August 2008 Grocery Challenge

carolt2 wrote: »

Frugalswan and Studentgirl

Welcome to the challenge:hello:

Anyone can join in.

The best way i find to to this is for the first month keep all your reciepts.
Add them up at the end of the month to see what your actually spending then as you say Studentgirl, just cut down your budget gradually.

Some people doing the challenge budget differently.

Some people prefer to do their budget by calendar month, some weekly and others weekly. This depends on paydays etc.

its up to you what you include in budgets, you could include everything grocery wise ie food, drink ,alcohol,pet food, cleaning materials etc. Or break things down into seperate budgets.

I do mine weakly:D

teedy23 wrote: »

I do mine weakly:D

Oh dear!
Was it you who had the trout?
A couple of ideas- because it's a fairly dark fish it goes very well with the dark green salad veggies. You could have some flaked with a load of raw spinach and croutons. Add a nice dressing and some heavy bread with real butter- yummy!
Another idea, warm pasta with a sauce (cream or tomato type would work equally as well) with courgettes, jullienne carrots, chopped tomato chucked in towards the end. If you do a cream type sauce sweetcorn would go well but may not be as good with the tomato type base.
You could do a lasagne with it too if you like the evil concoction that lasagne is!
Any left over spinach from the salad could be used in a fish pie too.

I've had the left over carbonarra for tea as the family are still out.
Not sure if they'll have any food left over as they've been out all day but even if they have eaten everything they took there's still food left in the fridge. Also DH has taken £11.71 worth of food. So even if they have used it all, £11.71 for an entire day eating and drinking out is not bad. They couldn't have got a meal for that amount for the three of them. Hmmm, he's getting there isn't he!
I need to get more kitty litter too soon.

Well the SC pork curry was a roaring success :j - its all gone, including the leftoversfor puss (saves using a can of food and was not enough to freeze anyway). Did my weekly shop (based on what else we need from meal plan, some fruit and fresh bits for DS and some flour, eggs etc) and spent £15.21 in Tesco and £4.83 in Lidl. Very happy with this
Might make a nice cake tomorrow for my birthday celebrations- got some silver balls for 9p in Tesco, some vanilla essence for 19p (the cheap stuff as I aready had decent stuff in) and also some muffin cases for 49p and cake cases for 25p. There seems to be gaps for lots of Supercook stuff lol, although today the shelves were quite empty! I resisted getting sugar strands as still have the 100's and 1000's I got last time- someone else can get the joy of cheap sugar strands .
Hoping the weekly budget option will work out for us but we will just see how it goes and either keep it this way or go back to monthly depending on the outcome! (Sorry angelnikki for us having to move lists!). How do I declare my final figure for weekly budget ? I was thinking to take my average weekly spend from the weeks that are in August and use this (although hoping not to go over any weeks!)- would this be ok ?
Just thinking in advance :rolleyes:
Ta ra for now, and welcome all newbies.
x

Hello all,
i'm not finishing my July challenge until 31st, so will declare in a day or so. But can you put me down for £200 again in August please.

Jackie x

mama67 wrote: »

I think the recipes list should be carried over each month with maybe the link being to the original source.(hope that makes sense)

We discussed the different ways that the index could be done but in the end decided it would be best to have all the recipes brought forward as it will save confusion in later months as to which month's GC the links to particular recipes are in IYSWIM. As otherwise when it gets to sept/oct/... people will have to look through several lists to find the recipe they were looking for.

OrkneyStar wrote: »

How do I declare my final figure for weekly budget ? I was thinking to take my average weekly spend from the weeks that are in August and use this (although hoping not to go over any weeks!)- would this be ok ?

I think MandyMoo has a weekly budget but when she declares she says her total for the month. But you can do it whichever way works for you.

Nikki x