Dh and I did a month's food shopping today and spent ...

[Miaou]

£98.05

Beat that!!

tried those lemon cookies - they werte fabby, better once cold thou have decided to try it with orange zest fruit/coconut as well instead of the lemon, will let you know how I go.

oooh glad you liked them munz! Coconut is a good idea - I'm not a fan of coconut so that would not have occurred to me

Hey Miaou, did I miss an announcement? Morning sickness?

Due in July!!

CONGRATULATIONS!!!

sorry

I think you had them put it in when they took your appendix out

Congrats miaou and mrmiaou!!
I've been reading the thread and I'm inspired! We normally spend about £50 per week for me and DB (DD is breast fed) Definitely gonna start making meals from scratch, money's tight while I'm on mat leave. You should def get MN award!

Congrats Miaou - I am due 3 weeks today, and if you feel like I felt at the begining I dont know how you can even wrte about food

This end of the journey food is all I can think about - and obviously going on maternity leave, need to find ways of reducing outgoings and making sure we all still eat well - thanks to you and Mr M. I think we;ll actually eat better!

BTW DD has eaten nearly all the shortbread - must find somewhere to put it as soon as it's out of the oven that she ca'nt reach. Out of 26 pieces made this moring we have 4 left - still it's a compliment to my cooking I suppose

pmsl Gillian!!

Thanks for the compliments guys - I did wonder if this might be a bit tedious to wade through but it seems some people are valiantly doing so . Hello princesscarrie, welcome to the gang!

I think my interest in food is about to wane rapidly VanillaMilkshake - m/s comes and goes in waves atm but am expecting it to hit like a brick wall very soon - at which point I shall leave MrMiaou to do all the posting!!

some of these recipes are great

congrats on pregnancy

Am I the only one who is not inspired? Fair play to you if you eat well and are happy on £98 a month.

Do you think if you suddenly had a big increase in your income you would increase what you spend on food? Also what is your biggest expense and where does the food bill come? Just curious.

drosophila, it depends on your point of view. If you have more than £100 to spend on food per month, then why would you want to stick to such a tight budget? It's hard work and it does limit your choices. Naturally, if we had more money to spend, we would spend more on food - not a vast amount more, but we wouldn't be so budget conscious and count every penny.

Not sure if I understand your last question, but if you mean what proportion of your income do you spend on food, it's like this:

Income: £880
Rent: £500
Council tax: £60
Household bills: £200
Therefore: £120 left for food, clothing and petrol.

Hopefully we won't have to stick on this budget for long!

First of all thank you Miaou and Mr Miaou, and Vanillamilkshake. I have bought the ingredients and will be trying your recipes tomorrow!

dh and I looked up Lochaline. Amazing and fantastic!!. dh worked/travelled in Scotland for nearly a year; he loved Fort Augustus, Kingussie, Aviemore, Skye etc. WQould love to ask more questions about how and where you live!

Drosophila, I think where they (the Miaous) live plays a huge part in what and how they eat.

Mercy, feel free! Either on here on email, I don't mind

drosophila - i agree with you up to a point and i'm lucky i dont have to budget this tightly. however, i am crap generally with budgeting with food so if someone can provide cheap but tasty recipes for homemade stuff i might not cook otherwise then i'm all for it

Miaou, you have inspired me to get back on the horse!

Tonight I baked some delicous brownies and, from an MN recipe, some lovely flapjacks w/condensed milk.

Bon apetit!

cool!!

Am doing banana cake/bread this monring as I was too tired yesterday - however did manage a fab stir-fry for dinner. DH is quite impressed.

As for the budget thing our normal weekly shopping budget is £55. But if I can make savings on this and have a bit more freedom elsewhere then great, I am all for that.

Miaou - told DH last night about your thread as he had been wondering about my new drive for better meals etc. But he asked what he should have for cold drinks as water just tastes wet - he hates milk and can't abide squash (as I would still have to get that). So he has made me promise to still get of lemonade and also his choc-ices.

ooh expat, how do u do your brownies? are they the no bake choccy squares/does anyone know how to do those?

miaou - did 16 biccys at 2pm by 7pm we#'d had the lot! lol. DH even ate the slightly burnt ones! lol. he recosn if I do a batch on a w/e they'll last the week! lol.

drop same as we have a budget of £150 for food, but normally I go over, it's silly little things like the busicuts the jam tarts cakes etc bread - god we go thru 4 loaves with just 2 of us in about 10 days, so it's easy to see where our food budget goes to! also I've stopped working and have more spre time also about £900 p/m less than we had before so for us we have to be strict otherwise we end up with huge bills.

Miaou - can you get any assistance with your rent at all?

In theory we can, munz. But the housing people at the council are horrible. Last year they cancelled our claim and we had to appeal - despite being entitled they knocked back our appeal four times and we had to pay the rent ourselves. We had to borrow £800 from my parents and we have no way of paying this money back to them. We just can't risk being put in that situation again so we just manage on our Working Tax Credit and pay the rent out of that.

Miow that is outragouse

is there not some body higher up you can appeal to

BTW, despite not replying (until now) i have been watching this thread very closely and i am VERY impressed...

IMO we all pay taxes etc... and if you are entitled to something you might as well have it... would the CAB help you... or tell you how to appeal / start again etc?

I know nannyl - but tbh the appeals last time just about lost us the will to live! It's the person who makes the final decision who is the really awkward one. And we are past the deadline for appeals now.

This is (hopefully) only a short-term situation so we decided it was just more stress and worry than it was worth. And they only pay a fraction of the rent anyway as they say rents are too high round here (er, that'll be because of the housing shortage then ). On paper it must look like a mad decision but honestly I couldn't go through all that worry again, I'd rather be really poor!

And nice to hear you are enjoying the thread nannyl - please feel free to contribute ideas and recipes too!

Expat - can you post your brownie recipe? Sound yummy ...

miaou.

yes expat come on girl! lol.

did I read you right miaou you put fruit in your flapjacks? mine always come out solid so does that mean too much syrup or too much cooking?

and I was going to make another batch of cookies today for m&d - best get moving! lol.

got a beef pudding in for lunch today so it's feeling very warm and homely in the munz household

ooh also do you guys do the 2 for £5 chickens if you're not fussy on organic? we also tend to get what ever meat our butcher has on offer down here as he seems to have a differnt one each week - for example he had 2LB of Dicked pork for £3.99 don't know what i'm going to do with it all yet but it will make at least 5 meals for us so was very pleased with that.