Sunday 17 March 2013

What does £71 buy you?


Since the beginning of this year, we have been doing our food shopping a little differently. We've grown tired of the Supermarkets - they're just so busy and, well, just not for us. So we've been visiting different farm shops and butchers near to us, finding out which ones would be a good fit for us. It's been a much better experience and I now get excited about food shopping - something that I very much used to dread. I love the ease, freshness, value and knowledge  that comes along with people who genuinely love their what they do.  We've been doing our weekly shop every Saturday but this week we planned ahead and did our food shop for 2 weeks. We've been finding the vegetables from the Farm Shop easily last two weeks and our favoured Butcher is a little further afield, so it just makes sense.


We're planning a lot of Baking - Apple and Cinnamon Slide, Jam and Coconut Slice, Breakfast Pastries and Cinnamon Blondies and then some Egg and Cress sandwiches which always go down well in this house. I'm also going to make some Carrot and Bran Muffins for the Freezer. 30 Free Range Eggs for just £4.80 - completely amazing and they have the most beautifully gold yellow yolks.


So, our two weeks worth of shopping came to £71 - we used to spend about £50 a week in the Supermarket, so this gave us quite a saving. We have a menu chalk board in our Kitchen which really helps with meal planning and my forgetful brain! I'm so glad we've changed our shopping habits for so many, many reasons.

9 comments:

ALoadofOldTat said...

Looks pretty wholesome to me. Who said cheap has to be unhealthy?

Lynne said...

Great photo Claire - encapsulates everything I'm excited about these days. There seems to be a little bit of a 'movement' about at the moment,don't you think, de-cluttering, inventorying, clearing out, organising, meal planning, frugal shopping......I'm quite into it myself in a tentative kinda way, as you've seen from my blog - thank you for your regular and cheerful comments by the way!

Meal planning seems to me to be central to all of this, I'll be interested to see how you do with yours and also what you are cooking and baking. (nice to have fresh ideas!)

Lisa said...

Meal planning is the key don't you think. I used to try and stick to a monthly one plan then do one big monthly shop with small top ups but found too often that plans change so its a weekly basis now.
Your table of goodies look so wholesome and appetising. It sounds as though you have found a lot of positives from making this change in your shopping habits.
Lisa x

Vintage Sheet Addict said...

I get all my fruit and veg from my friend who has her own stall on the local market, it's so fresh! :) x

Ladybird Diaries said...

Hi there, thanks for your lovely comments on my blog. Glad to have found yours and am now your newest follower! Love your photos, and yes I agree meal planning is definately key, we have saved so much money (and time) since we started doing this.
M xxxx

Jay said...

Lovely colourful photo's, planning ahead is definitely the key to spending less. I try to do this but then plans change half way through the week!

Hannah said...

How wonderful! I wish I could find eggs that cheap.

Gillian Roe said...

That is such good value! Especially the eggs. Meal planning definitely helps with budgeting.

Gillian x

Louise said...

It was interesting to read this. I love farm shops but there aren't many around me. The closest I know of are at Chatsworth and in Bakewell and those two are not cheap! I wouldn't mind paying more as I do like to support farmers and small business and the produce is always much better but I simply can't afford to. This post makes me want to though, I may be inspired to do some research and see if I can find other farm shops nearby that are so expensive - I bet they're out there if I go looking.