I'm doing a kind of experiment to see how long we can survive on our present food stocks before having to go shopping again....we want to save money for next year and the best way to do that is not to go shopping! We have full cupboards, fridges and freezers (a tall fridge freezer in the kitchen, tall larder freezer and under counter spare fridge in the utility room), so in theory if using up what we already have, we shouldn't have to go shopping for 2 or 3 weeks, or even longer. We'll probably run out of fresh green veg fairly quickly, but have plenty of other fresh veg (onions, leeks, potatoes, sweet potatoes, butternut squash) and loads of frozen, plus tins of beans, other pulses, sweetcorn, tomatoes etc, and some dried pulses, peas and beans. We have several cartons of milk in the freezer and lots of cheese and butter, but once the dairy stuff runs out we will have to go shopping then.
The idea is to use up what we have without resorting to going out and buying anything....if I run out of something I'll either improvise or go without, there's sure to be an alternative. It might mean some 'interesting' meals further down the line!
I need to use up some things in the freezers first, as I need to make space for some meat joints for Christmas and New Year. I'm using Mysupermarket to keep an eye on the cost of meat joints, once they're a good price then we will be going out to buy them, but only the meat. We'll probably get a large gammon, leg of pork and possibly a beef joint, we rarely have turkey as we're not really fond of it. I'd like to buy the meat from a local butcher, but can't afford to.
Having said I need to make space, I've made sausage rolls to freeze today. About 2 dozen small ones, and 4 large ones for us to have for lunches a couple of times. I also made a large veggie pasty, using some leftover lentil & cheese mixture I made for something else.
The sausage rolls were made using a pack of Cumberland sausages. I deskinned them then mixed the meat with some chutney, a big squirt of tomato puree and some grated Cheddar.
So today is the first day of no shopping or spending on food.
We have stocked up as much as we can, in hope not to need to enter a supermarket in December, anything fresh we need in the coming weeks and for 25th will be purchased from out local Co-op, we have saved £45 on their reward card.
ReplyDeleteIf you have a Tesco close by they have 1kg of boneless leg pork on offer until 26th at £2.50 each xx
ReplyDeleteYou can do it Sue. x
ReplyDeleteGood luck with your challenge. You are such a creative cook I'm sure you will last a lot longer than many of us could!
DeleteOoh a good Challenge. I like a challenge … have you noticed ;-)
ReplyDelete