Frugal Food - 3 September 2010

by Serena Cowdy on 02 September 2010  |  2 comments
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Welcome to this week's edition of Frugal Food. We’ve got new and extended restaurant deals from Zizzi, Loch Fyne, Pizza Express, Pizza Hut, Pizza Hut Delivery, Caffe Uno and GBK. We also have half-price bubbly, cut-price spirits, half-price bagels, a big chocolate sale, 50% off Heinz ketchup, and a great new frugal cookery website!

Welcome to this week’s edition of Frugal Food. Let’s kick things off straight away with the best grocery deals around.

Best supermarket deals 

This week, I’m going to start with the top deals at ASDA. 2.5kg bags of baking potatoes are currently down from £1.87 to £1, and 400g of Cathedral City Mature Cheddar is reduced from £3.88 to £2.

There’s a great better-than-half-price deal on Muller Fruit Corners: Six-packs usually cost £2.88 each, but you can now get two packs for just £2. And 620g packs of frying steak have been reduced from £6 to £2.98 each.

Finally, four-packs of Branston baked beans are down from £2.14 to £1 each; and you can pick up two boxes of Taylors of Harrogate Yorkshire tea bags (160 bags each) for just £3.

Over at Tesco, 150g punnets of blackberries are down from £2.99 to £1 each.

There are 2 for 1 deals on Clover and Frijj milkshakes, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is still half-price at £1.99 a pot; though only until 6th September.

Finally, there’s a 2 for 1 deal on 200g jars of Douwe Egberts Pure Gold Medium Roast coffee.

Good deals at Sainsbury’s include a half-price offer on New York Bagel Co. bagels, and this hot chocolate fudge cake - currently reduced from £6 to £3.

White seedless grapes are down from £2.50 to £1.25 per 500g; several varieties of Pizza Express pizza are also half-price at £1.99; and 570g squeezy bottles of Heinz tomato ketchup are down from £1.99 to 99p.

Morrisons is currently running a £4 back to school meal deal, made up of rolls, turkey ham, carrot batons, fromage frais, bananas and more. There’s also a half-price Morrisons deal on Walkers crisps, meaning you get 26 bags for just £2.

At the Co-op, Ben & Jerry’s ice cream is still half-price at £2.04. And six-packs of Muller Fruit Corners are also 50% off, at £1.49 each.

Super 6 fruit and veg deals at ALDI include 2.5kg of baking potatoes, two-packs of sweetcorn, five-packs of nectarines, 200g of runner beans and 250g of cocktail tomatoes - all for 59p each.

At LIDL, top deals include whole sweetcorn for 19p each, three Alfredo pizzas for £1.49, and 1kg bags of baby potatoes for 49p.

And finally, at NETTO you can now pick up 24 cans of Coke or Diet Coke for £6, and triple-packs of McVitie’s Jaffa Cakes and various other biscuits for £1.50 each.

Tipple

There’s still a big sale on at Tesco Wine, within 50% off many cases.

At Tesco itself, this Rene Florency Champagne is also half-price, down from £30 to £15. And over at Sainsbury’s this Etienne Dumont Brut NV Champagne is 50% off, at £13.99.

Morrisons has reduced the price of several spirits: 1l bottles of Gordon’s, Smirnoff, Bacardi, Bailey’s and Pimm’s are now all £13.

And there are still several free drinks offers to take advantage of. You can pick up a free J2O drink at Toby Carvery with your evening meal, as long as you’re each paying £7.50 or more. Just print off this voucher and present it on arrival.

The voucher is valid Monday to Saturday after 7pm, until 25th September. Just be aware it can’t be used on bank holiday Monday (30th August).

You can also get a free Pimm’s at Miller and Carter steakhouse bar and grill when you sign up, print the voucher and bring it in before 5th September. Again, you need to buy a main meal to qualify.

And finally, get a free bottle of WKD when you buy another at a Yate’s pub. Just sign up here, and present the voucher at your local branch.

Best restaurant deals

As always, new and extended deals appear at the top of the table. For the section covering regular and ongoing deals, go to the bottom of the page. 

Cut price snacks

Thorntons is currently having a summer sale, with lots of treats priced at 50% off. For example, this alcohol truffle selection is now £3.50 (down from £7) and this original special toffee is £2.50 (reduced from £4.99).

This next deal is for Londoners only, I’m afraid. Pick up a free La Carte Noire loyalty card from any PAUL patisserie (not including outlets in train stations) and register it online.

You’ll then be entitled to claim a ‘Parisian’ breakfast completely for free. This includes either a pan au chocolate or a croissant, plus a large coffee, and would usually set you back around £3.

Voucher codes

You can still get money off at Gondola Wines when you spend £70 or more and enter the code WINE20 at the check-out.

This discount code is now valid until 7th September. And fortunately, it’s even valid on wines already in the big Gondola sale.

Voucher code promotions tend to be withdrawn quickly. If you’ve missed out on this one, you can use the following websites to track down new voucher codes as and when they come up:

HotUKDeals

RestaurantVouchers

MyVoucherCodes

SavaCode

SupermarketVoucherCodes

ShoppingCodes

SupermarketCoupons

Regular deals

This is where you’ll find the restaurant and retail deals that run on a permanent or ongoing basis. 

And finally... be a resourceful cook

In last week’s Frugal Food comments, reader jobbwu flagged up a really useful website called The Resourceful Cook. In a nutshell, this is a free meal-planning site that allows you to cook the food you love, and save money at the same time.

You plan your meals for the week, then print off a shopping list of everything you’ll need to cook them.

All the meal plans use fresh ingredients in amounts that match the pack sizes available in the shops - so you’re less likely to waste food you don’t use.

And if you don’t want to plan for the whole week, you can plan a three night quick shop instead, for either one, two or four people.

Has anyone used the site already? Let us know in the comments boxes below.

Every Friday, we round up the week's top food shopping bargains, supermarket vouchers and restaurant offers. If you register on lovemoney.com, you can follow this blog and find new posts as soon as they are published, via your personal homepage. Never miss a frugal food bargain again - register now.

Every effort is made to source voucher codes which are valid at the time this article is published. However, please be aware that lovemoney.com cannot guarantee that every voucher will be valid or that it will not be withdrawn by the provider immediately.