Last Friday, I did some grocery shopping to pick up ingredients that I needed for a big meal. I wanted to cook a few of my specialties for my family while I’m here, so I made burritos and nachos on Saturday and spaghetti and meatballs on Sunday. Coupons are few and far between here in England, so I was eager to see what sort of deals I could get. Since this is a special occasion, I needed very specific ingredients, which I knew would be more expensive than if I had based my menu around sale items. So here’s a special UK edition of my shopping trip recaps, with purchases from Sainsbury’s, Home Bargains, and Aldi:

Total spent: £23.14 (With the current exchange rate, that’s about $37.54)

Sainsbury’s:

4 packages of ground beef – .97p each, £3.88 total
1 head of lettuce – .57p
2 bags of fair trade coffee – £1.39 each, £2.78 for both
2 packages of tomatoes – .72p each, £1.44 total
1 bunch of spring onions – .72p
1 package of cilantro – £1.00
2 heads of romaine lettuce hearts – £1.00
1 package of yeast – .79p
1 package of red Leicester cheese – £1.42
1 package of cheddar cheese – £2.96
1 package of black beans – .65p
1 tub of sour cream – £1.00
1 small bag of flour – .70p

Aldi:

1 loaf of bread – .47p
3 heads of garlic – .59p

Home Bargains:

Multipack of Monster Munch crisps (AKA chips to my US readers) – .99p
2 bags of tortilla chips – .50p each, £1.00 total
1 bag of oatmeal – .49p
1 package of tortillas – .69p

Click the photo above to see it full-size. A picture of my receipts will have to do, since my dad doesn’t have a scanner! 🙂

This wasn’t exceptionally cheap, but since this was a special occasion I had very particular needs for my menu. Had I based my meals off different items, I could have stretched my money a lot further. Also, I’m not terribly familiar with what each store carries, so I don’t necessarily know which place has the best buys for everything.

So here’s what I made:

I cooked half the ground beef with onion, garlic, and seasoning, and spooned it into tortillas with two kinds of shredded cheese, cilantro, and tomato, then topped it with sour cream and shredded lettuce. For the nachos, I layered tortilla chips, black beans, onion, tomato, cilantro, both cheeses, sour cream, and green onion into a dish and baked. I forgot to take a picture of the second meal, but I made large meatballs by mixing the rest of the ground beef with onion, garlic, seasonings, two eggs and oatmeal, which I baked for about half an hour. I served them on top of pasta and homemade spaghetti sauce made by cooking tomatoes, tomato paste, Italian seasoning, water and olive oil. I served this with salad and a homemade no-knead bread that I made using this recipe. The bread turned out OK, given that my dad doesn’t have any measuring spoons and I had to guess how much yeast to put in. 😉 This food served three people and we have LOTS of leftovers!