Yellow Sticker Challenge - Day Two

I might have been 'robbed' in yesterday's post about the Co-op but I struck gold with my little foray into Marks and Spencer.  Talk about being in the right place just at the right time.  As I walked in two ladies were going round with a small trolley adjusting the yellow stickers that were dotted around on lots of various shelves with to quote them 'the second reductions of the day'.

I managed by circling a couple of times to get this little lot, some first reductions and some second, which will be added to many meals over the course of this Challenge.

My biggest coup were these packs of ham slices,  at first I thought they each contained four slices, but it turns out after using one pack on buns for Alan's lunch yesterday that each pack actually contains eight wafer thin slices.

I bought eight packets at just 25p each, and no, I didn't nab them all before anyone accuses me of being Little Miss Greedy Guts, there must have been about forty packs all reduced to this price which lots of other people were gradually taking.

I also picked up two packs of these Starter Selections.

At just 65p for each pack they were a really good bargain ... and ideal Six Nations snacking food along with a bottle of beer. 

After I had paid the till spat out a coupon for £5 off a £35 shop, perhaps to be used after the Challenge is over.  I only tend to use these if there is something we really do need to stock upon so I will wait and see as I have until the 19th to use it.

An interesting evening meal.  

My Wicked Curried Cauli ready meal and Alan's Cheese Salad Bowl from this M&S shop, on a bed of Mixed Leaves ... all YS items.

Sorry for the slightly blurry photo ... and that was before I drank my glass of cider  ;-)


Figures

Spent in M&S  £12.50    Original Price  £26.95    Saving me £14.45

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Yellow Sticker Challenge - Day One

I'm not entirely sure how I'm going to post about this Challenge as obviously what I buy one day might not feature in the meals for that day, and to be entirely truthful I'm in a bit of a slapdash mood with my shopping, cooking and life in general at the moment.

So I think what you will be getting are photos of the entire YS buy from each shop and then perhaps a close up of individual items ... if I have something to say about them.

This yoghurt for example.

£2.75 for a yogurt ...now that's expensive I thought ... but I'll give it a go for £1.35

But gosh, it was delicious.

We had half each for breakfast as obviously it being a day over it's Use By date we did need to use it up.  I had my half of the tub with some Deliciously Ella Nutty Muesli, some mixed seeds and a dollop of peanut butter, and Alan had his with Asda own label Tropical Granola

This was something else I doubt I would pay full price for, and to be honest I was not overly impressed with either the flavours or the quantity for the money.  It was nice to have something that cooked in four minutes though and had minimal washing up.

The bread will be used for toast this week and is very tasty.

Also picked up at the start of the Challenge were these two items from the Co-op.

Red stickers rather than yellow but hey-ho bargains can be colour blind!!

The crumpets made for a lovely and rare for us second course to breakfast, eaten directly after the yoghurt and muesli.  These I would buy again and at full price as they were lovely.

BUT ... I have just found out on mysupermarket.co.uk that these are on special offer everywhere except the Co-op  for just 50p a pack ... I WOZ ROBBED!!


Figures

Spent in Tesco £4.61   Original Price £7.85    Saving me  £3.24

Spent in Co-op £2.01   Original Price £2.79   Saving me 78p



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It's my eldest son's birthday today, and he is a chip off the old block as most nights straight after work he calls to his local supermarket and peruses the reduced to clear sections for his ingredients for tea and the following days packed lunch.  Happy Birthday Simon ... I could have got you a YS birthday cake today but it would have cost too much to post it up to Cumbria so sorry ... you'll have to find your own.

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The Yellow Sticker Challenge Rules

As you can see I am already drinking YS stuff ... I think our local Tesco found some of the old label Everyday Value items lurking in the warehouse.  The trolley of yellow stickered bargains by the front doors was full of them the other night, so I picked up a few bargains.

And now the rules.  Every Challenge has to have a backbone of rules to keep me on the straight and narrow ..  so off the top of my head the rules for this one are:


Every meal for the next seven days is to contain at least one Yellow Sticker item.

Hence forth Yellow Stickers will be know as YS.
I'm sick of typing it in full already  :-)

I will photograph all my purchases.

I may eat anything I want ...as long as it had a YS when it was bought.

I may not clear the YS shelves in one fell swoop and buy all my food in one go.

I can however buy one day's food in one go.

I must try and visit at least four different supermarkets/shops on different days during the course of the Challenge.

YS items may be whole meals, as in Ready Meals or the ingredients for meals.

I must not sharpen my elbows and enter into scrummages with people that may need the food more than I do.

If this all goes pear shaped ... I must not sulk  :-)


The Challenge starts on Monday.



Sue xx

Yellow Sticker Shopping Challenge - Edited

So the new Challenge has been picked and we will be off and running with the Yellow Sticker Challenge in a couple of days.  In the meantime I am getting my eye in and looking everywhere I go for bargains, yellow sticker items and other reduced to clear goodies.

Yesterday for instance, while I was at Wyevale in Altrincham for a spot of lunch with Mum, I spied this little chappy all alone on a shelf.  He's a doorstop ... but not in our house, nope we are never normal but I'm sure you have all sussed that out by now.  

We already have one exactly the same guarding the spare-room door, not to keep it open but to protect the carpet on the outside of the room when the door is closed!   Our lovely boy Ginger the cat, thinks that every closed door is a challenge that should be dug under, and he will spend minutes at a time frantically pulling the carpet up.  He has also started doing that on our little landing area halfway up the stairs, and I'm finding myself more and more frequently having to push the fitted carpet back into place.

Our first doggy doorstop cost me £10 I think a few years ago, but this chap was reduced to 70% off ... 

... which means he cost me the grand total of £3.90, and I think he will come in very handy.

Now I know he's not got a yellow sticker and he's not edible, but I think for the duration of the seven day Challenge if I see something like this I will break out of 'yellow sticker 'mode and add any multi coloured sticker bargains to my shopping basket as well.

It would have been rude to have left such a handsome and useful little chappy behind.

Edited to add ...

Doggy Twins  :-)

I'll be back tomorrow with my Yellow Sticker Challenge shopping rules.

Sue xx

The Challenge is Chosen

Yay ... the Challenge has been chosen.

As you can see from my little 'chart' ... gosh it's all hi-tech here ... the winner, by the narrowest of margins is Yellow Sticker Shopping.

In joint second place we have Cook from One Book and Shopping Hauls  (spend £10 per day in a different shop each day).

In third place we have 50p a Day.

So in the interests of fairness and to thank you all for voting, I will work my way through each of these four winning Challenges first.  I will however hang onto the 'scorecard' and perhaps do the others if you want me to at a later date.

Votes were counted from the comments on the last post and from emails received up to and including this morning.

Voting is now closed ... if you continue to vote your vote will not count but you may still be charged   ... haha just kidding 😆😃🙃

Shocked at the result ... just a bit!!

I was a bit surprised to be honest.  I don't really know what I was expecting but I thought as blogland has a lot of bargain hunting yellow sticker shoppers it may be a bit overkill.  But the majority has spoken and once I've sat and thought about things for a bit, and maybe worked out a few rules etc, I will be out with sharpened elbows fighting through the scrummage at the supermarket seeing what bargains I can pick up to eat and post about.

Just kidding I think I'll do it the civilised way ... maybe I'll start in Marks and Sparks to get the ball rolling.

Sue xx

A New Challenge?

Just a tin of sweets from Alan's Christmas stocking, I couldn't resist buying it for him, naughty really because it's full of boiled sweets ... but don't worry I'll help him eat them  ;-)

Anyway I was stood staring at it the other day in a little thoughtful world of my own, as one by one I added boxes and bags of fruit from the freezer to the jam pan.  

Blackberries, blueberries, strawberries, lemon slices and rhubarb, lots of lovely tart rhubarb.  You can see now why the shelves of the freezer emptied so magnificently!

The apples from the fridge drawer went in too ...

... then finally a block of apple puree from the freezer.

Once there was no fruit left to be seen in the freezer or fridge I brought the large jam pan up to a roaring boil.

Finally after a good simmer in the bottom oven of the Aga for an hour I mashed everything up a bit with the potato masher.

And poured it into my jelly straining bags to be left overnight.

All the while thinking and pondering over what to do as my next Challenge.

Now the strained and made up jelly is jarred and labelled ...

... and because of the large amount of rhubarb in there I am loving it.  

There is no overly sweet edge, even though as with all jams and jellies there is a lot of sugar incorporated into each and every jar.  Delicious and a perfect jelly like set.

I am still pondering though.

The ideas in my head at the moment, both from my own brainwaves and from folk that have emailed me with suggestions, are currently a choice between ...

Wartime Rationing

50p a Day Budget

with a basic store cupboard

Decluttering

A Ten Item Wardrobe

and what I wore each day from the choices made.

Money Saving Tips

Animal Photos

 Shopping Hauls

£10 spent in a different shop each day, every day for 7 days

A Specific Diet or Way of Eating

Yellow Sticker Only Shopping

Cooking from One Recipe Book Only 

our evening meal each day

I really don't know what to do but as you can see I have lots of choices up to now.  Whatever it is it will be just a seven day Challenge.  

Maybe I'll leave it up to you ...  maybe  :-)

What Katy ... err I mean Sue ... Did Next

So that was it, the end of the Eat the Stores Challenge. So what did I do next ... well my first job was to empty, sort out and clean the kitchen shelves.

I mixed a few of the contents of the jars together, split peas, yellow peas and pearl barley were all amalgamated with the dried soup mix, and neatly filled just the one jar instead of four.  I took away the Christmas lights and strung them carefully in the living room to be used as cosy lighting until the batteries run out.  The reason they were lying on the shelf and not hanging along the edge as usual is that I accidentally smashed two of the glass balls, and they weren't safe to hang over a food preparation area.

Then the shelves were given a good clean, everything I wanted on there was put back in place and it ended up looking like the top picture.

Then I braved the snow and ice and went shopping.

Nothing too excessive, just a couple of loaves, four packs of buns (our favourite Welsh buns are nearly always on offer at two packs for £2 whereas a single pack is £1.20, so when they're on offer I always buy them in pairs), some potatoes, onions, fruit, a couple of salady things and some yellow stickered meat and fish bargains to go into the freezer.

So now one shelf of the freezer looks like this.

I bought two boxes of  McCain Ready Baked Jacket Potatoes as they were on offer at half price.  They are not something I usually buy, but they're handy to have in to add to a meal at the last minute or when either of us is here on our own and need an easy lunch.

I also got a bag of our favourite chunky frozen chips to go with couple of packs of yellow stickered fish portions that I managed to pick up ... it makes for an easy no think about it tea when I'm brain-drained after a day working, a pack of yellow stickered chicken in breadcrumbs for Alan and as my favourite Ben and Jerry's non-dairy ice-cream was also on offer with £1.50 off ... it would have been rude not to get one of those for me   ;-)

The fishy products went in the empty bottom door pocket of the freezer.

And the sausages, once separated with Easyleave, were popped into a box to join everything else in my now tidy freezer.

I also got some Six Nations nibbles for Alan.

A multi-pack of 'Stockwell' brand crisps and some of his favourite Bacon Rashers. 

Now these little bags aren't much but when you add them to a plate of sandwiches give you a nice little crunch to add something to your meal (it also, along with the beer, helps take away the pain of your team losing like they usually do).  And at just £1 for a bag of 10 packets they are not to be sniffed at ... although I can only eat the ready salted flavour as even the salt and vinegar flavour have milk products in them for some reason!

And of course I also topped up his salted nut jar.  As a treat mixing in a bag of his favourite Honey Roasted Cashews as he has patiently waited for a new delivery of nuts for nearly a week.

So that's it Challenge One of this year done and dusted and we are back to normal, well a slightly new normal as I am determined from now on not to be over filling the cupboards or freezer in future.  Just enough in store to eat what we have bought within a few days, and with a back up supply of store cupboard basics that can be made into meals should the worse come to the worse ... you know snow, flood, illness, Brexit ... haha   ;-)

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