Bargain Hunting

This weekend I went bargain hunting.  I'd spotted on MSE that there was a voucher for £5 off a spend of £40 in Aldi or more in last Thursday's Daily Mirror so I'd requested that Grandad and Granddaughter went and bought me a copy after taking Grandson to nursery school.  So we called in to Aldi on Saturday and stocked up on some things for us and lots of fairly traded coffee for church. There were also some coupons for other things in Aldi too.  I've not seen coupons for Aldi before and I actually used 2 of them. Then yesterday afternoon we went to buy more hen food and rabbit food at the feed merchant and carried on to the big Tesco.  I don't normally go to the big Tesco because of the cost of getting there but it is not far from the feed merchant. We were low in petrol and if you spend over £50, then you get a voucher for 5p per litre off petrol and our tank was nearly empty.  On Wednesday, we'd been and put £10 worth in the car at the local filling station to get us through to Sunday...  And nice Mr Tesco had sent us a voucher for £5 off a spend of £40 or more as well as several other vouchers, some of which I actually spent.  So often these vouchers for extra points or money off are for things that I wouldn't normally buy.

I had a couple of things to buy for my son as we were going to the shop and it saved him a trip and this helped bump up the total.  Without buying coffee for church or school, I find it extremely difficult to buy enough for a £40 or £50 spend for just the two of us.  Anyway, I managed to get to the right totals for both Aldi and Tesco (and will be repaid about half by school and church) and we filled the car right up with fuel at a discount.  And (cue lots of smiley faces) we were at Tesco when they did the final reductions and we managed to get several little pasties (with a "100% British beef" sticker prominently on the front...) for the princely sum of 6p each, 2 x 500g packs of "best" turkey mince for 68p each, a 4 portion pie for 68p, 4 x medium tubs of double cream for 13p each and some fish for my friend at 30p (my husband doesn't like smoked fish and my friend loves it).  They also had 2 blocks of Anchor butter on offer at £2 and Tesco had kindly sent me a coupon for 40p off one block of butter.  I shall make a little bit of butter with the cream apart from a little bit to go with the next strawberries, but that butter will be saved in the freezer for treats in the school holidays.

They had also sent a voucher for 25 extra points if I spent £1 on home baking supplies. I had thought that this was a really useful voucher but it quickly became a problem for me.  I had intended to buy a pack of sultanas and a bag of flour.  However, the flour is 20p a bag more than charged in Lidl and the sultanas are a few pence more than in Aldi.  I was wondering what to do when I spotted a tray of mincemeat on the bottom shelf........ at 20p per jar and dated for 2015.  It was sat right next to a tray of Tesco Finest mincemeat at £1.96 per jar for the same size.  So I now have enough mincemeat to see me through Christmas 2013 AND Christmas 2014.

And when we went to pay for the fuel for the car, they had reduced the 2 pint size of milk to 20p.  So we came home with a bag of things for my friend, a bag of things for my daughter and a bag of things for my son as well as the things he had requested.  It never hurts to spread a little joy in somebody else's life : )

We decided to come the long way home rather than straight up the main roads and I spotted some elderflowers on one of the little lanes as we drove by.  So I now have elderflower cordial steeping, ready to finish off tonight. Tesco had some strawberries at a knockdown price so I've got some jam to make as well as finishing the cordial.  I'll be busy tonight : )

I don't often manage to get such good bargains but I was so pleased.  It really makes a difference to the budget when you can knock £££ off the shopping and the saving continues as most things are now in the freezer.  I would prefer to make everything from scratch all the time but sometimes (because such great bargains are a rare event) it is good to smile and just be grateful for the savings.

For dinner last night, we had homemade turkey burgers with home grown salad.  One pack of the turkey mince and some onion (homegrown), herbs and breadcrumbs mixed with an egg turned into 6 quarterpounders with the remaining 4 now tucked away in the freezer. So we started eating this lot of shopping with a pretty good meal from scratch.  I've also got a big bag of tomatoes from the market (for £1) that my daughter brought me and I want to get them turned into pasta sauce. There are several recipes in blogland for that which are bottled for use in the winter.

http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/2013/06/bottling-tomato-pasta-sauce/#more-7554


http://ournewlifein the country.blogspot.com/2011/09/preserving-gluts.html

http://mortgagefreeinthree.com/2012/05/spicy-salsa/

http://thequincetree65.blogspot.co.uk/2010/06/elderflower-cordial.html