April 2008 Grocery Challenge

Bargain_Rzl

Welcome to victory (and congratulations on the FANTASTIC weight loss!)

EmptyPurse - I totally understand wanting to shop with Ocado/Waitrose for quality reasons rather than a cheaper online supermarket, but there are certain things I can see which could be bought equivalently for cheaper elsewhere. Butter beans for example - you're spending 53p a time. If you must have tinned, Lidl ones are about half that price, but it sounds like you may not have a Lidl within reach so you could try using dried ones which work out a lot cheaper anyway.

For dishwasher tabs, these can be bought very cheaply when on special offer at various supermarkets (not Waitrose ) Edited to say: kitchen towels too - how many are in a £3.85 pack? You can often bulk-buy decent brands at somewhere like Netto really cheaply.

Some of the prices of your fruit and veg are making my eyes water (99p for one garlic :eek:) - is there nowhere else you could go for these? £1.39 for cherry tomatoes too - if you're anywhere near a market you should be able to get them for £1.

I know it's not easy without a car (I don't have one either, but in London it's different as there's a good choice of supermarkets).

Also it might just be my perception, but £15 at the butcher seems like quite a lot for the quantity of meat you've listed. Maybe ask if he does any special deals?

weezl74

EmptyPurse wrote: »

Any ideas about how I could cut down, bearing in mind that a)I'm not OS-enough to give up my Method cleaning stuff and b)I have to shop online because I don't have a car and the supermarket is very difficult to get to on public transport.

Hiya,

I think you'd save about £15 if you could have your groceries delivered by asda.

This is assuming a like-for-like swap, i.e get the 'extra special' range if you'd like, but waitrose does seem very pricy for certain things,:eek: although you didn't say how much you were getting of a particular thing. How much garlic do you get for £1?

Hope that's of use, and the very best of luck with your grocery challenge,:D

Weezl x

EmptyPurse

Bargain_Rzl wrote: »

Welcome to victory (and congratulations on the FANTASTIC weight loss!)


Some of the prices of your fruit and veg are making my eyes water (99p for one garlic :eek:) - is there nowhere else you could go for these? £1.39 for cherry tomatoes too - if you're anywhere near a market you should be able to get them for £1.

Thankfully it's not "one garlic" but "one pack of garlic" - i.e. three bulbs. Even I'm not quite daft enough to pay 99p for one garlic!!!!

The only markets anywhere near me are all terribly chi-chi farmers' markets: I adore them but would end up spending more rather than less money on fruit/veg Would love to go to Lidl but the nearest one is miles away.

Thought I was getting quite a good deal on the dishwasher tablets as I went for own-brand instead of Finish (I did try, honest Miss!). I thought that Ocado was supposed to price-match Tesco? Or have I got the wrong end of the stick?

clair2305

Hi All

just returning after the weekend of not ready any posts and preparing for my interview on Wednesday (aaaahhhh!!)

Jessie 18 and teedy23, I think it was me who originally posted about freezing mushrooms. Let me know how you get on with them. I'd really like to know if after freezing they're ok for fry-ups (and if I should defrost them before cooking them), I should imagine they's be okay for other meals like chilli, shep pie, etc but I'd be interested to hear this.

I also bought a mushroom growing kit in Woolies for £2.99 and once the weather warms up, will give it a go.

Froze loads of baby toms last week, so plan to only keep a few in the fridge for eating, salads, and then to use the frozen ones for recipes, etc

RICE - yes I've noticed it's gone up as well as pasta, not noticed the increase in tin toms yet though

Didn't spend anything over the weekend , but was greedy - cooked a whole swede, told OH what we don't eat I'll freeze, then dished it all up anyway....it was lovely

Off to Iceland later, need sausages, waffles, bread - just a few bits.

weezl74

victory wrote: »

It is just some things like the korma sauce I bought yesterday BOGOF was £1,29 and for that I could not buy all the ingredients needed, make it for that price.

Hiya victory,

Welcome to the challenge.:hello:

I agree that in the short-term you couldn't buy a korma sauce making kit for £1.29, but if you were prepared to take a hit of a few pounds extra now, you could yield 20 meals worth of korma for the same as one jar of sauce if you make it from scratch. :eek:You could freeze the sauce, without meat or veg in small containers, and then whip one out the day before you fancied a korma.:T

That should save quite a bit of money.

As for the question of what you should aim at, I think we're all so different here, in terms of how many peeps we're feeding, how much space we've got in our freezers, how hungry/fussy our DH's and kids are, how much time we've got to spend faffing in the kitchen.....:p That we can't really compare ourselves with each other, only with ourselves, if you see what I mean?

Maybe just try each month to do a little bit better than you did the month before?

All the best with your challenge, you'll love it here, great recipes and a very friendly forum!;)

Weezl x

Bargain_Rzl

You may still find you can get some good deals at your farmer's markets. In fact the reason I thought about cherry tomatoes specifically was that I remember seeing big bowls of them for £1 at Borough Market (mega expensive!) on Saturday.

I'm not sure about Ocado's price match policy I'm afraid

Actually one (slightly ironic) piece of advice I've just thought of is that when you are buying from Ocado, it might be worth buying more rather then less (non perishables, obviously) - there often seem to be deals available for money off, but they tend to be on a high spend (£10 off £90 spend, for example).

EmptyPurse

Bargain_Rzl wrote: »

You may still find you can get some good deals at your farmer's markets. In fact the reason I thought about cherry tomatoes specifically was that I remember seeing big bowls of them for £1 at Borough Market (mega expensive!) on Saturday.

I'm not sure about Ocado's price match policy I'm afraid

Actually one (slightly ironic) piece of advice I've just thought of is that when you are buying from Ocado, it might be worth buying more rather then less (non perishables, obviously) - there often seem to be deals available for money off, but they tend to be on a high spend (£10 off £90 spend, for example).

Will have to go down to Borough Market next month - if I can trust myself not to buy all their lovely, yummy but terribly expensive food!

Have just had a voucher from Ocado for a free bottle of wine (£6) next time I do a shop with them. And they send me personalised offers - e.g. the cheese I bought normally costs £3.77 but because I've bought it before I got £2 off this time. So I can't work out whether it would actually be cheaper overall to switch to another supplier or not. Honestly, I feel like I need a degree in mathematics to master this money-saving business!

chimp_choker

MRSMCAWBER wrote: »

Hi teedy23

You might know this..but just in case

You know when your tomatoes appear and are big enough to be planted out.... sink them into the compost so that the 1st true leaves are just above the soil... tomatoes grow extra roots from their stems...they take water in from the bottom roots and feed through the side roots ..so you should get sturdier, healthier plants.... making them less leggy and prone to snapping :T ...I had some that were about 4" tall in the bedroom... now they are potted up they are only about 1" :rotfl: god I need to get out more..how can someone get so excitable about growing veggies ..i will slink off now and carry on reading my gardening books

Well I didn't know that Mrs M!! Thanks. Mind you I got stung for £2.99 for 6 poxy organic tomato seeds the other weekend... well the bonny picture on the packet was nice!! 5 have since grown on.

Moment_of_Clarity

Thanks for the tortilla recipe carolt2. I can't wait to try it!!

faye1978

I have JUST done a list of my Storecupboard ingrediants and CAN'T believe HOW much is there. Honestly, If DH ate veg and 'Normal, healthy' food I wouldn't have to shop for about a MONTH. :eek: BUT he doesn't so I have to go to the shops to get some more meat and milk etc. :mad:

Anyway, does anyone know if meat is generally better value/cheaper/better at the butchers? We have one round the corner but I have always been wary of it as it sells quite a bit of what looks like pre packaged stuff- So I haven't been sure - meat has always been fine on the occasion we HAVE bought there however. Just never looked at the price