Low spend food shop

 I am trying to keep my spending as low as possible so that I can pay as much as I can onto my debt. One way I do this is by buying as little food as possible. I don't mean by starving any of us either! Haha

Throughout the week as inspiration arrives from many places I jot down idea of food/meals we can eat. This inspriation could be from spotting food in the the fridge or freezer that needs using, or I could see a picture of someone else's food on social media etc and think I have ingredients to make that.

This is our current menu plan. 

This week's shopping list. 

I then create a shopping list of the extras I will need. That's my water bottle next to the list. It's warm out so I know I'll get thirsty on the drive into town and then with the walk around the shop so I fill it with cold water and take it with me. It saves buying a drink out, and the plastic waste from buying a drink.

I headed off to aldi as it is cheap and stocks what I needed. I had a target of £20 in mind for this week's shop. Here's what I got:

All of this came to £20.90. There is a lot of food there for the low price, including done treats that weren't on the list. £7.30 worth of treats to be exact. I'm a work in progress, I'm not great at saving money but I save more than I have in a while.

How do you keep your food shop low? 

Camping

Stephanie, Smudge and I are off camping for a week on Sunday. Dylan and his girlfriend are staying home to look after the house and the rabbit. This is a week away on a budget. I have saved for the last couple of months for this, as it has been planned for a while. My sisters and their families are coming with us. We have a stay in the Peak District booked, I can't wait. I planned out the meals and things we will be eating today, based on what is easy to cook on a camping cooker and what we have int he cupboards already.

 This is what I have come up with:

The main items on this list are in my cupboard and just needed packing. The BBQ food will be taken from my freezer and pack in the cool box with ice packs to keep it fresh as will take us 4 hours or so to get there. We then will need to unpack the car, put up the tent etc etc before we eat. BBQs on the first night are always fun, especially when you meet others there as they are fun social meals allowing us time to catch up as we share.

Excuse the dog's nose- food is around so he's not far away! HAHA

I shopped through the cupboards for the meals on the plan. Then headed to the fridge:

This bits are fruit and veg that we can use for either snacks, or to enhance our meals. Not enough for the week, but once we are settled we will head to local shops/farms to buy the bits we need as we go. we won't have a fridge whilst we camp so we will buy fresh bit as needed.

This is how I keep costs down when we go away.What things do you do to keep the costs down?

McCains home chips recipe challenge

Recently I was contacted by McCain's with the tempting offer of trying out one their recipes. I simply (HA ha!) had to choose one of the 5 recipes they emailed me and I would be sent the ingredients to make our choice.

I say ha-ha because it was very tricky to choose, well I narrowed it down to 4 pretty quickly as neither Stephanie or I like minced meats so the chili chip pots were out.
that left us to choose between;

• Salmon and prawn parcels
• Steak pie
• Stuffed chicken
• Stuffed peppers

The children ruled out the stuffed peppers as Dylan doesn't like them at all and Stephanie doesn't like them cooked. I decided to let the children look at the recipes and see which they would most like to try. The result was the only one they could agree on
The Salmon and prawn parcels.

I was very kindly sent all of the ingredients to make this by a confused delivery man who said there's only these 3 bags? LOL

The receipt said the lovely goodies to make this recipe came in at £17.48! That's a whopping total bearing in mind we only have £20.00 as our weekly food budget. However there is enough here to make 2 dinners, and actually as we tend to eat slightly smaller portions probably even 3 meals. You could make the dinner cheaper by taking offers as we normally would by buying whole salmon and filleting it into our sized portions to make this a much cheaper recipe.

Stephanie decided she wanted to go and visit her dad today so had dinner with him instead of at home so in the end it was just me and Dylan for dinner. So I got started;

Herby butter ready to mix- that is the 100g of butter, 1 tablespoon of chopped chives and 2tablespoons of chopped parsley. Now in my excitement when the delivery arrived I put the butter in the fridge so at dinner time it was pretty hard. not to worry I put the hundred grams in the microwave for 20 seconds. If you try this be careful my microwave is very basic, if you have a posher one it may not need that long! Just long enough to soften the butter and make mixing easier. The recipe says to leave this for a few minutes to allow the flavours to develop. So I took a few moments to go and get the washing in off the line.
When I came back I continued to follow the recipe, I cut some squares of greaseproof paper and buttered one side of each. I laid the salmon pieces, one on each sheet. Then put prawns on top and then a generous dollop of the Herby butter;

 

2 parcels ready to wrap. Guess which one is mine, HINT: prawns are my favourite ;-)

 

Then I wrapped them up tightly;

Spread some chips on an oven tray and put it all in the oven at gas mark 8. The recipe says for 20-22 Min's. Again I know my oven is not always the fastest so I set my timer for 22 minutes. Which left me enough time to do this-

 

snaffle the last of the prawns from the packet- this is my favourite way to eat them!
And then a little of this;

I have had a busy day pottering around home and washing windows so I had nets for 3 windows to iron and hang. It turns out that this recipe takes just enough time for me to iron and hang the nets and make a quick side salad using items from the fridge;

Mine and Dylan's' yummy dinner. Dylan doesn't like prawns but I put some on his salmon in the hope that he would change his mind  if he tried one with this meal. It didn't work however it did mean that I got to eat his share too.

The recipe was Delicious. I was surprised by the chips. I don't normally buy McCain's as at £2.00 a bag they are a little out of our price range to be honest. I honestly was surprised- they were delicious. We don't have chips often as I try to eat healthily and oven chips normally just aren't that nice. These ones are!! I ate all of what was on my plate, we had a few left over which I offered to Stephanie, she arrived home as I was cooking. She was full so didn't want so I put them in a bowl and left them on the side in case she changed her mind. Probably a good job she hasn't as I keep sneaking back for 'just one more'- even cold they are delicious!!

These will feature on a treat meal for us as I really have enjoyed them and well it's still cheaper than the chip shop for a treat even at £2 a kilo.

If you get a chance I really would try these, either your having a treat moment, or spot them on offer maybe.
I am also very impressed as we have chips left in the freezer and enough fish etc to repeat this recipe another day- Thank you McCain's!

Now which recipe will I try next...........




I was not paid for writing this review, I did receive the food in order to make the recipe free from McCains. The opinions in this review are my own, honest opinion.

 

 

food glorious food!!

I love food, and I have been busy yesterday cooking, and today listing items on selling sites. Her'es the food calling to me at the moment;

Mince tarts made with home-made mince meat. Even Dylan likes them!

 

 

Cheesy swirls, loved by us all!

 

And slow cooked lamb stew- all the random veggies I had thrown in together this morning.

 

With dumplings added from an approved food shop.

 

All cooked with food I had in no extras needed!

 

 

 

Bargain holiday!

I thought as many of you have expressed an interest in how our barain holiday went I would dedicate a post to.

I booked at the very last minute and got our caravan for £69 instead of the £250 it should have gone for. We had 4 nights; Monday to Friday. The caravan was on a Parks holiday site. See my post here for pictures of our caravan. It was a Silver level caravan this meant that we got the bedlinen included in the price, we had a fully equipped kitchen with toaster, microwave, fridge etc. We also had a tv and dvd player (although it says you only get DVD players in Gold accomodation on the website). The caravan was very clean and well looked after, unlike some we have been in in the past on a different holiday site a few years ago.

Our entertainment passes were included in the price I paid for the caravan these gave us use of the swimming pool, and the clubhouse. There were also children's entertainment activities going on during the day included but we didn't use these so I don't know how they were. There were some entertainment in the evenings for the children for me the entertainment leader lacked a little enthusiasm and could have livened up a little, that said Stephanie seemed to enjoy herself when joining in.

Not advertised on the website was that the swimming pool on our site was closed, we were told we could journey to the next Park holiday site and use their pool free but we didn't do this. There was no hidden extras onsite; no fair rides for children to pester for, no go-karting/crazy golf etc etc that we have had on previous sites. This did mean there wasn't a huge amount to do on site but as we planned on exploring the local area it wasn't a problem I have never been a fan of all singing all dancing spend spend spend sites. So this site suited us perfectly.

 This holiday did prove to be a complete bargain, I would happily pay cheap rates to come again, I wouldn't pay the full asking price. When I compare this break to ones in the past when we have taken a sun holiday I have found that it is not for £9.50 as advertised as you have to pay for 2 adults!!! I hate that! then you pay for the children, then a surcharge for the entertainment passes, then pay for bedding etc. When we did a Sun holiday I took my sister as I refused to pay for an absent adult, altogether our £9.50 holiday was around £100.

I took food for us to make all of our meals with us and each day we took a packed lunch out with us so we barely spent on food. Apart from Thursday when I managed to leave the cool bag on the caravan table! I had packed it with drinks and nibbles as I was planning to surprise the children to a fish and chip lunch, so not a great loss I did end up paying out a few pound in drinks, but this was balanced out by discovering if we parked at the top of the Cliffe and walked down to the front we paid £1.20 to park for 4 hours instead of £4 for 3 hours at the bottom of the Cliffe.

We had 2 days we spent on the beach and a little play in the arcades I gave the children £2 each in total and they used their pocket moneys and had lots of fun. We visited Battle Abbey making use of our English Heritage membership so saved £7.80 per adult and £4.70 per child  on entrance fees, also as we were members the car park for the whole day was £1 instead of £4.50. So in all we saved £20.70 on that day out.

I did spend a little on treats, we went to the clubhouse for one drink each evening which cost between £3.50 and £5 each time, and we spent £1.25 per game on 3 games of bingo. Our fish and trip treat ended up being a little more than anticipated as due to wet weather at lunch time we decided to eat in and not have soggy chips. So lunch for 3 plus drinks came to £14.00. Which was only a little more than I had expected it to be.

We had a fantastic time on our bargain holiday which truely had no hidden extras, so I will be keeping a close eye on the Parks holiday website to see if we can book a bargain during another school holiday.

Use it up challenge

Last Friday I posted about following the use it up challenge. I have used what we have in the fridge for most meals and supplemented that with what is in the freezer we have had;

Lunches

• cheese rolls
• Philadelphia rolls
• salad
• fruit
• yoghurt
• cakes

dinners

• jacket potatoes
• home-made pizza and dough balls
• pork chops and noodles
• chicken curry
• mackerel and tomato pasta

breakfast

• croissants ( i did buy these)
• toasted rolls
• cereal bars

All I bought during the week was some croissants these fed us for a couple of days and a KFC I could give you an excuse- there was an accident on the way home from work meaning I was very delayed on the day we had it, Dylan was on a school trip and I had to feed Stephanie and myself in the 45 minutes I had between collecting her from the childminders and going to the collection point to get Dylan back from his trip. I realise I could have done a quick and simple dinner for the 2 of us in that time but I was being lazy! LOL

This week resulted in most of the fridge being depleted. There are a some eggs, few carrots and a couple of parsnips still to use but apart from that everything was used. The eggs I will use tomorrow to make cakes for next weeks lunches, the carrots and parsnips for tomorrows roast.

I have been shopping today I bought some more fruit, yoghurt, fruit juice and cheese these are items we constantly use. Just buying these this week has meant that my shopping was less than £20.

I have some chicken bits in the fridge which I will use to make a roast dinner tomorrow and will go through the freezer menu planning for next week. I also need to look in the cupboard to see what I can incorporate from the tins etc to our meals as I am sure some of them have been lurking in the back a while.

How are you getting on with the challenge?

Incidentally I know June is the month for Mackeral fishing, one of our favourite fish- where can I learn how to fish myself??

Using it up!

As part of the using it up callenge set by Mrs Green I have been wading my way through the food in my fridge for the past couple of days so far I have eaten;
Chicken fried rice
egg rolls
sliced beef and duck skewers with salad, coleslaw and potato salad
turkey rolls
griddle pan waffles

All except the griddle pan waffles were made using barbecue leftovers. I have had to put some more into the freezer as the children have gone to their Dads for a few days and I am off to stay with a friend. So rather than waste the 2 boxes of cooked chicken breast and 4 packs of bread rolls I have frozen them to eat another day.

When the children and I went to the woods the other day we collected some elderflowers to make cordial with. As Stephanie has an allergy to citic acid I made 2 batches one using lemons, one without. Instead of citric acid I made it with tartaric acid which she is ok with.

Here is the citrus one;

This is them all bottled (or jarred!) up. I keep any jars I use throughout the year so that I can make jams for us all in the summer months. When the bottle of wine was emptied the other day I thought it would be useful for this recipe. Unortunately I only had one wine bottle so the rest of the cordial has gone into jars- there's an excuse to drink more wine ;-)

Getting ready

Tomorrow we are having our Jubilee celebration. I am refusing to call it that B word as I can (almost) guarantee the sun will hide and the rain will appear if I do. So we are having a celebration I will make the decision whether I cook inside or out tomorrow about half hour before I begin. To accompany our celebration we have been home making this is what we have made so far;

Hmm, I wonder what all these triangles will be for?

Yup you guessed it frugal bunting. I have used some sheeting, which originally covered the throne in  Stephanie's castle. I cut 1/4 of it up and we all used fabric pens I already had to decorate them. The triangles are joined together with curling ribbon from the craft stash, attached with staples. Quick and easy. The plan is for these beauties to decorate the garden tomorrow.

Then we began the baking. The desserts for tomorrow were made with ingredients from the store cupboard- no expense necessary

Mini Victoria sandwiches, even the jam is home made.

 Cup cakes;

 And best of all Dylan's gooey chocolate brownies;

These are my favourite dessert at the moment. I must stop getting him to bake it- I'll be the size of a house soon otherwise.

Tomorrow I will continue to cook for our gathering on the to do list are;

bread

home grown coleslaw- you didn't know that grew alongside the slugs on the allotment did you? LOL

Potato salad

sausage rolls

ermm I'm sure there was something else but I can't remember at the moment, oh yes the chicken kebabs need making.

How are you celebrating?

Food glorious food...

I am feeling smug this week as we have been eating homegrown produce with our dinners. We have had raspberries, potatoes, carrots and peas so far. I have tomatoes,onions, peppers and strawberries beginning to fruit in the garden and allotment. As well as plenty of the potatoes, peas, etc at the allotment still to pick. I love how food can occupy us as a family. We all have good appetites and enjoy a 'real' dinner more than anything. The children both love to help choose what we eat as well as to cook it. Tonight was pie with freshly picked veg, it has got to be one of the children's favourite meals it comes high on the list along with a roast dinner. There is nothing better than sitting around the table with the children enjoying good food and nattering about our different days.

Food, clothes and gift for a baby!

Yesterday I was clearing out the fridge and found some fruit which needed using up so Stephanie and I set about makinf crumble. We have pear, apple, rhubarb. Then some mixed ones rhubarb and apple, pear and apple and pear and rhubarb. There was still some rhubarb left over and no topping (or small dishes!). SO have frozen the rhubarb as it is, will add more topping as required.

Then we worked on Stephanies new dress;

With the left over materials I made her a handbag before we left for nursery this morning. She loves it and ran in to show off her new outfit.

I have since made her a hairband out of a slither of left over material,

I have also begun work on a baby quilt for my newest nephew due to be born in August. I don't think my sister has discovered my blog yet- If she has she needs to turn away now!

I am planning on making several of these framed squares then using a pale blue material to join them all together. If it turns out as well as I hope I will be making another one for a friend whose baby is due in September. I will use pale green/yellow for hers, or other neutral colour I discover whilst out and about as she doesn't know what flavour baby she is getting.