Shopping the Pantry/Freezer Week

With one food shopping week left to go this month and the food budget already used up (well slightly over spent if I'm honest), I'm going to have to get a bit more creative with our final few meals, in order to minimise any further food budget overspend.

I will, of course, need to buy some fresh products, such as milk, fruit and vegetables, fruit juices etc., but I'm hoping that next week's shopping list will be a short and fairly inexpensive one.

In addition, I'm determined to eat down a few more things from the freezer, such as some allotment grown sweetcorn cobs and chopped courgettes, that definitely need using up.  There's also some frozen berries that I need to use up, so I'm thinking of  using them in making some home made ice lollies/sorbet, or some sort of fruit flavoured cake, to save me buying any.

My trusty Easi Yo mini will be in regular use, as I have quite a few sachets left from when I stocked up on them last month, so I can use these instead of buying any in. (OH still likes me to buy a few in, to mix it up a little).

Talking of which, they have brought out a few new flavours for it, which are available only in Lakeland.  I tried the Greek Yoghurt with Coconut this month and was very pleasantly surprised.  OH liked it too and he really doesn't like coconut all that much.

There's plenty of pasta, rice, tins and jars in the store cupboard to fall back on and if any of the cereals are running short, we will just have to make do for the week.  I'm sure it won't be too much of a hardship. I am also pretty well stocked up on condiments, teabags etc., so these should now easily last until the end of the month.

One good thing this month, is that I haven't bought any lettuce for over two weeks now, due to the salad bed being in full production. In fact, I'm not really keeping up with eating it all, despite regularly taking salads for lunch to the CS when I volunteer.

I'm actually looking forward to reining myself in a little on food grocery spending, as I usually don't think about depriving us of anything we want, but to do so does makes me stop and think just how much I spend each week on groceries, without really thinking too much about using up what we already have in the cupboards and freezer.

Sometimes you just need to clear a few things out and use them up, allowing space for new culinary ideas and inspiration to present itself, not to mention saving money in the process. Budgetary restrictions are a good excuse to do just this.