The BritMum's Challenge - being a #morrisonsmum!

Morrisons used to be my supermarket of choice when living in the city. Living literally a 10 minute walk or 2 minutes drive away made it really convenient and easy to do both the weekly shop and smaller top-up shops in between. Since moving to the sticks, a visit to Morrisons supermarket is quite a luxury! Our local supermarket isn't the cheapest, but for day to day shopping for bread, milk, etc. it's fine and I can't justify an hours drive each way for a small shop!

So, enough about me and my Morrisons relationship - how did we get on with the BritMum's Challenge?

The 'I'm Cheaper' campaign has been covered in the national media and on the Morrisons website itself, but it's much easier to see for yourself what exactly is cheaper and how the overall prices compare. We were pleased to see that it was not just own label items that were cheaper; branded items and marketplace produce is also included in the price promise, with clear markers showing you where the price changes had occurred.

I don't often consciously 'track' the cost of my shopping, but know the prices of regular items such as bread and milk. The Morrisons prices compared better than my usual supermarket for most general items, but there were a couple of items currently on offer in my usual supermarket that were more expensive in Morrisions, but this was purely down to the particular special offer.

Our weekly shop consists of probably half and half branded products and own label products, but we did buy a few treats for over the Bank Holiday weekend due to celebrating my youngest child's 7th birthday on Sunday!

I try to plan at least half of our meals for the week so with each shop I do, I have some sort of shopping list to work to. The rest of the meals are more flexible as we would see what special offers were in store at the time! To help us plan this week, we decided to look at the recipes on the Morrisions website. There's a great recipe tool where you can search by meal, ingredient and even whether the recipe is 'kid-friendly'.

Here are the links to the recipes that we chose to make throughout the week:

Perfect Pizza served with salad and crusty bread

Chilli Con Carne served with rice and a dollop of natural yoghurt

Cheesy Chicken Nuggets served with potato wedges and carrots/sweet corn

Tuna Pasta Bake, again, served with salad and crusty bread

And a couple of treats and puddings!

Raspberry Ripple Fluff

Yoghurt Lollies

Pancakes - I know it's not Shrove Tuesday, hey it's not even Tuesday, but we love pancakes!

All of these have a good value, price per serving - who can beat the pancakes at literally pence per serving.... but it all depends on how many you eat! The pizza is less than £1 a serving, of course, you can add more toppings which can alter the price but even then, a great mid-week meal for the family.

The chilli con carne (our favourite!) works out at under £1.30 per portion - rice included! Both the chicken nuggets and tuna pasta bake come in at about £1 a portion, so again, great value!

The pizza, chilli con carne and tuna pasta bake all use the same basic tomato sauce base, so we made this in one batch and used it through the week (it will keep for up to 3 days).


Raspberry Ripple Fluff - with extra birthday decoration! 

On top of our weekly shop, we bought picnic items for our day out to Fairbourne Railway on Monday and other items to use for meals throughout the week, for example a seafood mix for making paella one day, treats for the dog, drinks and after school snacks for the kids! We spent around £100 in total, so with the treats thrown in, we feel that this was very reasonable.
Overall, Morrisons provided good value for money, with sensible offers and 'I'm Cheaper' prices on things that you would buy in a normal weekly shop.

The only thing that stops me from shopping here more regularly is purely the distance! So, if you've a Morrisons local to you and you're not a regular customer, give it a try!

Patak's Fusion Indian Stir Fry Punjabi 5 Spice Review

We were sent a packet of the new Punjabi 5 Spice Indian Stir Fry sauce from Patak's... now I love LOVE curry - anything from a mild Korma to a spicy Balti (not quite managed a Vindaloo, but hubby has not been beaten yet!) I love the different flavours and spices that each curry brings.

The sauce does not need to be kept in the fridge so you can stock up and keep them handy as a quick-fix tea when you cannot decide what to have!  I love a homemade curry made from scratch but sometimes I don't have the time or energy (or cash to run to the Indian takeaway!) to make a decent curry but this stir fry sauce made an exceptionally good curry.  It's spice strength is described as medium, which is just the right level for a great tasting curry.  Anything too hot just burns but with the Punjabi 5 Spice you can taste the spices and enjoy the flavours. My neighbour popped in for a quick chat whilst I was cooking the curry and said, "it smells like a professional curry"!

You only have to add the chicken (or other meat, i.e. lamb) and vegetables - I used red onion and green and yellow peppers, but you could use any vegetables you have in the fridge that need using up!  We enjoyed the curry with rice but it would be equally as good with potatoes, naan bread or wrapped up in a big chapati!

There was just enough sauce, not too much and not too dry - there's nothing worse than chicken and veg swimming in a sea of sauce!

 

From start to finish, it took 15 minutes including the preparation of chopping and slicing so a really quick and easy meal to make.  By doubling up the sauce and ingredients, this would also make a great get-together meal for a family weekend as it's so easy to make, it leaves you with more time to catch up with your friends and family!  A great big serving pot of curry and a help-yourself bowl of rice goes down a treat when my family all get together!

Pop over to Patak's Curry Club Facebook page and say "hello"... keep up to date with new products and the odd freebie!