First week of my grocery budget.

Sorry, it`s been about 5 days since my last post, but I`ve been pretty busy, with the kids going back to school MrB going back to work and me cooking, baking and budgeting, as well as working. Sorry I haven`t any pics yet of my bakes etc.  I`m hoping to sort this out this coming week (fingers crossed). 

I set my budget for grocery shopping at a very generous £100 for this week and hoping to reduce this as the weeks go on.  So how did I get on? Well I spent  £88.17, not too bad, but of course I could do a lot better. I used a mix of the local shops (butchers, bakery, greengrocers and mini market, then did one shop at the large Tesco near us).  Unfortunately the bakery will be just a treat every now and then, as this is a little too expensive, such a shame as I would like to support the local shops where possible. There was no meal plan for last week, as I wanted to use up any Christmas food left over, but I`ll be doing one for next week, later today, so hoping this will help bring my spends down.

A first for me, was to make choc chip brioche bread. I tried 2 recipes both from the internet, I can`t remember where I got the first recipe from, but it was a disaster. It said to use plain flour, which I thought alittle odd, as it was a bread I was making, it did prove up, but not as much as I had hoped and when I baked it, the bread was dense and the crust was uneven and horrible.  I did freeze this as I thought I could maybe make this in to bread pudding or bread and butter pudding and I`m afraid the recipe, went straight into the bin.  The second was a success. This recipe was from `The busy mamas` and it was so light and delish, that the boys kept going back for more. It`s quite a long process, with the first proving taking over 8 hours in the fridge, then another 3 hours for the second proving, but well worth it. It is something that I would love to make more of in the future.

     MrsB

xx