Week 4 - Grocery Shopping & Meals

I thought I would give you an update on how things are going with reducing my grocery shopping bill and the meals we have been eating. I have found that with some planning I can organise our meals for the week and that this reduces waste. I also realised that I needed to make use of the food I have in my pantry, fridge and freezer rather than going shopping every week for a large supermarket shop.

I went shopping at Sainsburys on Saturday morning because I have just over £88 on my nectar card. I was able to use £67.50 of it on my shop so as I had spent £68.22 my bill came to 72p. This was a fairly large shop and I confess that £33 of this was spent on wine as we had no wine left in the house at all. Not a good situation to find yourself in on any Friday or Saturday evening.

At the weekend I planned our meals for the week and cooked a number of meals to be put in the fridge and freezer. This way I know what is waiting for us that evening and am not tempted to call in at the shops on the way home for a ready meal - no matter how cheap it may be on the reduced counter. It is all about doing some shopping at home and using up what you already have. This clears some space in my cupboards, stops food going out of date and saves on my grocery bill for now.

I made two lasagnes and a fish pie at the weekend. One lasagne and the fish pie have gone into the freezer and one into the fridge. To make them I used two lots of minced beef from my freezer and ready-made Dolmio sauces from my pantry. I also used some packs of soffrritto which I bought reduced from £1 to 15p in Tescos. Soffrritto is a mix of finely chopped onions, carrots and celery and is a great addition to many dishes such as casseroles, soups etc. I also used a tin of tomatoes and dried herbs from the pantry.

The fish pie is a considerable size and will feed four so this will do for two midweek meals for us. I bought fresh fish which was half price at the fish counter in Waitrose. It is a ready prepared fresh fish pie selection in that it is a mixture of three fish cut into cubes. The fish is salmon, cod and smoked haddock. I used two parsley sauce mixes from my pantry, frozen peas already in my freezer, fresh parsley which I have growing on my kitchen window sill and potatoes from my pantry. 

26th January

I have plenty of jam and spreads in my pantry which I have either bought, had given to me in Christmas gift sets or my mum has made from the fruit grown in her garden in France. Rather than have cereal for breakfast we have been having toast and jam. Bread has been fairly cheap the last couple of weeks. It has either been on offer or I have managed to find it reduced. I bought a large bloomer for 22p from Waitrose on Sunday so this has been used for toast. I had bought two lots of  sandwiches for David which cost 89p each for his lunch. I worked from home so made myself an omelet for lunch with eggs from the fridge. We had fresh trout for our evening meal. I had bought these half price on Sunday and they were best before today. They cost £1 each. I used peas from the freezer and ready made mash that had cost £2. I usually make my own mashed potato but at half price for a large tub I could not resist.

27th January

It was toast and jam again for breakfast and lunch was home-made sandwiches. I used bread which had been bought reduced from Waitrose and ham from the freezer. The ham had also been reduced from Marks & Spencer and cost 90p instead of £3. It is what I call fancy ham rather than the large packs of square shaped slices that many shops sell. These tend to be pumped full of water whereas I would much rather have the fancy ham which is a real slice rather chopped and shaped pieces made into a square shape. We have plenty of sweet food bought for us or by us for Christmas. I have been taking a couple of foil covered biscuits from biscuit selection boxes or two foil covered chocolates with me to work or a mince pie to have after my sandwiches or mid morning with coffee. It was Burns night on 25th January and we usually have haggis, mashed potatoes and crushed carrot and swede. However I had a BOGOF voucher for Pizza Express which needed using so we went out for our evening meal to their restaurant in Hale. We love it there as the staff are so pleasant and the food is consistently good. We ended up having our Burns night meal on this evening instead.

28th January

Toast and jam again for breakfast and a reduced pot of soup from M&S for me for lunch. They are normally £2.50 but I paid 60p. I bought two packs of pink lady apples from Waitrose a week ago because they were half price at £1.50 for 5 instead of £3. I took one with me to work as well as the soup. Our evening meal was home made lasagne which I made at the weekend and some garlic bread which had been reduced in Marks & Spencer to 60p. This came from one of my freezers and was delicious as it was shaped into small garlic bread rolls instead of a large loaf. Very dainty.

29th January

I had porridge for breakfast as I had toothache when I woke up and needed something soft to eat and toast would not do. I worked from home today so lunch was cheese and biscuits. We were bought two cheese gift sets at Christmas and they both had different cheeses, chutney and wine in them. The cheeses now need eating as they are getting near their use by date and I find that once I open a box of crackers,  no matter how hard I seal them to make them airtight they still quickly go soft so I try to eat them once opened in a short period of time. David took a microwave burger because they were on offer at £1 each in Tesco so I had bought two for him. Our evening meal was left-overs of lasagne and haggis.

30th January

David attended a conference at work and lunch was provided for him. He said it was the usual buffet food of sandwiches, quiche, sausage rolls and chicken legs etc. I had to take something quick as it had snowed yesterday during the day and then again at night. I needed to leave for work early to avoid the chaos on the roads when it snows so I grabbed a packet of 6 slices of deli ham from the fridge, two biscuits and a packet of low fat crisps for lunch. Slightly odd but I enjoyed it. We had hot dog sausages on buns for our evening meal and drank a lovely bottle of cava.

I have slipped a little on adding up the cost of everything we ate this week but know that the meal out blew any budget we had but I still think taking this out of the equation that I have stayed in budget.

As far as the jam is concerned I always keep my jam jars and use them for desserts so this is a further saving.

Last of the January Sales

I am sure that I am like most of you and have plenty of clothes but sometimes it can be wise to spend a little when the end of the January sales are on and where you can save a lot. Marks & Spencer has had a fairly good sale and from my previous posts you will know that I am a lover of their plus size range. They have had a number of items half price or even buy one and get one half price on their sale items.

I decided that I would buy a more formal style coat to wear to work and I was getting fed up with plain black so was delighted to find this patterned coat reduced in the sale. It is a formal double breasted style but the material and pattern make it a little more modern and great to wear over a suit for work or over jeans at the weekend. This should have cost £99 but I paid a little over half this amount.

I also bought a jacket style cardigan which looks great with black trousers and top and I found an unworn necklace in my cupboard that matches perfectly. I wore this outfit to work last week and got some compliments. My final clothing purchase was this lovely loose top which will be great for an evening outfit throughout the year. I got these reduced and buy one get one half price. The two items together cost just under £30 but should have cost more than double this amount.

I called in at one of the large Tesco stores which is on my way home from work on Thursday to buy just a few groceries such as bread and milk. I am managing to keep to my reduced grocery budget - only just - and have been using many items from my pantry and freezers. Anyway, more on this in a later post. When I was in Tescos I saw large boxes of 6 luxury crackers at £1 which is a bargain so I bought 4 boxes. They are silver which matches my Christmas table as I always go for silver and white. They had other boxes of luxury crackers at 50p but they were much smaller and very bright colours - shocking pinks, reds and gold stripes. They looked lovely but just not right for my table so I passed on these and just kept to the silver crackers.

I also found two boxes of cute felt Christmas Tree decorations which were not priced at all so I thought I would ask the price when I got to the till - 10p!! What a bargain. I think these are so cute with the red ribbon and heart button detailing on the front. These will be given pride of place on my Christmas Tree later this year.  I also found seven boxes of craft projects to make your own felt fairy for hanging on your tree or anywhere else you fancy. These were priced at 10p each so I scooped them all up and now have some crafting to keep me busy in the evenings. I am going to make these now rather than wait until near Christmas as I know I will not have the time to make them as I will be busy getting everything else ready for Christmas.

I am sure that you will have also found some last of the January sales bargains. Let me know what you have found.

Week 1 - Grocery Shopping & Meals

Week 1 - Grocery Shopping & Meals

I thought I would give you an idea on the meals we ate and how I am doing on the grocery shopping budget for this month by giving you a run down of our first week. I won't do this every week as I think it will make boring reading.

I think I will have to not take meals out into consideration in the grocery budget as it would mean just blowing the whole budget. We don't eat out that often but  a couple of meals out a month could mean that the whole budget will be gone. I will tot up the amount spent on dining out at the end of each month to see if this is cheating!!

January 1st - zero spend

We decided to go to Shopping at The Lowry to see if we could find a few bargains in the sales.  I had already been with my sister the week before but David had not been to the sales so wanted to go. We got there early and as a treat  had breakfast at The Harvester. It was a huge meal, very tasty, good value and very filling. I ate nothing for the rest of the day apart from a couple of Christmas present chocolates in the evening. Our spend on food today was £14.48 plus we left a tip on top of this. 

January 2nd - zero spend

I made David sandwiches for work out of left-overs from the fridge and bread already in the bread bin. David does not eat breakfast and I had porridge from my pantry. I had hot chocolate with mini marshmallows from my Christmas leftovers in the fridge mid morning and mid afternoon I had parsnip & apple soup from the freezer followed by a cranberry and white chocolate cookie. The cookies had been bought at 75p for 5 reduced from £2.50 from Waitrose on New Year's Eve.

We had a left over Chinese take away for our evening meal. We ordered a set meal for two on New Year's Eve and found we were full after eating the mixed starters and soup. We put the main course in the fridge to eat the next day but were still full after eating the breakfast out so saved it to eat today.

January 3rd - zero spend

I had croissants for breakfast from the freezer. They had been reduced from £2 to 45p for four. I had some strawberry jam with them. The jam had come from a set of two pots in a lovely candle holder for 50p from a car boot sale last year. The best before date is October 2015 so I had no problem with buying them, plus I love the cute little jars they came in.

I found two lovely duck breasts in the freezer and decided to have these with some sprouting broccoli, green beans and mashed potatoes for our evening meal. I made a mash from Maris piper potatoes which are my favourite versatile spud and instead of butter to bind it I used some sour cream and chive dip that was left over from Christmas. Dessert was an apricot and almond tart heated through with champagne cream from the fridge left over from Christmas.

January 4th - zero spend

Breakfast was porridge from the pantry followed by a brunch of sausages and bacon from the freezer, eggs from the fridge and bread from the bread bin.

I had started with a nasty cold on New Years Day so wasn't that hungry so I had just porridge from the pantry for my evening meal and David made himself fish fingers and chips from his rummage in the freezer and pantry.

January 5th - zero spend

Breakfast was porridge and I had some toast for lunch as I was still feeling rough. I had spent all of Sunday in bed so had not made David any lunch so he just did without food until our evening meal. I am not happy about him doing this but he takes two sugars in his tea and coffee so I suppose he is getting some energy from this but I would rather he ate a balanced meal instead.

I made shepherds pie from some steak mince from the freezer and vegetables and potatoes from the pantry.  I made a mixture of Maris piper and sweet potato mash instead of plain mash and used some left over single cream to bind the mash together.


January 6th - £5.15

Breakfast was cereal from the pantry with milk already in the fridge. I attended a conference at work and there was a free buffet lunch thrown in so I did not have to make anything for myself. David took the remaining croissants from the freezer for a brunch at work.

I had not been grocery shopping since New Year's Eve so called in at Marks & Spencers as I had a coat to collect that I had ordered on line in the sales. I bought the £6 meal deal which was a main course (chicken and leek pie) side dish (two cheese filled jacket potatoes) and dessert (lemon tart). This gave a saving of £2.70 on full price. I bought some ready made fajitas which had been reduced, a loaf of bread and ready made hot steak sandwich which had also been reduced. After taking down the Christmas decorations the house looked rather bare so I treated myself to some flowers too. David had given me a gift card which he had been given as a gift himself so I used this to pay the bill but had to put £5.15 towards the total cost.

David had half the chicken and leek pie with left over mashed potato for his evening meal and I had the fajitas. We ate a couple of Christmas chocolates each later on in the evening. We also had a couple of glasses of wine from a bottle bought for Christmas lunch but not used.

January 7th - zero spend

Breakfast was again cereal from the pantry and milk already in the fridge. I buy Cravendale milk in four pint cartons and usually two at a time because they are normally on offer at two for £3. The milk has been filtered and lasts a long time but does not taste nasty like long life milk can. It has a fresh milk taste and I very rarely throw any away whereas when I bought normal fresh milk I was always throwing it away as I could not judge how much would be used in a week.

For lunch I took celery sticks filled with cream cheese and both of these came from leftovers in the fridge. I found one solitary mince pie and a breakfast muffin in the bread bin and took those with me for lunch too. David was having a lunchtime meeting at work and pizzas were provided so I did not have to bother with lunch for him. In the evening I finshed off the fajitas and David finished off the pie and mash. We finished off the bottle of wine that we had opened the day before.

Not exactly and exciting selection of meals and some not cooked from scratch but I do not want to be throwing away food or buying more when we have plenty in the pantry, fridge and freezers. I know that I will need to go shopping for fresh vegetables, bread and milk in the next day or so and I will keep ou updated on my  grocery bills at the end of each week.

New Year Resolutions

Happy New Year

I hope you all have a wonderful year ahead and enjoy reading my blog on how I try to live a frugal life but with an added bit of luxury.

Well it is January and the time of year that we all think about New Year resolutions. I have made many in the past which have lasted a week or a month and then they have fizzled out. This year I thought I would set myself some monthly targets and then see if I can manage to maintain them month on month. This seems more manageable and bite-sized for me and will stop the disappointment when I have not managed to keep to my resolutions in the past.

So here is my target for this month: 

Limit my grocery shopping for myself and David to £60 a month. 

I am sure this will be achievable and I think we could manage for less but I will see how I manage for January and then reduce the amount if I manage to achieve £60 quite easily. It is only £15 a week for the two of us.

I have quite a bit of food in my freezers, fridge and pantry that I bought for Christmas and New Year celebrations so I think I should be able to meet this target if I use up some of my supplies. I think making a menu list for our meals for the week will help too. Although I do tend to change what I  plan to eat when I find foodie bargains on the reduced counters.

It is also a good time of year to stock up on some treats when the supermarkets start to reduce some of their Christmas stock in their sales. I have bought tins of chocolate biscuits, shortbreads and savoury snacks at very low prices in the past. The same goes for Christmas cake, puddings and chocolates too. We have enjoyed Christmas cake in August before now.

I have other goals that I want to achieve this year and will post about them on a monthly basis but to give you an idea they include:

• Clearing out our garage. This will be no mean feat.
• Decorating our bedroom. It has been 80% finished for some time.
• Remodelling our kitchen.
• Losing enough weight to drop one dress size.

I am planning on a goal a month and know that some will take several months to achieve but I am hoping that they will be achieved by year end 2015.

Best wishes to all of you for the forth coming year.