April 2008 Grocery Challenge

MrDT

First of all, happy birthday scotsaver :beer:

Right, I've decided to move the goalposts back to where they originally were for April - start 29/03 end 25/04. I'll be finishing off in three days, and I'm pretty sure I'll still be £2.53 overbudget, which aint to bad

May is gonna run from 26/04 through to 31/05, and from then on all challenges will run from the first calendar day to the last calendar day of the month. So, May's gonna be a 5 week and a bit month, but I'm sticking to £60 spends, and hope not to go bust this time! I should be able to do it, it's just me and I have a full chest freezer that needs emptying!

Had another 'mystery tub' of hm stuff for dinner this evening (am now labelling everything i freeze lol!) was very nice, thought it was gonna be chili, but was actually bolognese with kidney beans chucked in Added some pasta and an obscene amount of cheese to it nomnomnom Also made some nice tomatoey cheesy pasta for lunch next couple of days Right, I guess I'll see you all in the 'May' thread :cool:

Sosh

Happy Birthday Scotsaver!

I've just completed my first online shop with Mr T. Had to do something whilst DH is swearing at the tv! (He's a liverpool fan,)

It came to £112 inc del, but with £5 off. I don't feel too bad about this, as I would usually spend around £90 per week, and a lot of this is bulk buys for the month. I've also had to stock up on various flours / sugars to try all the lovely recipies I've collected .

While I'm on the subject of baking, does anyone know if it's alright to substitute light brown sugar instead of demerara sugar?

After reading all of today's posts, I've also changed from own brand pasta to value.

Bargain_Rzl

Err, so much for being frugal this month, and so much for doing it for the purpose of emptying the freezer. I have just BLOWN my little tiny budget for the month completely out of the water by spending a total of £22.48 at Asda and Aldi

That is mainly due to Mr Asda and his yellow stickers giving me the following unmissable opportunities:

Diced lamb, 297g, was 4.28 now 1.07
FIVE packs small lamb chops, were 12.23 in total, now 3.03 in total (I would have got a sixth pack, only there was another lady who wanted one and I had so many already... I'm not that mean)
One pack large lamb chops were 3.75 now 0.93
Six-pack of 6-grain seeded baps were 0.90 now 0.22, will go lovely with HM soup
One pack turkey breast steaks 427g were 3.28 now 0.82
One tray ready-to-roast vegetables were 1.98 now 0.58
One pack microwaveable saffron rice was 1.18 now 0.35
Extra Special Tarte Tatin was 3.48 now 0.87
Extra Special Belgian Chocolate Sponge Pudding was 2.48 now 0.62
Double Chocolate Chip Cookies was 0.98 now 0.20 (and somehow three of them, er, vanished on the way home - it was a long wait for the bus )
Can of Diet Coke, dented multipack can, 0.20, drank on way home, assume usual single can costs 0.47

That's about £35 worth of stuff, mainly for the freezer, for under £9 :j :j I think you'll agree that it would have been rude not to The trouble was, once I knew I'd totally blown it I decided to stock up on a few other things as well, which upped the spend further.

And do you want to hear the ironic part? I still have about another £3 I need to spend this week, because I had to come away without any milk or fizzy water (which were on the list of things I originally went out for) as I was worried the wally trolley would collapse :rotfl:

Off to [strike]ruin[/strike]update my signature!

angelnikki

Sosh wrote: »

While I'm on the subject of baking, does anyone know if it's alright to substitute light brown sugar instead of demerara sugar?

I sometimes substitute the two depending on what I've got in. It doesn't seem to make much difference IMO I also sometimes substitute caster sugar and normal sugar

Nikki
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faye1978

Hi Moneysavers

Well my month starts tomorrow and I went shopping at MrT's Today. Spent £88.01 but I have meal planned for the entire month and that should cover me apart from the meat which I will buy in Costcos tomorrow (should last about 6 weeks) and the fresh stuff I'll need every week like fruit and salad etc.

So MrsM can I do the challenge officially this month please and make it £160 :rolleyes: Although that's still a lot for 2 of us I think I'll do it slowly. Would like to get it down to £100 eventually.

Oh, and I bought DH beer today which wasn't accounted for so that is £10 on my Mr T bill I hadn't accounted for. :mad:

I think we are going on hol this month too so that'll be good for the food situation - I'm hoping to batch cook a fair bit (more than usual) from recipes on this site. You lot are an inspiration :A

JennyBee_2

I have a question (and I admit it's a random one!)

Whilst wandering down the tissue aisle in Asda the other day I came across the baby food and noticed one jar proclaiming "pasta spirals in tomato sauce". Is it just me, or does it seem a little irrelevant to anyone else to specify what shape the pasta was before some factory machine squished it into mush?!

Discuss!

PS - just had a text from a girl at work proclaiming that porridge in spag bol is in fact an amazing idea and actually improves it as well as making it more filling! I told her about it last week and she looked at me like I was crazy! We are slowly converting the world

chimp_choker

nessquic80 wrote: »

and yesterday bread rolls they werent so sucuessful ,a bit dense!

Add a bit more water to the bread mix. The more water makes the holes in the dogh larger. Alternativly try experimenting with half water / half milk or add a tablespoon of olive or sunflower oil.

Better still by laucke flour ........ best four you will ever use for bread.

JennyBee_2

Can you freeze butter/spread and natural yoghurt? (not together!)

angelnikki

JennyBee wrote: »

Can you freeze butter/spread and natural yoghurt? (not together!)

butter/spread Yes you can dont think you can freeze yoghurt though- it seperates when defrosted. (its fine frozen if you're making a frozen lolly or something like that though)

Nikki
x

Kaz2904

Hello all! Well despite me saying that I wasn't going shopping with my shiny new budget yet I was passing Aldi. Our Aldi is such an absolute pig to get into and out of that I hought I would go in there and then. I was also stuck in traffic and wanting to get home for tea.
Tea was supposed to be quiche but as I'd got stuck I bought a bag of frozen chips, some mini salami, vine tomatoes and a cucumber (among other things). They had no lettuce that I could see so got home and was still a little stumped as to what people were going to eat. Fished out some lamb kebabs from whoopsie hunt and DH did a salad (well sliced toms and cuc) and a handfull of chips.
It was actually very nice and solved the problem for us. We still have all the ingreedients for the quiche for me to make tomorrow and we have salady type ingredients too. Just might need lettuce.
I've still got no potatoes but can live without them for the time being!
I had to phone DH on Monday evening as he was on his way home because the BM didn't work and I ended up with a loaf of solid flour with a wet lump in the middle so he had to get bread and he ended up getting tuna too as it's £1 for 3 tins.
Will check how much we've spent and start a new part of my sig for May's GC.
Happy Birthday to Scotsaver- you're 10 years and 1 week older than I am!
Moo2moo? Sorry about the chook.


Note- eggs have gone up from 85p per 10 in Aldi (2weeks ago?) to 99p for 10.
It really is setting in. How can we keep within tiny budgets when everything goes up and up and up?
At least we are not as hard hit as we would have been before try to be OS.
Anyway- rambling cause I'm cream crackered! TTFN, Kaz.