized block (enough for about three loaves).
Had planned on not spending anything today but realised we had no Milton (baby steriliser) so spent £2.40.
Also spent £12.50 at dry cleaners as ds1 was sick on king size quilt.... - (does he not realise there's a budget???!!! lol!!!
Really enjoying being in control of our money but equally horrified at what I would have spent previously.
Good luck to all - off to update my sig

Blairweech

mumzyof2 wrote: »

spent 55p? May i ask what on? lol im so nosey :P nah only coz it seems a little amount hehe

Annoyingly, on a pint of milk from the shop (we were too late to get milk as the tanker had already ben :rolleyes:)

Had a GREAT day yesterday - popped into Mr T about 9ish last night and caught the RTC lady at work :j Spent £3.10 on....

- 4 x bacon quiche - 9p each
- 4 x quiche lorraine - 6p each
- 2 x veggie chilli - 7p each
- 1 x chix and veg meal - 16p
- 1 x chix tikka - 14p
- 5 packs organic king prawns - 11p each
- 4 packs sausages - 7p each
- 1 soda bread - 7p
- 2 packs hot cross buns - 89p each, BOGOF
- 1 pretzel - 10p
- Block of dolcelatte - 18p
- Skittles - 64p
- Strawberry sundae - 10p
- 6 cheesecakes - 2p each

But then I STILL forgot the milk, so had to pay another 57p for that :rolleyes: :doh:

I know a lot of that was stuff we didn't need, but at those prices you can't go wrong. The quiches will do for OHs lunch, and I have been taking my lunch to work for the past week.

So, total spend so far is .55 + 3.10 + .57 = £4.22

Mollymop5

Another day of nothing spent Pasta and sauce for tea with garlic bread.nice and cheap and a firm favourite in our house.

redmel1621

Well I'm annoyed at myself today....i managed to spend £16.50 in somerfield and the chemist (grrrr) I forgot I was on a challenge:rolleyes2

That means I have blown the budget for this week spending a total of £70.46, £10.46 over budget.

i'm going to do my Tesco shop now for monday so need to keep it at around the £50 mark. Wish me luck.

Mel x

NEgirl

only bought bread and milk today so updated my total with £2.41 spend

frankerooney

Sassamac wrote: »

do you have any info you could share on this? I have been vaguely browsing through the forums but not seen anything which tells me exactly what to do when. Im a total novice!

I've been dreaming about all the veg I want to grow this year but with a baby due at the end of March, I think it's just a pipe dream really..!

I would say putting black polythene down is the best thing you can do at this time of year. Kills any weeds and will warm the soil up a bit by spring. I only dig (or actually, get dh to dig!) a fraction of the veg patch. If you don't walk on the soil, most of it doesn't need digging unless you've got very heavy soil.

My plan for February is just to cut the autumn-fruiting raspberry canes down and start chitting potatoes. Otherwise I won't do anything until mid-March because I don't bother with a greenhouse or cold frames.

I think you can do worse than buying a few packets of seed of your favourite veggies and following the instructions on the packet. Getting a book out of the library is good advice if you want to get serious. But I would say don't grow too many different things to start with, and be realistic about for example how many spring onions you can really use. Veg growers traditionally plant in rows but for a small family, it makes more sense to plant in blocks of just 30-50 cm square at a time. Some things you can sow a few of every few weeks, like carrots, spring onions and lettuces so that you don't get a glut you can't use.

Sorry this is a bit off topic but I think growing your own is a very worthwhile contribution to the GC, your health and the environment.

If you do regularly grow more than you can use, I gather that you can offer the surplus for sale at Country Markets, held all over the country (used to be WI markets). I've heard good reports about them, and you only need a food hygiene certificate to supply them; you don't have to register your kitchen or get insurance or anything. In fact, you great bakers could sell your cakes and preserves etc and earn a few pennies! Just a thought...

galacticgreen

Still going OK here and everyone is getting involved. We did a supermarket shopping list tonight to do tomorrow. We did think about getting it delivered, but we've decided we'll try and go and stick to list, but if that doesn't work we'll do it online next time!!!
We order local veg and meat from local farmers consortium and we've decided we want to keep doing that as although we want to cut the cost, we think we can do that through better planning and eating what we buy, we'll soon find out........... Did the order for that tonight and it will get delivered on Thursday so I'll add the cost then as it does vary when it arrives.
Enjoying reading everyone's entries. It helps knowing there's lots of people trying to do the same.:beer:

Penelope_Penguin

Sassamac wrote: »

do you have any info you could share on this? I have been vaguely browsing through the forums but not seen anything which tells me exactly what to do when. Im a total novice!

Get yourself over to the Greenfingered Board. Lots of threads by and for novices. As a start, try lettuce, French beans, broad beans, peas, carrots from seeds, and potatoes, onions and shallots from sets.

HTH, Penny. x

JoJoB

Sassamac wrote: »

When are you due JoJo?
My DS was born in June and he wore little more than a vest for his first 3 months, DD was born in Sept and had drawer-fulls of newborn / 0-3 stuff. She still has twice as many clothes as him but thats girls for you.

Due in april Sassamac. I bought two little vests today for 25p each, then my friend brought round tons of baby stuff, so I don't actually need to buy very much at all now.

Yippee for hand-me-downs!

peony40

Hello All,

My first week is now complete and I had a total spend of £10.85 (£2.96 pin money savings, I haven't decided what to put PMS towards yet).

I have put the rest of the money left over from this week aside in a 'Rainy Day Fund' as I want to build up a little float to cover any expenditure I may have in the future such as washing powder. I remember reading earlier today, or was it last night, where someone had a good homemade washing powder recipe so I must hunt for it again!

Have a good evening everyone.