Frugal Friday...

The price of groceries seems to be increasing week on week at the moment, most of us are finding the things we buy regularly seem to be getting steadily more expensive, and promotions such as Tesco's Big Price Drop and Morrisons Price Crunch only seem to serve to push the prices up, so they can subsequently be "Dropped" or "Crunched"! My grocery budget is under constant scrutiny - I feed the two of us, Plus HRH The Cat, for £150 per month, and keeping within this means shopping around, searching out the best deals, and buying products when they are on offer. When I get vouchers from the tills they get used to stock the storecupboard (more on that in a future post) - £20 spent in Tesco is a big shop for me, and when I get a "£5 off when you spend £40" that requires major forward planning!
As well as using the supermarkets (and I have little loyalty to one or the other - if they offer me a big enough discount on what I want to buy I'll shop there. If they don't, I'll shop somewhere else!) I buy from Chinese supermarkets, Cash & Carrys, Indian Supermarkets, Farmers Markets and market stalls. The cheapest places, basically, to purchase what I want, at the lowest possible price. Occasionally I also buy from a company called Approved Foods. They (and others like them) sell short-dated or past Best Before dated food at knockdown prices, and are a great boon to the frugal shopper. Our latest order has just been delivered, and a quick look at the delivery note tells me that according to the RRP I have had £136 worth of goods delivered, which has cost me the grand total of £40 - including delivery. The delivery charges are quite steep, so it pays to get as close to the maximum weight allowed as possible. So, what did I get in my two huge boxes then? Well......

 The trick is to be selective and choose the stuff that will really save you money. The bottles of squash at the back of this picture? 2 for £1. Bought in the supermarket? At least £2 for the two. The coconut milk....50p a can from AF - at its cheapest normally approaching double that. The huge tins of chopped tomatoes were £1.49 each, they are equivalent to over 6 standard sized cans and each one will do a massive batch of bolognese...or maybe chilli, with the 20p red kidney beans! I did get slightly sidetracked....the bottle of Cranberry drink at the front - 29p but pure indulgence. 5 little bars of Green & Black's chocolate for £1 sneaked into the box as well..... these things happen. :-) What I won't do it buy things that I could make better myself - so no cake mixes, yorkshire pudding batter mixes or suet pastry mix. For me, those are simply not a saving as they are all so easy to throw together myself, in the quantity I need and fresh every time.

Biggest bargain this time would be 12 sachets of Sharwoods Thai Red Curry paste for 49p. Total cost of the items in the picture above....£5.54.  If you were to buy in the supermarket I bet just the Cous Cous in the middle would be more than that! As well as what you see here there is also naan breads, masses of crisps (Ben has a packet each day with his lunch), a 7.5kilo bag of long grain rice, savoury crackers, a couple of those fajita kits (at 50p each, less that just the cost of buying the tortillas on their own) and lots more. Great fun unpacking the boxes....less so playing storecupboard reverse-jenga in a bid to get everything stored, and there is just a small chance that the cupboard used for storing tins in the kitchen may collapse at some stage....
What little tricks have you developed to make your grocery budget stretch further? Do you stock your storecupboard in this way, or simply  buy things as you need them? What's been your best shopping budget-saver recently?
Robyn