April 2018 Grocery Challenge

Spends so far:
bottle of specialty vodka - 19.99
keg of beer - 15.00

I've spent an enjoyable hour in the greenhouse preparing seed trays of:
sweetcorn, dill, oregano, pepper, aubergine, kale, alpine strawberries, spinach, lettuce and salad leaves.

Easter Dinner at my dad's today, so no spends.
Cat.x

We've had a fiddle around with our budget and realised we were accounting for toiletries twice, so our £69 per week target is now just for food, household and cleaning products. That's only a change of £3.50 per week but it is strange how much difference it makes.
I don't have our figures to hand but we do seem to be on target, thankfully.

Just done an online shop to come tuesday evening, should come to £44.40 as I had an £18 off £60 new customer voucher. I've asked for no substitutions though so could be less. Will update once it's here.

JingsMyBucket wrote: »

First spend of the month is €5.65 for toilet paper by OH.

I’m going to add €15.40 to this total because when OH went shopping today, I thought he was buying mainly for the dinner guests we had tonight. (I tend to cover these costs and thought I’d let him shoulder it this time.) Looks like he overbought and we now have a lot of vegetables to use up this week. This is in addition to the market shopping I did on Saturday.

Totals so far:
€21.05 / €400.00
0 / 10 NSD

Anybody have some hen of the woods mushroom recipes?

Totally blew April out of the water yesterday :eek:

Went to a Food Festival (first in well over 12 months) and stocked up on lots of yumminess.

I spent
£9 on 2 packs of boneless rabbit (bought for a specific event, and going into freezer to be used next month)
£10 on two packs of sausages and a pack of Pheasant burgers (4 of each sausage flavour and 2 burgers, making for 6 meals).
£10 on five packs of sausages (6 individual items in each pack, making for a total of 15 meals)
£15 on specially blended loose leaf tea (100g each of almond flavoured Christmas green tea blend, mojito flavoured green tea blend, and herbal pina colada blend)
£10 on 7 jars of sauce base (add cream to use). Should have been 6 jars, but the owner recognised us from previous festivals (where we've always stocked up and encouraged others standing looking to try the tasters resulting in most of them making a first purchase) and threw in an extra for free
£20 on 6 cheese truckles (200g each) - will last me for months, and some will be halved or quarted and put into the freezer.
£15 on 3 380g sponge puddings. I treat myself once or twice a year when we see them at shows as I've never found any as light or tasty as these anywhere else. They do a mail order service, but fortunately the delivery cost is enough to stop me even considering using it They weren't actually listed as an exhibitor for yesterday, so this was a spend I wasn't expecting to make.
£4 on a couple of packs of shortbread. Another seller we regularly buy from at these events as the shortbread has a lovely taste (we always get with extra flavours - I got a pack each of lemon & white chocolate and ginger) and a wonderful texture. Another who wasn't on the list of exhibitors.
£2 on a couple of teacakes to have with a coffee when we got home (like the mallow filled biscuit based chocolate covered ones, but these were wafer based and the filling was like the stuff in a walnut whip)

So that's £95 spent in one day !!!!!

Monthly budget was supposed to be £80, then I was going to add on an extra £20 to allow for the long weekend in London (when I run the Marathon) as we're self catering and I'll be on a very strict diet so as not to upset my digestive system. No way I'm going to last the month on £5 even if prepare as many meals from my food mountain as I can, so I'm going to spend the rest of (at least) today figuring out how to build Festival spends into my budget - especially as we currently have plans to go to another 5 this year

Tried to make a loaf in a breadmaker last night (first time in I dread to think how long, and even longer for this machine as I have a newer one with additional functions I couldn't actually find), but it didn't rise properly and came out of the machine in pieces after a long struggle I was aware the yeast was a couple of months past expiry, but it was all I had in and I didn't have any bread for breakfast this morning so had to give it a try. It was also the first time I've used the start delay option on it, so not sure if that was part of the cause. Heading out in a few minutes to get some much needed milk, so I'm going to pick up some new dried yeast while there and have another go in a couple of days. In the meantime breakfast is chunks of bread with spread (need to get more of that as don't have enough for the month) and marmalade (going to have to make up the tin of Marm@de I have in this afternoon, otherwise I'm going to have to spend on marmalade several times this month) instead of toast. Also need to check my cupboards to see just how much of the bread flour / how many of the mixes in there are likely to actually produce anything decent (the bags of spelt flour and rye flour I used last night which still have enough for a couple more large loaves were just within date and are probably the last I bought, so I suspect the rest may be destined for the bin - something that comes of having a spate of using the machine and then not touching it for months at a time). Also need to pull something out of the freezer for tea tonight, and try and work out what else from there I'm using the rest of this week to minimise spending.