Frugal Grocery February - Week 4

This week I am happy to report that although I didn't manage my goal of no spending I kept it down to $33.25 . Little P came for lunch on Friday and he loves ham so I went and bought some and in the process I ended up buying three loaves of cheap bread to stash in the freezer (forward planning!) milk and some eggs. That's the psychology of shopping. You go in for one thing and come out with six.  I didn't feel so bad since all those groceries were what I'd call basics. It's not like I was off buying four kilos of chocolate. ( I wish !)    And last week one of the shops  had a super special on brand name coffee so I made the tactical decision  to lash out and stock up. I saved $21.00 on three jars of coffee and it only cost me $15.00. And we're set for coffee for a while.

Mr. P  made  cinnamon bun pancakes on Saturday and they were delicious. They made a great weekend breakfast. You can find  the recipe we used here. This recipe is definitely a keeper!

I'm pretty pleased with how this challenge has gone for us. Using what we have has been a huge money saver and has made me really think about what we already have and how we  can use it creatively. I must thank Mr. P who has pretty much done all the cooking during the week this month.  There has been a lot less "popping down to the shops " for one or two ingredients and mostly we've substituted or just left  out ingredients if we didn't have it. The roof wont cave in if we don't use fresh coriander-  just chuck in ground coriander if it's only about the flavour. 

This weeks grocery shopping  brings my monthly total to $151.75 (just over $50 .00 a week ) which means so far I've saved $298.25 for the month. My goal was to save $300.00 so I'm pretty confident I can meet that target and maybe even better it.

On the down side this week I am going to have to start re-stocking items. We're completely out of things like gherkins and pickled onions. I tend to be a hoarder and we'll have one in the fridge and another one on the pantry shelf. This month I'm down to about 5 gherkin rounds floating round looking lonely in the jar  in the fridge. I guess I should be thankful we still have plenty of soap and deoderant.  I have noticed though that I'm not throwing away 5 bucks worth of slimy sandwich meat every three days because it isn't being eaten because if I buy it , I've only been buying enough for a day or so, or using canned tuna or eggs or cheese for sandwiches or rolls instead.  

We had two meals last week from leftover chicken I'd chopped up and stuffed in the freezer at some point. One was Thai chicken soup which was just a packet Thai base with fat rice noodles.  Mr. P added extra stock, chicken, corn and spring onions and it was lovely. The other was a chicken fried rice which fed us for dinner and then lunch the next day. Mr. P just chucked in a cup of chicken, some carrot , some peas , soy sauce , a bit of garlic ,  spring onion and eggs . Both were very economical meals made from leftovers or things we already had laying round , and tasted really good. We do tend to be big meat eaters here and I think it's been a positive change for us to have almost meatless meals a couple of nights a week.

My menu this week includes a few more chicken meals since I have so much of that in the freezer. Mother of Pyjamas tells a story about chicken being so expensive  when she was growing up  ,  that they didn't get it very often.  That's certainly not the case these days . I love chicken and we eat it often mainly because it's versatile and cheap. I know when Mr. P needs beef or lamb because he starts clucking at me.

I haven't made a dent in the big outside freezer yet ...I guess there's always March. But I'm starting to see the back of the inside freezer and at least when I open the door half a barnyard doesn't fall on me.  That's progress. And I'm still finding it hard to believe I haven't bought meat in almost 4 weeks.

Come back next week for the final tally. I'd love to hear how you're doing if you're playing along.