Frugal Friday…

 You would be forgiven for thinking that perhaps meals have been a bit stingy over the past few weeks, but there there you would be wrong. As much as the challenge has been about keeping costs low, it was also about the fact that we had an awful lot of food in stores and frankly it seemed like a good way on focusing on using some of it! 

In the course of the month the meal plan has included leftover Christmas turkey in roast dinner form, and as an ingredient in a stir fry and a risotto, a rather tasty cottage pie using venison mince, a stew made with some of the meatiest lamb “bones for stock” I have ever encountered - only £1 for the bag of them and they produced three good portions of stew. That was a very budget offering actually as the veg involved was mostly from the Christmas veg wars! Also a quick cheaty biryani which combined a yellow stickered  sachet of sag aloo rice plus a reduced price chicken breast, along with some added veg - one of those meals that delivered way more taste than the sum of its parts!. I made katsu curry sauce for the first time on Friday - just a BBC Good Food recipe…well, actually 2 recipes which I sort of combined, but very tasty, and it’s nice to have a different form of curry to add to the repertoire. 

For this final week of the challenge spends started a little earlier than anticipated - on the way back from the theatre we called in at Sainsbury’s and spotted a couple of packs of branded falafels reduced down to 71p a pack - not much debate was needed about that, they went straight to the freezer when we got home and will get used as part of a couscous/veg bowl over the coming weeks. £1.42 well spent. The first main shop was done the following day - £7.46 in Aldi including a couple of packs of toasting muffins with 30% off - straight to the freezer for those, too. Other than that, the regular citrus fruit and apples, a pack of peppers as they had the “wonky” ones with plenty of red included, and a bag of coriander to use with the curry on Friday evening and through the week too. 

Saturday saw a trip to the farm shop as of course it is marmalade season- Seville oranges were required! I took the chance to buy a bulb of smoked garlic - and ingredient I use a lot but not easy to get- and MrEH made a convincing case for one of his favourite brand of yogurts - this is the only place he can get the brand locally. We also pounced on a decent looking rustic bread baguette reduced to 50p which got eaten through the day. Total spend £6.88 there, and we called in to the supermarket on the way back for milk, tomatoes and a couple of bananas- another £2.82. 

Only other spend of the week was another couple of bananas - but MrEH bought those and must have paid cash I think so they’re not forming part of my calculations!  By my reckoning that is a total of £18.58 for the week, and there will be no further shopping trips this month, so that is us officially DONE! A quick tot up suggests a sub-£60 spend which quite frankly I’m really pleased with. The grocery account has started the year with a nice little boost, we’ve made a bit of a dent in our food stocks, and it’s made us get our act firmly together with meal planning, too! 

Now- time for February, I wonder…can we have another go?

Robyn