April 2008 Grocery Challenge

natzini

Morning all!
Been up since about 7ish-have already wrapped presents for OH as it's his birthday today, and cleaned the hamster out, as well as doing comps and some clicks. Just about to go through food order-going to paste it into a Word document and then start meal planning for the next few weeks. Prospective order has come in more expensive than I thought, but we have loads in the freezer already, so hopefully the 2nd half of the month will be cheaper. Will prob make some muffins today-banana honey oat ones and some apple and cinnamon.

fedupnow

Many, many congrats to everybody who did so well in April and lots of look to EVERYBODY for May.

Mmmmmm I'm sailing very close to the wind here with my April.:o

It's not over yet I just HAVE to get dog food today. I also have to last till Wednesday if I'm going to play fair. I have £15.33 left...........dog food is around the £9 to £10 mark. I could buy a smaller pack but that would be defeating the long term purpose.

I am a little gutted actually. This is my first challenge and although I will come in almost bang on target I was secretly hoping to be under and whoopying a little. I have relooked at our budget and if we are going to achieve what we hope to achieve then we need to cut back drastically.

I have worked out that I will have £5.91 a day to live off. So, £183.21 for food for May eeeeeekkkk. Almost half of what I have managed with in April. THAT's a challenge.

My boy and I don't eat meat but I have been buying my dh one piece of meat a month (I know, I know I'm just tooooo generous;) ) - the last bit, a steak cost £4.62:eek: :eek: That's almost a day's worth of money!!!! But how on earth can I reasonably say one treat a month is just one too many ....... sorry.

So anyhow, £183.21 for May for me.

I'm scared now.

Girl_least_likely_to

Morning All :wave:

Just had 2 NSD's but am running very low on milk due to me not doing a big shop on Friday as i usually do. So I'll bob in to Aldi in a bit, need to pick up some of their 49p courgettes to grate into a batch of spag bol before the offer ends. Does anyone know when the new Super 6 starts at Aldi?

Hope everyone is having a nice weekend

dawnylou

I failed..... so far my spend was over £170 but I am going shopping on Tues as we have friends up for a few days and I want to make sure we have fod in....

MRSMCAWBER

Afternoon all

A NSD for me today -2 in a row now :rotfl: ...Have been sat tweaking my meal plan for May -again..but looking at the weather and how it seems to have turned to summer :j ..I think i am going to have to start again :rolleyes: ... really don't see us eating many of the meals i was thinking of ... I think full scale summer menues are about to start which for us generally means salads of some sort every day.... luckily we are both salad monsters.... It does mean that my spends will have to go up... we get through loads of salad stuff ...mind its only until all my stuff is ready to be picked :T have put the broad beans out there today and loads of the stuff is appearing in the tubs :j god im easily excited :rotfl:

I was planning on using a lot of what was in the freezer and luckily it is mainly raw ingredients so im sure i will come up with some ways of using everything...
oohhh im all excited -i love summer meals..mind i love all meals ....

It was supposed to be lamb for lunch today..but it is glorious- so the lamb has been sliced and bagged into the freezer (will use it to do hot lamb tortillas for a couple of meals with salad ) and i have just concoted a potato salad mmmm

Steamed potato chunks, sliced onion, ribbons of carrot, frozen peas just defrosted, chunks of courgettes and there were 4 bacon medallion rashers in the fridge so cut that into pieces and dry fried that and briefly tossed the courgette in there... then added seasoning, greek yogurt and mayonaise tossed it all up and shoved it in the fridge for when hubby gets home ..then i will add tomato and a bit of crumbled lancashire nomnomnom

right i had better get off and do that meal plan again...I WILL have it sorted by the time May is here :rotfl:

hope everyone is having a good weekend

weezl74

not sure I get why this is here????

empir69 wrote: »

http://www.the-peaceful-riot.com/missions/liens/link.php?m=1&l=1&u=108&k=18mmX918Q8UhjiOufKUyNWAV4XqRl0

ifonlyitwaseasier

hello all,

been swimming this morning but as we have all our foods all i took was enough to get in and nothing else!

will be looking forward to next month, have a small meal plan started but as we're away for 4 days i'll leave it flexible.

:-)

superspam

Natzini - oh please please please post your muffin recipes!

Sunnyday

weezl74 wrote: »

not sure I get why this is here????

Nope neither do i !

Well back to the GC, i sit here looking through my reciepts wondering how i failed so badly and i have the answer now, i bulk bought white flour, wholemeal flour, teabags and shampoo/conditioner this month and as it was at the end of the month when all the offers were on thats one reason.
The second reason is that i included Birthday cards x 4, 2 lipsticks and some flowers (for Auntie in hospital) and other bits and bobs in the GC spends when i really shouldn`t have. No point in taking tham off now i`ll just have to remember not to do it again.
I`ll declare at £54.52 over this month and will put May`s GC down for £160, this will include a big sack of dog food and also another sack of a different type that i only have to buy every 3 months or so. Looking at the dog food spends over 4 weeks i usually spend around £25 - £30 per month on tins for the 2 dogs and the cat including mixers and other bits and then the dried stuff on top so i suppose that we don`t spend too much on ourselves each month, probably around £120 for us humans, finding out that one of the dogs needs a lot more meat every day or something else that includes a lot of protein is having an effect on the budget as we never used to spend this much and i still make the odd slowcooker full for the houndies but have to include much more meat than i used to.
If i`m struggling in May then i intend to take the dogfood out of the budget alltogether and set up a seperate one for them, this will include an allowance for vets bills etc but thats just an idea for now and i`ll see how we go in May as it`s far easier to lump everything together.
I`ve just done a freezer inventory and was a bit stunned by how much food is in there as i do hoard it but i`ll try to empty a shelf this month, one plan is to use the several cartons of meatballs that i found to make some of MrsM`s tortillas for work for both of us, that should help in more ways than one
My meal plan for this week goes something like this

Sun Only me today so something from cupboard
Mon Beef, mash, carrots cauli, broccolli & gravy
Tue Spicy meatballs & noodles
Wed Sausage, mash, peas & gravy
Thur Tuna chunks, salad & cottage cheese
Fri Boiled eggs, salad & cottage cheese
Sat Salami & onion pasta & tomato pesto

It`s great to see so may people coming under this month, well done!
For those who didn`t i`ll bet that you`ve spent far far less than you would have normally so don`t worry about it, the slate will be wiped clean soon and Mays challenge will be starting. May started for me yesterday so i need to update my sig now.
SD

candygirl

Think i'm gonna make the challenge-just- this month, but Mrs M please put me down for £120 for May, as I was on hols for a week and have only just managed to come in under £100 this month:eek: :eek: :eek: