But I am coming back. Posts in preparation: Buy it or make it: Yogurt and a update on my average weekly grocery spend.

Much to my joy I found free range split chickens marked down to less than the price of a regular whole bird so I had to have a couple of those… One has gone in the freezer, which is only small and now full to bursting so we won’t buy meat for a bit. Everything else I bought there was on special – coconut and rice milk, Heinz baked beans for $1 (so much better than Coles and great for a quick budget meal), fancy Birds Eye frozen lemon pepper salmon (it’s pretty yummy but too expensive normally – $7 for two small fillets makes it a little less outrageous than the normal $10), Nando’s Hot Peri-Peri sauce (half price so I got one for the pantry) and Nice and Natural cereal bars (I’m still making my own but need back ups).

The supermarkets have a few things for Xmas on special like frozen turkey and chocolates, so if you are celebrating with a big spread it’s a good time to make a list and think about what will keep in the pantry or freezer until December. Then you can pick it up beforehand if it goes on special and, best case scenario, you’ll only need to fight the crowds to get a few perishables a couple of days before. I only just decided to cater for 6 to 8 people last week so I need to get on to it myself!

This week I spent $28.43 in Coles (after the $10 voucher) and $12.63 in Aldi on food. Take off 14c for the value of the flybuys points earned and add on $40 for our organic veggie delivery and that makes $80.92. That brings our our average to date down to $126.82.

Meal plan

Friday – Lunch: tuna salad; Dinner: chicken tacos using shredded meat from one of the split chickens I got marked down.

Saturday – L: lunch at a cafe; D: left over roast chicken with salad

Sunday – L: we are volunteering at a charity day with a sausage sizzle; D: salmon with green salad, asparagus and potatoes

Monday: L: steak sandwich with some healthy green trimmings D: veggie stir fry with nuts and seeds

Tuesday – L: left over stir fry D: chicken risotto

Wednesday – L: left over risotto D: some sort of made up on the spot slow cooker lentil & veggie curry

Thursday – L: left over curry D: slow cooker sausage casserole

Happy grocery hacking!

J

In terms of specials, I picked up a couple of frozen Balfours premium potato topped pies for the freezer for $4.65 and my favourite tomato sauce by the brand Outback Spirit for $2.25. We also picked up a free range Lilydale chicken mini-roast for $10, which is $3 off the usual price. I am aware that a whole chicken is a similar price but these are stuffed with dates and quinoa and my mouth started watering and I was sucked in…

Tip Top ultra thick sliced raisin toast was on special $2.90 and the plan is that hubby takes it for snacks at work (if I don’t eat it first). Non-food specials – if you need laundry liquid, Dynamo is half price in Coles and Omo is half price in Woolies this week. I don’t think I ever pay full price!

I got a few markdown bargains in the organic meat section – two packs of organic beef sausages (nitrite free as far as I can tell) have gone in the freezer for a future sausage casserole and a BBQ and a pack of frying steak will do for a future beef stew or weekend sandwiches or maybe tacos.

The grocery bill got a bit blown up by spending $18 on coffee beans but I’ve worked out it costs about a dollar to make a flat white at home compared to $3-4 at a cafe. So if like me you live with a caffeine addict that $18 is well spent!

Altogether the bill at Coles was $139.47 but $25.23 was on non-food items. I used a triple points voucher and so collected 442 points, or a future saving of $2.21. So the adjusted total at Coles was $139.47 – $25.23 – $2.21 = $112.03. Add to that the $40 veggie delivery plus $19 for beer and that comes to a whopping $171.03. Our average weekly spend to date is $136.00, about $36 higher than I’d like.

Meal plan

Snacks: We are going to make our own South African rusks this week instead of paying $5.75 for imported rusks at Coles – I have high hopes for this week’s Buy it or Make it installment! Then we’ve got muesli bars and the raisin toast plus fruit to snack on.

Friday – Lunch: salad with roasted beets and radishes with fennel and feta; Dinner: chicken risotto (we didn’t have it last week, had pizza from the freezer instead…)

Saturday – L: left over risotto with avocado salad; D: out with friends for a birthday dinner at a seafood place

Sunday – L: beefburgers with salad and feta; D: roast $10 chicken with roast potatoes, fennel and carrots

Monday – L: left over chicken with salad and rice; D: slow cooker veggie stew with chickpeas

Tuesday: L: left over chickpea stew eaten cold with boiled egg; D: beef pie, mash and veggies

Wednesday: L: tuna and rice salad; D: slow cooker chicken curry

Thursday: L: left over curry; D: lazy day – something from the freezer like a veggie pizza…

Happy grocery hacking!

J

This week we went shopping at Woolies AND Coles. We didn’t need a lot of things, so we just mainly bought specials for the pantry and freezer. I don’t really like going to two places, it is such a waste of energy, but Nudie juice was $5 at Coles and I’ve been waiting for some preservative free and not from concentrate juice to go on special so that I can make some homemade cider. We also picked up Ayam coconut milk (two for $3.60 at Coles) to satisfy cravings for Tom Ka Gai (coconut milk based chicken soup) and coconut cream for future dessert treats. And I needed to spend the $5 voucher we received last week.

At Woolies, their Select home brand pizzas are half price at $2.60 so we are trying them out tonight. Also half price are Stewarts frozen fish portions (2 portions for $3.50) and Twinings tea bags (worth getting for the flavour, also $3.50). Macro free range chicken breast fillets are on special this week also at $14.99 a kilo which was cheaper than their thighs so I got a large pack of 3 breasts which will cover 2 meals (one large breast has gone in the freezer). Hubby talked me into getting some Magnums (no, I shouldn’t take him shopping) which were also on promotion, I think 40% off. Woolies markdown stickers are not brightly coloured and almost impossible to spot but we did get some smoked salmon pieces for a birthday brunch at home for $2.50 (down from $6).

Altogether on the shop we spent $53.04 in Woolies (plus $6.14 on non-food items), $16 in Coles and $40 on our veggie box delivery, which totals $119.04. That inches our weekly average spend down a bit to $127.24.

Here’s the meal plan:

Friday: Lunch – rice salad with tuna; D – tom ka gai with chinese greens, carrot and capsicum.

Saturday: L – left over soup; D – frozen pizza

Sunday: L – chicken salad; D – Out with friends

Monday: Brunch- salmon, avocado, spinach and poached eggs; D: spinach and ricotta cannelloni

Tuesday: L – left over cannelloni; D – frozen fish with potatoes and plenty of veggies

Wednesday: L – tuna sandwich; D: chick pea veggie curry with boiled egg

Thursday: L – left over curry ; D: chicken risotto

Happy grocery hacking!

J

Verdict on the Woolies Select pizza: more Pizza Hut than Italian restaurant, but edible. The base was on the thick side and the topping needs extras adding at home to beef up the flavour. We won’t get them again unless they are half price.

We wouldn’t have hit the $120 without some decent specials to stock up on. This is not a particularly healthy list of things, but we’ll generally only eat one or two of the naughty things a week, they are to stock the freezer while they are cheap. We bought frozen Seargent’s chicken pies, Angus beef burgers, 3 x boxes of Weetbix Bites (hubby’s fave), Nutella, Ribena, Nice and Natural muesli bars, Lindt chocolate, Sakata rice crackers, corn chips and a tub of ricotta, all on special.

The ricotta has a really long use by date so sits in the fridge for some future spinach and ricotta meal (I have the cannelloni tubes and tomato passata in the pantry and the spinach comes fresh in my weekly veggie delivery). The corn chips and crackers are for some future social gathering either at mine or someone else’s. I hope they last that long!

We also got a few goodies on markdown: A shepherd’s pie from the cooler section (got it for $5, was $14 – who pays that?), some scones from the bakery ($1.80 for six) and $1 for a couple of chocolate mousse tubs.

Here’s the meal plan:

Breakfasts are the usual (see earlier weeks)

Snacks: homemade muesli bars, chocolate (one Lindt square after dinner is our treat!), fruit, scones

Friday: Lunch: chicken pie with braised red cabbage side; Dinner: Store bought shepherds pie with salad leaves and left over red cabbage.

Saturday: L: left over shepherd’s pie with salad; D: we’ll go out and have choc mousse for dessert at home

Sunday: L: beef burgers with lots of salad and home roasted beetroot; D: kind of nicoise tuna/ egg salad with asparagus.

Monday: L: more salad (we have lots of beetroot and green leaves in the fridge!); D: green soup, followed by fish and chips from freezer.

Tuesday: L: tuna sandwich; D: slow cooker beef stew with mashed potato

Wednesday: L: egg salad; D: tacos using the left over beef stew plus tomato, salad, onion

Thursday: L: anniversary lunch out??; probably a sandwich or salad, or maybe a pizza from the freezer.

We spent $124.35 in Coles, but $14 was for non-food items, so that’s $110.35 on food. Add $40 for our weekly veggie delivery and that makes $150.35. The Coles total does include ammonia and Coke that hubby is using to speed up the garden compost breakdown (he found some recipe on YouTube, I don’t ask questions!) so that we can use it on our edible garden, so it seems right to include that with our food total.

Average weekly shop to date: $129.97. We’ll be needing a couple of small spend weeks to bring this average down if I’m to meet my goal of $100 average spend a week!

Happy grocery hacking!

J

All up we spent $75.52 and Coles tells us on the receipt that we received $10.79 in savings. $8.79 was for non-grocery items and we got double points today, which means we earned 150 points or 75c. There were bonus points on offer if you bought Coles beef steak, $7.50 of bakery products or $22 of meat products but we were in a rush and I forgot. So our total comes to $75.52 – $8.79 (non grocery) – 75c (points) + $40 organic veggie box = $105.98.

Average spend to date: (£133.58 (last week) + $105.98) / 2 = $119.78.

This week’s meal plan:

Breakfast all week: a choice of oats, muesli or weetbix. Snacks: muesli bars, yoghurt, fruit and nuts.

Friday – Lunch: Sandwich; Dinner: Beef stir fry

Saturday – L: Left over stir fry; D: we’ll eat out

Sunday – L: tuna and rice ; D: hot smoked salmon with fennel & celery salad and potato

Monday – L: tuna or chicken sandwich; D: spinach and ricotta cannelloni

Tuesday – L: leftover cannelloni; D: slow cooker chicken thigh curry with ginger

Wednesday – L: leftover curry; D: chickpea & vegetable stew with fresh chilli

Thursday – L: left over stew; D: pizza night or something else easy from the freezer.

Happy grocery hacking!

J

a) the specials in the catalogues put out by the supermarkets only contain a selection of the offers that week, so it’s hard to know what is on special until you get there; plus

b)you might get lucky with a few marked down items that are close to expiry. It is embarrassing just how excited I get over a tray of meat with 80% off! And then you might want to eat one or two of those items before they expire and so you don’t need to freeze them; and also..

c) I like to shop in the second half of the week because the promotional bonus point type offers run by Flybuys & Coles usually run from Thursday to Sunday. However, I get an organic veggie box delivery on a Monday (I don’t get to choose the day). The veggie box is seasonal and sometimes I get inspired to rethink our menu because the guys at The Organic Scarecrow have thrown in something unusual. One week I received a whole red cabbage, something I would never think to buy, and as a result learned to make a beautiful polish cabbage and sausage casserole and also a braised cabbage side dish to have with a pie. I’ll write a separate post about why I buy organic.

So this means that I concentrate on stocking up groceries when they are low priced, and then make a meal plan based on what I’ve just bought plus what I’ve already got in the pantry and freezer. Then I might adjust that if I have some unexpected veggies arrive on the Monday! I think it’s still important to make a meal plan so that all the fresh food gets used up and nothing is wasted.

It’s a bit like making  a household budget for the coming month using the income you earned last month, a really useful tactic when your income is variable. Grocery specials are also variable, so if you want to avoid paying high prices for your food, you need to be able to make a meal with what you’ve got if specials and markdowns are thin on the ground one week. If you want a worked example of the last month’s income/ this month’s budget approach, this is something that Ashley at Blogging Away Debt is working to right now.

I went shopping at Coles this week, and the specials that appealed to me were pretty thin on the ground to be honest. I got two half price loaves of bread (Abbots Village Bakery – the light rye and the country grain are pretty tasty), one is for the freezer, and four frozen Dr Oetker pizzas at $5 a pop, which will keep us going until they are next on special. These and the McCain’s thin base ones are the only frozen pizzas we go for. The cheaper ones in Aldi and the When In Rome range we find barely edible! On special I also got some Oat Milk (I can’t drink a lot of cow milk so use 1 litre per week from the non-soy, non-dairy alternatives), and a big box of cereal bars and canned tuna. I found a meatloaf and some organic chicken thighs both with 60% off. The thighs have gone in the freezer and the meatloaf we will have tonight. To be honest, I’ve never eaten meatloaf in my life, but at $2.30 for this massive chunk of…. something, I was curious!

My targeted offer this week from Coles & Flybuys was to spend $80 and get 500 bonus points (equivalent to $2.50 off the total). I hit $82.38 but $6.30 was for non-grocery items. Add on $40 for the veggie box, take off the non-grocery items and the bonus point saving and that makes $113.58. We are also out of beer, so we probably spend about $130 this week all up.

Here’s the menu plan as it stands at the moment:

Breakfasts all week – a choice of oats, weetbix, weetbix bites, buckwheat flakes, muesli, eggs on toast.

Friday: Lunch – avo on bread; Dinner – meatloaf* with salad

Saturday:  L – leftover meatloaf; D – we’ll eat out

Sunday: L – egg salad; D – moroccan-y root vegetable stew with chickpeas and a side of salad greens

Monday: L – left over stew; D – spicy sausage and lentil casserole

Tuesday: L – left over casserole; D – shepherd’s pie with sweet potato topping

Wednesday: L – left over shepherd’s pie; D – ‘sort of risotto’ with salmon, ricotta and spring vegetables

Thursday: L – lunch out with friends; D – frozen pizza or something else easy

Most weeks we’ll have one or two lunches out and one dinner out, so if you want to compare our spend to yours, factor it up or down according to how often you eat out.

Happy grocery hacking!

J

UPDATE: Meatloaf – not bad at all actually.