Menu planner 6/10/12 to 12/10/12

I guess you may have noticed that it's been quite a while since my last post.  Although I've been putting together my menu plans each week I haven't had a chance to post any of them.  Finally I've managed to find some time to write a post!

My menu plan for Saturday the 6th October to 12th October 2012 is as follows:-
Saturday dinner - Quick chicken chasseur
Sunday dinner - Pork loins with stir fry vegetables
Monday dinner - Sausages with creamy lentils
Tuesday dinner - Pizza
Wednesday dinner - Chicken and chorizo jambalaya
Thursday dinner - Mary's paprika pork in a pot, rice and green veg
Friday dinner - Salmon, baby potatoes and green veg

For lunches we will be having sandwiches, ham salad wraps or leftover chicken and chorizo jambalaya.

When a few adjustments to the weekly menu plan are needed...

...don't be afraid to make them!

No sooner had a I returned from the grocery shop on Saturday evening than my husband suggested that perhaps we could have a BBQ for dinner instead of whatever I had planned to make.  I had nothing in for a BBQ!  After initially saying no, I ended up agreeing to a BBQ - after all, it was our one half decent Saturday this 'Summer' so far and for all I knew it might well be out last!!  This caused me a little menu plan dilemma. 

Firstly I had to go and get the meat required for the BBQ.  Unexpected additional grocery shopping, but as I've already said, it may just be the only Saturday we get to have a BBQ for a long time so I forgave myself for the extra spend.  We ditched the idea of soup as we had to go out to the butchers again and needed something that would be a little faster to make.  Queue sandwiches!

Secondly, I had already lifted the pork loins out of the freezer before I took off to get the grocery shopping so I had to decide what to do with them.  The reason why we were to have pork loins two nights in a row was because I had five frozen together.  I was going to cook two on the Saturday night for my husband and I, and three the next night to feed up as all.  I knew they'd still be fine to cook on the Sunday, but was a bit worried about cooking them on the Monday night as they were lifted out of the freezer on the Saturday morning (I really should read up about freezing/defrosting meat and how long it is 'ok' for after it has been defrosted).  As luck would have it my mum called to say that she and my dad would be visiting on Sunday, so I needed five pork loins for dinner after all!

After being invited to a birthday party on Sunday evening, we decided to have our main meal earlier in the day.  I made the Bacon and sweetcorn chowder at the same time as preparing Sundays dinner.  I initially intended for us to have this for lunch during the week, but we ended up having it for dinner tonight.

Tomorrow night we will have the soup again, then we will have the mixed bean chilli on Wednesday and Thursday night.  The only night this week that we will eat the dinner I intended will be on Friday night.

I guess you could say that things haven't exactly gone as planned!

The other thing about spending extra money on meat for a BBQ - I went slightly over my €50 budget for the week.  I'll write a bit more about this later this week as I intend to have a review of my July challenge to work out exactly how I did...

Menu planner from 21/7/2012 to 27/7/2012

On to week 4 and the final week of my July challenge, though I think I might keep it going for one a 5th week.  Once again I am working off a list of items that are in my freezer, fridge and cupboard to try and use what I have in already as far as possible in order to keep the cost of my groceries down.

So, my menu planner for 21st July to the 27th July is as follows;
Saturday lunch - Bacon and sweetcorn chowder
Saturday dinner - Braised chops with borlotti beans and wine and Boulangère potatoes
Sunday lunch - Leftover bacon and sweetcorn chowder
Sunday dinner - Braised pork chops with cider vinegar and prunes with leftover Boulangère potatoes
Monday dinner - Mixed bean chilli (my own recipe)
Tuesday dinner - Leftover mixed bean chilli
Wednesday dinner - Fish fingers, waffles, peas and sweetcorn
Thursday dinner - Smoky beef stew served with tortillas
Friday dinner - Pizza (for me and daughter), chicken breast and gravy with potatoes (for husband)and other freezer dinner for baby (using up odds and ends from the freezer here!)

For lunches during the week we will have ham sandwiches, tuna salad and any leftovers from dinner.

Last week I spent below my €50 budget once again by spending only €43.80 on my groceries for the week.  I am hoping that this week I manage to stick to my €50 budget once again.  If I do, that will mean that I will have managed to stay below €200 for the four full weeks in July, leaving €200 to go to our savings account.

Menu plan for 14/7/2012 to 20/7/2012

We're onto week 3 of my July challenge and so far things are going good.  Last week I managed to spend only €35.70 of my €50 budget for the week.  To say I am happy would be a bit of an understatement.  Although, in fairness I had one less day to feed the family last week and while this wouldn't have caused me to save the €14.30 that I didn't spend of my budget it certainly helped a bit.  Hopefully I'll be able to do as well with my budget this week as I did last week.

This morning my husband cleaned out our fridge while giving me a bit of a lie in (I know - lucky me!) so it was possible to see at a glance what we had in our fridge.  Together we had another review of the contents of the freezer and made a list of what was in there just to update the list of what we had in already.  So, using the list of what we have in already I put together a menu plan for the week.  It is as follows:

Saturday dinner - Steak and sticky red wine shallots with potatoes
Sunday lunch - Tomato, lentil and lime soup (I have all the ingredients in for this)
Sunday dinner - Roast lemon chicken with tagliatelle (I have all the ingredients in for this)
Monday dinner - Wraps
Tuesday dinner - Pizza
Wednesday dinner - Chorizo pilaf (I have all the ingredients in for this)
Thursday dinner - Leftover chorizo pilaf
Friday dinner - Fish fingers, chips, peas and sweetcorn

For lunches we will be having ham sandwiches, leftover tomato, lentil and lime soup and leftover roast lemon chicken with tagliatelle.

As you can see, I have selected three items for my menu for the week were I will not have to buy anything for the recipe as I already have all the ingredients in.  For the rest of the options I have selected I have most of the items in already apart from Tuesday evenings pizza.  I will be buying whatever frozen pizza is on offer for my daughters dinner on Tuesday evening as a special treat for her as my husband and I are off to a concert on Tuesday evening while she and her brother stay at home with a minder.  Picking recipes where I have most of the ingredients, if not all of them, in the house already has enabled me to keep my shopping list quite small for this week again.

Tip
To help select recipes using ingredients I already have in, I used the search function on the Good Food website to do this quickly.  I typed in a selection of the ingredients I have in already, for example 'chicken' and 'basil', and then went through the search results.  I then looked at the ingredients list for those that caught my eye, dismissing those that involved the purchasing of lots of items I don't have in the house at the moment. 

Menu planner 8/7/2012 to 13/7/2012

I've been a little slow at getting my menu plan for this week up - sorry about that.  Anyway, I have finally got round to posting it.  This is week two of my July challenge, so I am attempting to keep the cost of the shopping down by using leftovers from the freezer and other items I have in already.  Another way that I will be able to keep costs down this week is by using some veg that my father-in-law grew and gave to me and by using some eggs that my brother-in-law gave to me.

We were at a Christening on Saturday so my menu plan for this week only runs from Sunday 8th July to Friday 13th July.  It is as follows:

Sunday dinner - Leftover better-than-baked-beans and oven chips
Monday dinner - Letfover sweet and sour pork and rice
Tuesday dinner - Salmon, broccoli and new potatoes
Wednesday dinner - Summer chicken and basil stew
Thursday dinner - Leftover summer chicken and basil stew
Friday dinner - Fish, chips, peas and sweetcorn

For lunches we will be having soup, sandwiches and leftovers if there are any.

Weekly shopping budget - slightly over in week 1

As you can see from the title I went slightly over the weekly shopping budget in week one.  To sum up my expenditure for the week - I spent €6.91 in Lidl, €45.82 in Dunnes and my husband spent €5.38 in Dunnes on Monday.  The means I spent a total of €58.11 which is €8.11 over my weekly shopping budget of €50 during each week in July.

So where did I go wrong?  Well, two things happened that I feel caused me to go over the limit.  Firstly, my disorganisation meant that my husband ended up buying some food on Monday in order for me to be able to put together a meal for Monday night.  So, lesson one is to be better prepared in future!

Secondly, in a rush of blood to the head I managed to miscalculate how much I spent on cartons of ready-made formula for the baby.  I had to buy a lot more of them than I anticipated as a trip to the Dr's on Tuesday resulted in me being told that the baby has a food allergy of some sort and in order to get to the bottom of it I have been told to cut out cows milk and all fruit from his diet to see if the rash clears.  This means that I need extra formula to send up to the creche for his cereal in the morning so that it can be used in place of the cows milk that he usually gets and I bought more than I had on my shopping list.  So, my second lesson is not to try to do maths in my head when I am shopping.  I should use the calculator on my mobile phone.  Of course, it generally helps if the mobile phone is in your handbag when you go shopping in the first instance!

Still, I am pleased with the €58.11 and won't be too hard on myself for going over.  I did acknowledge that if I was intending to buy nappies and formula that I would need a slightly higher budget than the €50 I had set for my July challenge, but I really didn't think I would need to buy anymore of either this month. 

I wonder if next week I might be able to limit my spend to €41.89 to make up for my overspend this week.  That might be too much of an ask.  You know what they say though - it won't hurt to try!!

Not exactly going to plan...

So, day one of my July challenge hasn't exactly gone to plan as I ended up not being able to do my grocery shopping as yet for a number of reasons.  Instead of having the turkey meatballs that we were supposed to have this evening, we ended up having fish, chips, peas and sweetcorn.  There was fish in the freezer and I used tins of peas and sweetcorn, so all that needed to be bought were the chips which my husband picked up on his way home from work, along with some bread and bananas.  He spent €5.38 in total leaving me with €44.62 for the groceries for the rest of the week.

As we didn't have the turkey meatballs this evening, I am going to make them for dinner tomorrow night instead.  I'll just bump my entire menu plan along one day, freezing the leftover better-than-baked-beans instead of having it the following evening for dinner.  I could just stick to the recipe and make enough to serve dinner for one night, but it is such a simple recipe to double up and save the leftovers for another night that it would be a shame to waste the opportunity to save time another evening.

I am hoping to get my groceries tomorrow so I've done my shopping list in preparation for going.  It is REALLY short this week so I know that I am definitely going to stay within my budget.  It is as follows:

1. Red Pepper (on offer for 79cent in Dunnes at the moment)
2. Mushrooms x 2 punnets (on offer in Lidl for 69 cent per 250g at the moment)
3. Milk - slim line x 2 litres
4. Milk - full fat x 2 litres
5. Cheese - babybel
6. Ham
7. Bacon medallions (on offer in Lidl for €1.69)
8. Cartons of ready made formula x 15 (10% back in Dunnes on baby products ending on the 3rd July)
9. Toilet cleaner

A very short shopping list.  I have decided to split the shop over two stores as there is so little I will easily be able to walk from one shop to the other carrying whatever I have bought.  I don't go in for driving to different shops on a weekly basis as I reckon that any savings that would be made would be swallowed up by the fuel costs in getting between all the different shops.  However, if I can see that I will make decent savings, I will walk between Lidl and Dunnes as they are not too far away from each other, so it is worth my while to park between the two and do this.

I am actually quite excited to see what my food shop comes to for the week.  I think I'll put whatever extra I save, on top of the €50 that I am aiming to save, into our savings account as well.

July challenge starts now - the first menu plan of the month!

So, this week will be the first week of my July challenge where I aim to limit my grocery spend to €50 per week.  I hate to admit it but I am actually quite excited by my July challenge.  I know, I know - this makes me sound extremely sad, but I think it will force me to exercise a bit of creativity to stay below the €50 each week.

Now, to be clear, this €50 will probably only be food shopping with the odd toiletery, pack of nappies or tub of formula thrown in.  I have quite a large stockpile of toileteries, nappies and formula built up at the moment from buying when they were on offer or from using my Boots Advantage card to buy them.  If I was to buy formula and nappies each week as well as the groceries, I think I would need to increase my shopping budget to €75 to accomodate this.  So if you have decided to give yourself a July challenge, remember to allow yourself some extra money to allow for expensives items like this or you will be setting yourself up for a fall!

This weekend I am up visiting my parents as it is my dads 50th birthday, so I won't need to worry about grocery shopping for dinner on Saturday or Sunday evening.  So, for this week my menu plan only needs to cover Monday to Friday.

So, my menu plan for the 2th July 2012 to 6th July 2012 is as follows:-
Monday dinner - Turkey meatballs in tomato and fennel sauce
Tuesday dinner - Leftovers
Wednesday dinner - Mushroom and rice one-pot
Thursday dinner - Better than baked beans and wedges
Friday dinner - Leftovers

For lunches we will have ham sandwiches, leftover mushroom and rice one-pot and tuna salad.

Menu plan 25/6/2012 to 29/6/2012

I didn't get a chance to plan my menu over the weekend and just used whatever was in the freezer.  I needed to put a bit of thought into what I am planning for the next few days before heading off to the shops though, so I put together a menu plan for the next of the week.

So, my plan for the rest of the week is as follows:
Monday dinner - wraps
Tuesday dinner - Patatas bravas with chorizo
Wednesday dinner - Grilled pork loins, potatoes, peas and sweetcorn
Thursday dinner - Sweet and sour pork stir-fry
Friday dinner - Summer-in-winter chicken with olive oil baked potatoes

For lunches we will be having sandwiches, wraps, broccoli and almond soup and baked tomato and feta.

I'll be continuing my inventory this week in preparation for my July challenge.  I am hoping that by using a lot of the contents of my store cupboard and freezer contents that I will be able to limit my grocery spend to €50 per week.  I've also been reading through some of my recipe books and Good Food magazines to try and get a few ideas of recipes that won't cost the earth to make.

July challenge - €50 per week

So, as the title suggests I have set myself a bit of a challenge for July.  I intend to limit my grocery spend for each week in July to €50 per week.  I've recently re-done my monthly budget again and I've lowered my grocery budget down to €100 per week again, so if I manage to spend €50 per week throughout July I'll be able to save €200 which I'll put into my savings account. 

There are a few reasons why I've decided to do this.  Firstly, it'd be nice to put the extra money into my savings account as it'll come in handy come Christmas time.  Secondly, I am hoping to run down the contents of the freezer.  Thirdly, if I limit the amount I am spending each week to €50 then I'll be forced get creative with the contents of my store cupboard.

So, to help to try and complete this challenge I will be taking an inventory of my kitchen cupboards and freezer so that I have an accurate list of what I have in the house.  I'll then plan my weekly menu using this list, as well as considering what is on offer in the shops each week. 

Hopefully I'll be able to stick to it and still make some yummy meals for my family!

If anyone has any suggestions of cheap and cheerful, yet tasty meals then please leave a comment sharing your suggestions.

Parsnip soup

As my menu planner for the week shows, on Sunday I intended to make soup for my family, but the type of soup would depend on what vegetables were on offer in Dunnes when I got there.  Parsnips were on offer for 49 cent for a tray of 500g.  I bought two trays (98 cent) knowing that I would be able to find some sort of parsnip soup on the GoodFood website that I could make.  After doing a search on 'parsnip soup' and sifting through the results I decided on the parsnip soup with parsley cream, minus the parsley cream as I didn't have all the ingredients for it.

I only completed step one of the recipe.  After an incident (the soup boiled over when I went upstairs to see what my daughter was up to) there wasn't much liquid left in the soup, so I didn't bother with the removing of the liquid to blend the parsnip.  As it was, once I finished blending I had to add a bit of liquid to the soup as it was very thick. 

The end result was pretty tasty and it is definitely one I would make again.  Removing a chunk of the steps and cutting the parsnips finer than the chunks the recipe calls for meant that it was ready in about 30 minutes.  Leftovers were used for lunch on Monday.

Not adding the parsley cream lowered the calories and fat content of the soup considerably. I used slimline milk to help lower the fat content as well.


Cost
The cost was pretty reasonable.  As I already noted the parsnips cost me 98 cent.  I have allowed another €1 for the onion, stock, milk and bay leaves - I think this is quite generous.  This means that the total cost of the soup was €1.98.  Another bargain soup for lunch!!

Next time I make the soup I'd really like to make the parsley cream as well.  I know that this will add to the cost of it, but given how cheap it is in the first place I don't mind.  As I've mentioned before - parsley is one of my favourite ingredients and I'd try the soup with the parsley cream in it to see how it adds to the taste.

Menu planner for 12/5/2012 to 18/5/2012

So, it's that time of the week again - menu planning time!  This week I have quite a few leftover ingredients in the kitchen, so I have made a list of them so that I can pick recipes that will use them up and prevent waste.  Doing this will also keep my grocery spend for the week down, which is good as I need to buy some formula and nappies which takes a chunk out of my budget.

My meal plan for 12 May to 18 May 2012 is as follows:

Saturday lunch - Orange, carrot and mint soup
Saturday dinner - Smoky chicken and bean stew
Sunday lunch - leftover soup
Sunday dinner - Chicken wraps
Monday dinner - Shepherd's pie
Tuesday dinner - Leftover shepherd's pie
Wednesday dinner - Leek and mackerel penne bake
Thursday dinner - Spanish bean stew
Friday dinner - Leftover stew

For lunches during the week I will make puy lentil, spiced roast carrot and feta salad, some leftover chilli that is in the freezer, leftover shepherd's pie and sandwiches.

As you can see, this week I am making a couple of dishes that we can eat two nights.  This means that I will only have to cook from scratch three nights during the working week which will save time that I can spend doing other things.

Colcannon - abandoned :-(

You may have noted that according to my meal plan for the week that we were supposed to have black pudding and colcannon tonight.  We didn't have colcannon as we were a bit pressed for time and the recipe that I had picked was going to take too long to make.  Instead we had black pudding, mashed potatoes, and mashed carrot and turnip.

My husband had come across a different recipe for colcannon in a newspaper during the week and he wants to make it some night instead of the recipe that I found.  Hmmmm...I might just let him.  I've made a note of this recipe so that I can make it in the future when I have a bit more time.

We are heading away this weekend, so my menu for next week is only going to run from Monday to Friday night.  I intend to plan it and do my shopping list before I head away, but I wont know what offers will be on in Dunnes,Lidl or Aldi so I intend to be a bit more flexible than I normally would be when doing my shopping.

Irish coddled pork with cider..again!

Back in January I made this Irish coddled pork with cider recipe from the GoodFood magazine and it went down a treat.  I decided to make it for dinner today when I saw that both cabbage and turnip were on offer in Dunnes yesterday for 29 cent each.  There we pork loins in our freezer and we got some bulmers when we were in Asda last week (note - we bought 'Magners' not the English Bulmers), so I didn't need to buy them which made this recipe a cheap enough option for me this week allowing me to stay well within my grocery budget.

The cabbage on offer in Dunnes was a quarter of a white cabbage for 29 cent, so I only used a quarter of cabbage this time round.  There was still more than enough to go around.

I wouldn't normally post about a recipe I've made previously, but I wanted to show how tailoring your menu to suit what the stores have on offer on any given week can reduce the overall cost of your menu for that week by comparing the how much it cost me to make the coddled pork this week to when I made it back in January.

Cost - As I said I had Pork Loins in the freezer.  They were recently on offer in our butchers at 5 pork loins for €5.  This recipe used 2 so this it cost €2.  The turnip was 15 cent, the cabbage was 29 cent, the carrots were 25 cent, the bacon was €1, potatoes were 60 cent (I used 4 instead of two) and the bulmers was 25 cent (the offer I bought them on was not as good as the one I got before Christmas making this ingredient slightly more expensive.  This makes the total cost of the meal €4.54. 

I saved 46 cent on this recipe this week when compared with how much it cost when I made it in January.  I used an extra potato but less cabbage.  Even if I had bought an extra quarter of white cabbage, I would still have saved money on the recipe as this would only have cost another 29 cent.

A saving of 46 cent doesn't really seem like a lot in the grand scheme of things, but if I saved this much in every meal I made in the week I'd have an extra €3.22 at the end of the week.  Considering that I have some recipes on here that cost less than €3 to make, this extra money means that I could feed the family for an extra day on what I had saved.  Something to think about I guess.

Grocery shopping - menu planner for 28/4/2012 to 4/5/2012

So, it's Friday night and it's time to sort out my meal plan for the next week and write my grocery shopping list ready for my trip to get the groceries tomorrow.  Is it sad that I actually enjoy doing this on a Friday night...possibly, but I'm not afraid to admit that I enjoy having a trawl of recipe books and magazines on a Friday night and putting together a meal plan for the week.

Anyway, I digress!  My menu plan for the 28th April to the 4th May is as follows:-

Saturday dinner - Marinated lamb steaks with barley salad
Sunday dinner - Irish Coddled pork with cider
Monday dinner - Very quick chicken stew (I am planning on making this with chicken breasts)
Tuesday dinner - Leftovers from Mondays dinner
Wednesday dinner - Sticky gammon steaks with steamed greens and rice
Thursday dinner - Black pudding and colcannon
Friday dinner - Sticky pan-roasted sausages with grapes and leftover colcannon

For lunches we will have ham sandwiches, quinoa tabbouleh and scrambled eggs.

Shopping list for the week:-

1. Chicken breasts (usually 10 for 10 at my local butchers)
2. Gammon steaks x 2
3. Lamb steaks x 2
4. Smoked bacon
5. Black pudding
6. Good quality pork sausages (my butcher does some thick sausages that will be suitable)
7. Potatoes
8. Pak Choi
9. Shallots
10. Scallions (spring onions)
11. Cucumber
12. Red chilli
13. Parsley
14. Carrots
15. Swede (29c in Dunnes according to their website)
16. Cabbage (29c in Dunnes according to their website)
17. Baby potatoes
18. Grapes
19. Oranges
20. Apples
21. Bananas
22. Pears (29c in Dunnes according to their website)
23. Mint
24. Red onion (39c for 1 kg in Lidl)
25. Frozen broad beans
26. Eggs
27. Ham
28. Full fat milk - 2 litre
29. Skimmed milk - 3 litres
30. Bread
31. Yoghurt's
32. Cheese
33. Rice Krispies (to make rice krispie buns with the remaining Easter eggs!)

Hmmm...starving now after putting that together. 

TIP - I have to confess that I often find more recipes to try than there are days in my menu planner and often find it difficult choosing between them.  To help me decide I look at the ingredients to work out which recipes I have a few of the ingredients in for already which will make my grocery shop for the week a bit cheaper.  Then I look at the time it takes to prepare and cook to work out if it is feasible for me to attempt to make the recipe mid-week when time is of the essence!  By doing both these things I usually manage to narrow down the list, but if I don't I'll make a note of the recipe for another week.

Meal planner for 23/4/2012 to 27/4/2012

My meal plan for this week is only covering Monday to Friday as I was visiting my parents this weekend so didn't need to worry about my menu for Saturday and Sunday.  This means that my grocery spend for this week should be well within budget. 

So, the menu plan is as follows:-
Monday dinner - Turkey, thyme and leek meatloaf, baby boiled potatoes and green beans
Tuesday dinner - Leftovers
Wednesday dinner - Chicken stir fry
Thursday dinner - Cannellini bean salad with roast cherry tomatoes and chorizo and jacket potatoes
Friday dinner - Spag bol

Lunches for the week will be tuna salads, sandwiches and soup.

Menu planner for 14/4/2012 - 21/4/2012

Last weekend I was away at a wedding which meant that I wasn't as well organised as I could have been with regards to the shopping and my meal planning.  On Monday I picked up some shopping and spent just under €60.  For dinner on Monday night I did squash and chorizo stew, Tuesday and Wednesday was chilli, Thursday we had Salmon, baby boiled potatoes and green beans and tonight we had chicken stir fry.  I had no choice but to make chilli as my daughter requested it every night the previous week, so to make her happy I promised to make it for her.

My meal plan for this next week is as follows:-
Saturday lunch - Leek and potato soup
Saturday dinner - Beef in black bean sauce
Sunday lunch - Leftover soup
Sunday dinner - Roast beef (eye of the round), roasted potatoes and vegetables
Monday dinner - Leftovers from Sundays dinner
Tuesday dinner - soup (depending what veg is on offer)
Wednesday dinner - Skinny Irish Stew
Thursday dinner - Quick chicken chasseur
Friday dinner - Herb and lemon pork chops, mash and vegetables

For lunches this week we will have sandwiches, tuna salad and soup.  The dinners that I am making will make use of meat that we have in the freezer - chicken, lamb and bacon and quite a few of the leftover ingredients in my fridge.

My shopping list for the week includes:-

1. Milk - 2 litres full fat
2. Milk - slimline 1 litre x 3
3. Yoghurt's
4. Cheese - babybel
5. Bread
6. Streaky bacon - I have bacon in the freezer.  It isn't streaky bacon but it will be fine for the chicken chasseur.
7. Beef - eye of the round
8. Beef fillet
9. Ham
10. Lettuce - I checked this fridge and I have these in already!
11. Cucumber
12. Cherry tomatoes
13. Red onion
14. Mushrooms
15. Baby carrots
16. Baby potatoes
17. Parsnips - I checked the fridge and I have these in already!
18. Leeks - I checked the fridge and I have these in already!
19. Parsley
20. Oranges
21. Eggs
22. Bananas
23. Custard - pots of custard to go with some stewed ruhbarb that I will make with some ruhbarb I have in.
24. Weetabix - I don't really need these, but having checked the internet I know they are on offer in Lidl this week, 72 bisks for €4.39 which is 50% extra free so I am going to get some while the offer is on

This week I have a voucher from Dunnes that will give me €8 off my shopping if I spend €80.  I would like to use this voucher, but looking at my list I doubt that my spend will get me near the €80 at the moment.  I am adding a note to the bottom of my shopping list of some store cupboard items that I could do with stocking up in.  I will pick up some of these to take my shopping to €80 so that I can use the voucher.  Although this means I will be spending more money than I intended too, I think it is smart to do this as these are items I will eventually have to buy, so I may as well buy them now and get €8 worth of them for free.  The items I am adding to the bottom of my shopping list are:-

• cans chopped tomatoes
• cans of bean - cannellini, flageolet, kidney etc.
• cans of sweetcorn
• cans of peas
• teabags
• coffee
• formula
• pepper
• stock cubes (though I need to check which flavour I need most before I go)
• toilet roll
• kitchen roll

TIPS - if like me you have a voucher to use there are a few things you can do to make sure that you get the best use out of the voucher.  In this case my voucher is for money off is I spend a certain amount.  To make sure that I spend enough to be able to use the voucher I will use a calculator to tot up my spend as I go around the store.  As well as making sure I spend enough, this will also allow me to make sure that I do not go too far over the amount I need to spend to use the voucher. 

Making a list before you go of store cupboard items that you need means that you can be sure that you are spending your money on items that are off use to you rather than just blindly picking up items to increase your total spend. 

Another good tip is to have a look at the promotions on in store and pick up any of the store cupboard items that are on offer first.  If there is a particularly good promotion I will pick up a few more of these items than I will of the others.

Grocery shopping - meal planner 11/2/2012 to 17/2/2012

Meal plan for Saturday 11th to Friday 17th February is as follows:-

Saturday lunch - Sausage, bacon, black pudding, fried eggs and rolls
Saturday dinner - Barr's butchers steak and onion pie, wedges and baked beans
Sunday lunch - Leek, potato and bacon soup
Sunday dinner - Roast beef, parsnip and apple mash, turnip, broccoli and roast potatoes
Monday dinner - Chicken and veg bake with potatoes
Tuesday dinner - leftovers from Monday
Wednesday dinner - Salmon with leeks and parsnip
Thursday dinner - Spag Bol
Friday dinner - leftovers from Thursday

For lunches we will have ham sandwiches, leek, potato and bacon soup, black bean and chorizo soup and tuna salad.  We were having a big lunch on Saturday owing to my parents visiting.  They brought with them the dinner for Saturday night, which saved a bit of money so I decided to buy some eye of the round to roast for dunner on Sunday.  It is a nice cut of meat and is a bit more expensive than the cut we usually get at the butchers for roasting.

The baby still has some food left in the freezer.  I need to make up some fruit for him to take to creche though.  They mix it in with his breakfast. 

I discovered Aldi this week.  I had never been shopping in aldi before and was pleased to pick up some groceries at a really reasonable price.  I am off to do my grocery shopping tomorrow, so I'll post up my costs for the week then.

It's my mums birthday today, so I am debating picking up something nice for desert.  I'll see what is in the shops when I go.  If I was more organised I'd have made a cake or something instead. 

Grocery budget revisited

My grocery budget has been €80 for a while.  I can not actually remember the last time I went through our household budget, so I decided that this weekend would be a good time to check it out.  Having sat down wand worked out our in comings and outgoings, I've realised that we can now comfortably spend €100 per week now instead of my previous €80.  This is just as well as my baby has gone from one meal a day to 3 meals a day within a matter of weeks.  He has an excellent appetite, so though he is only a baby and eating a small amount of food in comparison with the rest of us, I still need to get some snacks for him and the occasional jar of food which all adds up.

This week is the fifth week I've tracked the money I've spent on the food shopping so I decided to work out how much I've spent to date.  Looking back I can see that I spent €228.60 on grocery shopping.  During the week we've sometimes had to pick up extra milk and bread, so I am adding on an extra €10 per week as I haven't made a proper note of this.  That means that over the last 4 weeks our grocery shopping has come to €268.60 which is an average of €67.15 per week. This is quite low. 

If you are wondering how I've managed to keep my weekly spend so low over the last four weeks it is because I have only had to pick up a few cartons of formula for the baby and no nappies, toiletries or cleaning products.  This is because I stocked up on these items before Christmas when there were some really good offers going in the shops.

Although I now have a budget of €100 per week, I will try to keep this as low as possible.  Any money that I have left over at the end of the next four weeks I will use to buy seeds and supplies for my garden as I will soon be preparing to grow my own vegetables over the spring/summer.

My weekly grocery shop for this week I spent €52.42 in Dunnes, €8.23 in Marks and Spencers, €4.39 in Lidl, €10 in the butchers (10 chicken breasts for €10) and €4.97 in my local green grocer.  That's €80.01 in total.

Grocery shopping - meal planner 31/1/2012 to 3/2/2012

Short week for the meal plan this week as we were away for a few days.  So, the plan for this week is as follows:-

Tuesday dinner - Salmon, broccoli and potatoes
Wednesday dinner - Stir fry
Thursday dinner - Chicken stew (from freezer) and mash
Friday dinner - Fish, chips and peas (all from the freezer)

For lunches I will be making the black bean and chorizo soup I made last week (I have all of the ingredients in), salad and ham sandwiches.

As I'm off on Tuesday (today - better get a move on!) I bought ingredients to do a load of batch cooking for the baby.  I will be making a few recipes from the Annabel Karmel website:-

• Salmon, broccoli and cheese sauce
• Salmon puree
• Chicken puree with carrots and apple
• Carrot puree with lentils and cheese

I'll be freezing these in portions to give to the baby in the evenings when I get in from work.  As well as this, I will be giving him some finger foods over the next week including strips of chicken, plum and ripe pear.

 This week I spent € 60.44 in Dunnes and just under € 10 in Superquinn.  This shop was a bit more expensive as I was picking up specific ingredients for the baby food, including some free range chicken breasts.  When we were away I had to by some jars of food to give to the baby for practicality reasons so I know that spending a bit extra on cheese and free range chicken breasts is still cheaper than buying jars of food for him.