A Bargain Shopping Spree

It's Wednesday - food shopping day.  The list isn't as long this week as it's just the two of us and we're on a bit of a health kick.  Well, that's to say, I am (as I have a dress to make sure I get into for 9th May) and Antony is being reluctantly dragged along for the ride.

We had to whizz round the shops at lightning speed this morning as we had this nice fella...

... James Piekos from BBC Radio Humberside coming to interview us about the blog for the David Burns morning show.

Here's our list, well crumpled from being in and out of my pocket but thankfully a bit better organised than last week's sad effort.

This is the translation:

Bread Stall                  Butcher                       Fishmonger                     Other
2 loaves bread               500g lamb mince           Dozen raw prawns           Tinned Toms x 2
                                     2 chicken breasts                                                   Shampoo
                                     6 sausages                                                             Full Fat Milk


Greengrocer                                                      Deli
Eggs                                                                     Chicken Stock
Bananas                                                               Butter
Berries                                                                 Fish Sauce
Lemons x 2                                                          Haloumi
Red Chillis x 7                                                     Wild Rice
Flat Leaf Parsley                                                  Yogurts
Basil                                                                     Natural Yogurt
Green Beans                                                        Semi Skimmed Milk
Jacket Potatoes                                                   Cheese
Cherry Tomatoes
Red Onions x 3
Spring Onions
Carrot
Red Chicory
Rocket/Watercress
Salad Leaves
Mint
Tomatoes
Oregano
Limes x 3
Peas 125g
Broad Beans 100g
Coriander

Now that we're getting the hang of where we can find things, it's much easier to organise the list by shop.  There were a few things we couldn't get (highlighted in yellow) but to be fair I still have some parsley and mint from my mega purchase on the market last Saturday and they seem to be surviving pretty well with my new tlc approach.  But fresh herbs are definitely not easy to find so maybe there's a gap in the market there??

Turns out that chicory doesn't like the gloomy weather and goes green and bitter so I'll have to wait until the sun comes out until the greengrocer has it again.

And we didn't really have time to track down Shampoo. There's still some in the bottle so I won't be scaring small children away with my medusa locks for a few days yet.  I think it may have to be an independent chemist for that.  If we have one. Best look into that.

Instead of Peas and Broad Beans (which I dutifully suffer because they're good for you), we bought Sugar Snap Peas and Green Beans.  We also bought some Rhubarb because it looked nice and I quite fancy making a crumble at the weekend.

Wild rice was always a long shot and since we have the biggest bag of basmati rice known to man (bought by Antony back in January and still going strong!), we'll just use that instead.  The wild rice takes forever to cook anyway so probably a blessing in disguise.

So here's the haul when we got it home.

You can just about see the raw prawns on the right hand side of the pic - a dozen great big ones which cost us £4.

The meat from the butcher cost £10.21 but that will do 5 meals.  We'll be making a Ragu with the lamb mince and another pasta sauce with the sausages and half of both will go into our tiny freezer for another day.

So what about overall value for money?  Well, we spent a total of £56.86.  A cheap week for us as we nearly always spend at least £60 at the supermarket.  And Antony, heroic soul that he is, has price checked with 2 different supermarkets this week.  We think the same shop would have cost us:

£62.53 at Tesco
£63.57 at Waitrose

That's a saving of at least £5.67.  And let's not forget the buzz of shopping local which must be worth at least a tenner.

As fruit and veg was easily the longest bit of the list, we thought we should see how that compares on its own.  We spent £19.90 at the greengrocer.  The same items would have cost us £24.77 at Tesco and  £25.19 at Waitrose.

All good news for little and local.

I can vouch for the tastiness of the chicken which we've just scoffed down tonight.  Stir fried with green beans, basil and chilli.

Just a shame that Antony nearly blinded himself putting in his contact lenses to go and play basketball, forgetting that he'd only just chopped the chilli.  If you've ever done it, you'll know that even well washed hands can't beat the power of the fresh chilli.  Oops.