Frugal Friday

 

Unrelated Alderney Sunset - May 2025

Well here we are at the end of week one - and so far we do seem to have been sticking to the plan!

In the spirit of using what we have, I decided to have a little review of various reward card points we might be able to use for things that are needed this month. As I mentioned last week we had a £6.75 balance on an Aldi gift card which got used against last week’s “main” shop. A good start to the month! We do have £10 in claimable vouchers on the Morrisons card - but we are saving those to assist with the shopping we always do ahead of getting our ferry to the Hebrides - when we call in to Fort William Morrisons and stock up on some bottles of beer and odd and ends for the first couple of days, so those will continue to amass until they are needed.  I do have Tesco club card vouchers - but generally prefer to use those for rewards rather than against shopping- that said, if I reach a point where any are expiring better by far to just spend them! I have a £2 voucher in my Asda rewards wallet at the moment, and £2.50 ready to spend on my Nectar card as well. The real winner here though is an £11 balance on my Boots advantage card - I must remember that should any toiletries be required! I try and remember to review the offers on the Lidl & Co-op apps weekly as well to see if there are any that would be foolish to let go - this week for example the Co-op app offered us 25p off MrEH’s daily paper and 20p off milk - as he has a subscriber voucher for the paper (so pre-paid) that meant the full 45p of savings came off the price of the milk, taking a 4 pint bottle down to £1.20

We had agreed that if we spotted any real bargains in terms of stuff we would definitely use, we’d buy them, and so when a large chunk of Stilton - one of MrEH’s favourite cheeses - appeared in front of us in Tesco for £2.47 we agreed it was worth a purchase. We also bought bananas - 55p for 3.

I had to make use of the supermarket car park local to work during the week, and that did require me to be a customer (not unreasonably) so a packet of noodles got added to stores for 85p.

Total cash spends for groceries this week then - £8.61. We have used various bits up - scraps of pastry from the Christmas baking made into tartlet cases and filled with a potato, onion, ham, cheese and cream mixture (so tasty!) The last of the Christmas sprouts, chestnuts and bacon (chucked in the freezer on Boxing Day to avoid them being wasted) were used with couscous, toasted seeds and some bargain priced mushrooms I’d bought on New Year’s Eve and promptly forgotten about. The last of the Christmas ham formed a nice sauce for pasta with home grown tomatoes from the freezer, some of the 5p shallots from the Christmas veg wars, some more of those mushrooms and a blob of crème fraiche, and the last of the Christmas sausage rolls were reheated and teamed with mash and beans for a tasty tea. I've been adopting an approach of "what catches my eye first" when I open the freezer this week - but intend to revert to proper meal planning for the remainder of the month as I know that works best for us. 

And today we start the weekly cycle again with a visit to the shop, so I had best get my list written! 

Robyn