Grocery Challenge - February 2012

£3.45 in lidl on Friday on a cabbage and some blackforest ham - I thoroughly recommend that, btw. You only need a few slices of it to give a really strong, really delicious bacon flavour - amongst other things.

And £5.20 today on 3 x 1ltr crisp n dry and a bag of sweets for mini me in Tesco.

Dinner tonight was shredded crispy chicken (hence the oil, for frying) with fried rice.



Was quite chuffed as it was my first proper go at deep-frying.

I am really pleased that the chicken, choziro and butter bean stew has went down well and included in the recipe index (my first one) :j

I also have an update on my Tesco shopping incident last month were I had been over charged for some bottled water and the store refused to refund dtd. It was a really long, ranty post as I was still so angry about it. Anyway, I got a letter from the today with a full apology, confirmation that the dtd is their refund policy and a £20 gift card.

I am so glad I did send off the letter and thank's for letting me know who to write to.

Also an update - NSD today but spend yesterday £6 in Poundland and £6.15 in Mr M. Got smoked sausage, eggs, bananas, cooked meat and cheese.

Tonight's dinner was the last of my stew with sweet potato. My lunch for the next two days are being provided by work so only need to sort out dinners. I have a friend coming over for dinner tomorrow night then to shampoo my carpets - some Valentine's night :rotfl: (yes I am single!). Thinking of making salmon with pesto.

To those who've made Nigella's breakfast bars, I would like to make these but we don't like shredded coconut, could you suggest a substitute? Maybe just a bit more oats, or a different dried fruit? Also did you actually use cranberries? I've found they can be both sour and pricey!

Another Q: bought 2 cartons of YS extra thick double cream yesterday cos I needed single cream for a pie filling and thought I could 'let down' the superthick stuff with milk. It did kind of work but was lumpy and hard to mix, and I thought if I whisked it too much it would end up as whipped cream. Any ideas for using the rest of it? Apart from with pud!

A glimmer of good news, have now got 'new' freezer up and running so now have space to store lots more whoopsied stuff when I can find it, and batch cook more.:j On the downside, just decided not to go away for our planned (and paid for) nights this week due to a blend of teen apathy, alleged exam work (which is not evident at the moment...) and grim weather.:( On balance not great but at least it gives me time to work on generating some income. It's all well and good trying to work to a budget but when your income doesn't even meet your bills, it can feel a bit pointless and certainly DH sees it that way

Barbeduk wrote: »

I know I'm a 'reassurance' shopper. I used to live in the middle of nowhere so it made sense to have full cupboards but now I live within 5 mins walk of Horrorsons it's just silly. But it's so hard to break the habit!

Same here. Just done an audit of the freezer. Half way through the week We still have at least 45 portions of meat and fish in there :eek: We shop every saturday. Why am i storing food for the SM? And i'm still thinking omg i haven't got any mince in there. still work to be done :rotfl:

Thanks everyone for the advice.
Although i have blown this months food budget, i am going to try not to spend much more before March. I know i will have to get bread/milk/eggs etc, but i shoudnt really need anything to make a proper meal.

I am going to have a look through the first couple of posts on this thread and pick up as much advice as possible and also have a think about why i feel the need to spend.

Thanks again.