Budget & Finance

As you know thanks to BritMums I was selected as a #MorrisonsMum for the May bank holiday weekend. (Yay!) This meant I was very generously given £80 to do my weekends shopping at Morrisons. In fact what we actually bought will probably (and hopefully!) keep us fed for the best part of a fortnight with a few top up shops here and there!

We chose to do our shop on the Friday as I thought it would be the least hectic day… the thought of entering a big supermarket on a holiday of any kind generally makes me want to run away…. I hate queueing… I know how very un-British of me! But it was a good call and our local Morrisons wasn’t too hectic at all 🙂

We took a walk down our hill, very slowly as Emma was walking too, and we knew that not owning a car now we’d be getting a cab back so not taking a pushchair is easier. Vince took us a way I’d not been before which is down a very long flight of steps… which is why it was slow going with our little Miss. Independent.

There were some lovely views along the way though and a view of our Morrisons too.

Our shopping got off to a good start. We put Emma in the trolley and Vince said to me “Do you have your list?”,
Me: “Yep”, smiling and we walk into the store.
Vince: “Have you got your money and vouchers?”
Me: “Erm… no…”
Vince: “You are joking?”
Me: “Erm… no…. I’m really really really sorry!!!”
Yeah, I totally left everything on our dining room table… Helpful aren’t I?! My unimpressed but wonderful husband ran for the bus back up the hill, missed it by about 30 seconds and spent the next half hour hiking back up and down our hill to pick up our vouchers. (This was the first time in 6 weeks or so that I actually missed having a car!) Meanwhile Emma and I got started on the shopping.

It was a pretty good shopping experience I have to say. It was by no means our first visit to this Morrisons but we don’t often do a big shop there, it’s usually our top up shop stop as I have in the past found it to be more expensive than other supermarkets. When we had a car I was partial to shopping at Lidl for good prices but you can’t guarantee what they’ll have in stock. More recently I’ve shopped online and switch it up a lot between the big 3 – Tesco, Asda & Sainsburys according to what I fancy and any coupons I might have to hand.

Last week Morrisons introduced a new “I’m Cheaper” campaign to cut prices on everyday foods permanently, to bring them more into line with the likes of Lidl and Aldi. If I’m honest I wasn’t really expecting to notice much of a difference but happily there was a clear difference in our end bill and the store had gone to lengths to show the new price differences as you are shopping.

On a shop that I would have expected to cost easily in the region of £120, we spent £96.28 on 62 items that included a lot of meat & fish as well as organic produce and brand name items. Very pleased with that actually!

The staff were very helpful too. When I couldn’t find any pork shoulder on the shelves I asked the man who stacking out mince and he immediately disappeared behind the meat counter, produced an enormous pork joint, cut me precisely the piece I wanted and packaged it up so quickly and without any fuss. The fish counter is worth a mention here too, just on packaging alone. Unlike other supermarket fishmongers who tend to use a couple of flimsy, leaky plastic bags and a barcode label to keep your fish safe, Morrisons use one of these bags and place the whole thing in a much sturdier plastic bag which is heat sealed – freshness and no leaky fish liquid (ew!), I though it was a brilliant system.

So far everything we have eaten has been lovely, no complaints from myself or my family. In fact the raw king prawns we bought and I cooked up on Sunday evening were so good my fussy fussy fussy toddler even cleared her plate – I’m not sure I can say better than that! I also made an incredibly simple sausage & stuffing pie for our picnic yesterday, that will from now on be known as ‘piggy’ pie for Emma’s sake, that was also gorgeous and something I was brought up on. So I thought I would share that with you here!

‘Piggy’ Pie will not be winning any healthy eating, clean eating, wholefood awards anytime soon to be sure. But for a quick bank holiday treat I personally don’t think it gets much better! We are talking 4 store bought, store brand ingredients for a pie that will comfortably serve 8 people for 42p per serving, and that includes an egg for an egg wash on top! (The recipe is right at the end of this post)

I will be back tomorrow to share a bit of what we actually got up to over our bank holiday weekend as this post is plenty long enough already!

I hope you all had wonderful weekends!

 

 

 

 

 

Disclaimer: I was provided with £80 to spend at Morrisons but all thoughts, feelings, opinions and experiences described are my own.