April 2008 Grocery Challenge

TheBees

Evening all
Just updated signature to show a few small spends (eggs, icing sugar, bread and milk). We definitely eat less while we are all on 2 weeks school holiday so we still have £166 to last to the 30th and think we might make it under budget this time:j .

Got plenty of stuff in the freezer for meals with a menu plan on the wall but getting a bit bored of cheese or ham sandwiches at lunch time! :rotfl: Trying to put off another food shop until the end of the week if possible but might need some veg tomorrow for tea.

Mrs Mc - You mentioned in a previous post that you are making a lamb pie with your roast leftovers. What do you add to it to make the filling moist? When I do a chicken pie I use a tin of condensed soup but am not sure what to do for other meats. The only stock I have is in the form of stock cubes!

Very jealous of you all planting up your vegetables. We only have room on a small patio (which doesn't get much sun) and the rest of the garden which does get the sun is taken up with a trampoline:mad: , shed, washing whirly thing and grass that we don't want to dig up. Will grow some tomatoes in grow bags and already have some strawberry plants in a nice container. Any other ideas? I bought some geranium plug plants which I have potted on and they are now in the spare room window catching the rays until its safe to put them outside. £2.99 for 15 plants should save me a lot of money if they all survive but unfortunately they will only look nice and not be eaten!

Off to bed now
TheBees

TheBees

Hi Mooloo

I think Clowe's just starting her final week and as her child benefit comes through on Monday 21st that will be the start of May for her.

Cheers
TheBees

Bargain_Rzl

Yep, I understand Clowe's month timings. I'd be on exactly the same month if I ran my month starting from payday (my payday got moved forward a few months ago and I now get paid on the 21st). However, I (almost) always start my budgetary month from the first Monday of the calendar month, for reasons too boring and complicated to go into (as are the reasons why I started on March 31st this month )

TheBees - how did you get on with the Excel tip I gave you?

teedy23

searching_me wrote: »

ello everyone... just update my sig after a few days... after buying a few bits and bobs im left with £45 til the 26th... do'erable me thinks (well me hopes) ... currently feeling like poo... got the flu and extremely sore throat that just wont budge... any ideas how to get rid of it?... ive bought loads of cold and flu stuff and it just just aint working... any os tips people use... my step dad use to swear by a hot whisky (but i think he use to just like getting drunk lol) thanks xx

I would go for the whisky, hot or cold! If you drink enough of it you wont care if you,ve got the flu lol. It is a good idea to have it hot though with a bit of honey in, it makes you feel a bit more cosy and melty and the honey will help your throat.;)
Didnt spend anything today!

candygirl

Searchingme, I always gargle with soluble aspirin in warm water to soothe sore throats, hope this helps x
I had a NSD today, yipeeee:j :j

Kaz2904

Whoever posted the recipe for the quiche made with cottage cheese thanks!
Did it with a thin pastry base, shredded cabbage, ham and spinach. It was delish- so much so in fact that we have eaten 3 meals worth in one evening!
Never mind heh.
I've also made lemon sorbet today but won't know how it's come out as the freezer had been fiddled with so I didn't turn it to freeze setting until 9pm.
Hope it's going to work. I kept the egg yolks back for DH to use tomorrow to make Jamies carbonnarra.
Really struggled to get the sorbet into the freezer despite having used lots of stuff from it. I think I can probably get a couple of cakes in there if I do some tomorrow and may make another quiche with the leftover ingredients so I can freeze it for DD's lunch boxes.
Got out a packet of rolls for lunch tomorrow and also got out some bagels for a lovely breakfast.
One day I might actually get round to following Mrs Mc's bagels but need to shift the hormonal 1/2 stone.
Anyone else find they put on that much when they're due on? I only noticed because it was making my hips, knees and ankles hurt each month cause I was too heavy for what I'm used to. So I started to keep track each month.
(SOOOOOOO off topic I know- sorry!)

MRSMCAWBER

Morning all

The weather looks decent this morning...so will be tootling round the golf course with hubby when he gets home about 10am..which of course means a nosey in the NAFFI I really shouldn't as there is nothing i need.. but you never know what bargains there might be to be had .

Just watched the sky news...and they were talking about the price of food having its biggest increase in 17 years :eek: ... someone was saying that it would mean an average of £600 a year increase on the average families food bill ....which is shocking... over £10 a week actually sounds worse to me somehow..
They are saying that countries giving up fields for growing bio fuels instead of crops are part of the problem and poorer countries getting wealthier and therefore having more money to spend on food and so causing food shortages are 2 of the reasons behind the increases :rolleyes:
although Tesco have just announced a profit of 2.8 billion :eek: alright for some eh!!!..don't know the reasons but i do know that its shocking.. everytime i talk to my mum -we end up talking about this site and shopping etc and always seems to have some item that has shocked her whilst shopping .. mind at the age of 69 my mum now has had huge raised beds put in her garden, has a new shed and 2 greenhouses and is growing soooo many veggies :T
Ok enough rambling :rotfl:

Savingfortravel..im affraid that i can't help with you german find :rotfl: im sure egon will know what to do with it

The bees..im not much of a fan of gravies etc..so what i do is sweat of leeks, in a bit of oil n butter, add some carrots and potato chunks and cook for a few minutes then add some flour and a crumbled lamb stock cube and cook whilst stirring until all the flour has disappeared, then i pour in enough water to come about half way up the veggies and put a lit on and cook -just keep an eye on it and add more liquid if you need it.... i then make my pie by breaking up the leftover lamb and putting so much veg in and then sharing the lamb out and then more veg (find it easier to makes sure the meat is evenly shared that way )and sticking a pastry lid on -you don't end up with loads of "gravy" as such, but everything is coated in a lovely lamb flavour and doesn't dry out... hope that makes sense.. oh and some times right at the end i stir a bit of mint sauce into the veggies

Searching me... i use dried sage dropped in boiling water, leave to cool slightly - strain and use to gargle... it numbs your throat ... might seem a bit odd -but it has to taste better than the medical stuff

right i had better get off and get ready for hubby getting home...no doubt he wil be wanting to go almost straight back out again after a shower...

hope everyone has a great day

ifonlyitwaseasier

morning all,

definitely tryig for nsd today, Oh has his sandwiches and i have my lunch (and some more hob nobs ) so lets see if we can manage.

have mince and jackets for tea, might try bulking with oats and lentils, and maybe some grated carrot......

egon

TheBees wrote: »

Very jealous of you all planting up your vegetables. We only have room on a small patio (which doesn't get much sun) and the rest of the garden which does get the sun is taken up with a trampoline:mad: , shed, washing whirly thing and grass that we don't want to dig up. Will grow some tomatoes in grow bags and already have some strawberry plants in a nice container. Any other ideas? I bought some geranium plug plants which I have potted on and they are now in the spare room window catching the rays until its safe to put them outside. £2.99 for 15 plants should save me a lot of money if they all survive but unfortunately they will only look nice and not be eaten!

Off to bed now
TheBees

We only have a small garden. Not even enough space for a trampoline for the kids. BUT we are growing our veg in pots. We have potatoes in standing up grow bags (Jamie Oliver tip), tomatoes, broccoli, beetroot, carrots courgettes, garlic, raspberry and strawberries. This is our trial year, but it seem to be going ok so far.

Egon

Janeryan

Hi all

I lost track of March GC somewhere over Easter and this month hasn't been much better as we were on hols for the first week and then last week had very upsetting week(bad news at work and a fall where I tried to take on the pavement with my face-unfortunately the pavement won!) so had to medicate myself with wine and chocolate.

Any way added up the damage so far for April last night and have spent £94.88 since 27 March. As April will only be a 3 week month for me as we were out of the country for the first week that means I have £55.12 left t spend until next Friday(25/04) to stay on budget of £150.00.

Freezer seems to be full of random things(mainly Indian take away leftovers which are mostly sauces) and not much in the way of actual dinners-need to get back to meal planning asap!!!

Off to update my sig now-good luck to all!