For the avoidance of doubt, I am a member of the Collective Bias® Social Fabric® Community. This shop has been compensated as part of a social shopper insights study for Collective Bias and their client. Now the formalities are out of the way, let me tell you about our £10 challenge!
How often do we really think about what we are spending? I don’t mean in total, I mean when we are throwing things into our shopping trolleys or online baskets, are we really conscious of how it is adding up? My eldest daughter is now in Junior school and we have weekly homework on multiplication and division and whilst I may moan at her to do it each week, she actually has a good knack for maths, so when we were set the challenge to create a yummy family meal for £10, we put her in charge of the calculations.
So off we trooped to the Asda store in Minworth, Birmingham, which despite being by my parents’ house, is actually quite a rare event for me when I do most of my shopping, including the groceries, online. I was pleasantly surprised to find ample parent and child parking spaces, as given the hot weather I was expecting it to be heaving with people buying BBQ food. Both children wanted to get in the trolley, which meant we needed a big trolley (although we didn’t have a spare pound coin for the smaller trolley anyway. It still baffles me why they have a coin release on those and the bigger ones don’t?) and so we entered the lovely cool store.
Even upon entering, we were still unsure of what we were actually going to buy as our meal. It has been so hot over the last few days that we haven’t really felt like cooking or eating big meals so as we were browsing round, we thought a cooked chicken would be a good idea. We navigated our way through the busy aisles towards the hot food counter and my daughter asked the question "are these the same price as a normal chicken" and to her credit, she found that the fresh chickens were considerably cheaper, leaving much more of our budget to spend on other things.
I am most definately not the gourmet chef in our house but with the weather being so scorching hot outside, the inclination to create a full on meal was fairly non existent. Thankfully both my girls love their veg, (which can sometimes be a challenge in itself when we dine out as everything seems to come with chips and beans) so we chose some seasonal veg to go with the garlic chicken and some garlic potatoes .... good job we are only kissing each other! They all came freshly sealed in ready to cook foil tins, which was not only handy but reduced the washing up too!!
The chief estimator told us that we had just over £1 left, so she went off in search of something for dessert and came back with Moshi Monster cakes. It wouldn't have been my choice but she was so excited that she had found something in the budget, who was I to argue?
So in the end, we had a fresh chicken, flavoured with garlic and herbs, seasonal vegetables including courgettes and aubergines, garlic potatoes and cabbage. Asda have a great range of "ready to cook" vegetables so it really was a case of popping it in the oven and waiting for it to be cooked. (now that is my kind of cooking). One thing I was really pleased with about our shop was that we didn't have to buy the cheapest or "budget" options, to meet our £10 challenge.
I have to admit that the Moshi Monster cakes were a little more labour intensive but the girls really got involved in the mixing (and testing of the cake mix - obviously) and I had to get involved with the extra cleaning of the cake covered floor. They had a great time, with big sister assuming responsibility for reading the instructions (she is quite good at literacy aswell as maths! She must take after her mother!). In the end the cakes looked more like little green blobs than cakes but apparently that was the point and for £1, it certainly kept them captivated.
Grocery shopping is usually a one man (or woman's) job in our house, usually by me ordering online late at night, so it was great to get us all involved with the meal selection and even the cake making!
The savings in store are undeniable and as someone who doesn't shop instore on a regular basis, I can see the benefits. However, unless you bring your 8 year old (or a calculator), you don't really take account of the things you are adding into your trolley and with so many good deals on offer, it is easy for the shopping bill to mount up. Asda really do seem to have everything, including toys, games, sweets and everything else that entices children ..... not to mention the musical ride on's that are always so conveniently placed by the front door, so whilst we had great fun with our £10 challenge, it wasn't quite enough to stop me ordering (and budgeting) online.
As for the £10 challenge .... I think we did pretty good!
