Cheery's buttling diary: tea in one hand, plant pot in the other, running shoes on

rtandon27 wrote: »

:DWhat ^^she^^ said!:D



Cheery, does that make it a NSD?!?

er, no, because i sneaked into the co-op at lunchtime and spent a fiver :rotfl:

i never was any good at NSDs... :rotfl:

DedicatedDFW wrote: »

Hi Cheery

i wanted to ask about your food budget - is it £30 a week for the 2 of you? do you find you use some personal spends for food as well or is the £30 sufficient for everything?

Do you want the truth? Er, I actually don't really know :rotfl:

For the past few months Mr Cheery has been in charge of the food budget We have rather different attitudes to supermarkets, he loves being in them (or at least don't mind) whereas my inclination when faced with one is to run in the opposite direction . Some of our most fearsome rows have been in supermarket car parks... :rotfl:

He's also rather more thrifty than me and has slightly more time on his hands at the minute, so all food shopping has been well and truly delegated to him :T

I have been handing over £50 a month, and he's been trying to keep it under £100. I don't keep track of what he spends, but he doesn't come back asking for more (which he would if it was going over). He does a big shop a couple of times a month and goes round a few different supermarkets, and knows the prices of all the stuff in each of them :money:

We don't buy a lot of pre-prepared stuff. Breakfast is usually porridge-based, lunch and tea mostly rice, pasta, noodles based, lots of veg (usually whatever's reduced or cheapest, and we've been eating a LOT of frozen spinach in everything lately!) Cheapo yogurts for snacks etc, lots of basics passata for sauces, chick peas etc from the 'ethnic foods' aisle, and giant bags of lentils from either there or the international food shop on the other side of town (we do an occasional stock up of spices). We also eat a LOT of potatoes

We've been investigating the local food co-op - they do bulk flour/porridge/lentils etc which look like they might be cheaper than smaller bags, even though they're wholefood/organicy type things :j

What else? We've just bought a slow cooker, which I am LOVING for meaning we don't have to cook right before we eat :j:j

Food budget also covers milk etc purchases throughout the week - I try to let him make those because I'm a right one for walking in for milk and walking out with a bag full of stuff

Sometimes yogurt and fruit supplies aren't replenished quite as quickly as I'd like, and I end up buying something at the station on the way to work :eek: but that's not too often, perhaps a couple of times a month. More likely is that I'll pop to the co-op on the way home and grab a bag of bananas or something - probably more expensive than supermarket but not as much as station!

So that's why we've upped the food budget to £130 - to try to cover some of that incidental stuff.

To be honest I *hate* keeping track of every little penny, and Mr Cheery certainly won't, so I suspect we'll never know if it works exactly... but it's about right

Sorry, that's probably a load of waffle and not much help at all!! :rotfl::rotfl:what do you do??

You know what I love most about my slow cooker??

Coming down from working in the attic to a lovely casseroley smell wafting up the stairs - especially when I'd entirely forgotten I'd put stuff in it earlier :rotfl: :rotfl: What a lovely surprise!

I've named it Jeeves - cooks tea for me when I'm busy doing something else

Potatoes not quite done yet mind you - but that's no bad thing as if they were I'd be tempted to stop working and I haven't quite finished yet!