Food Challenge - FAIL

Ok, so I knew from the outset that this challenge was nigh on impossible, but nevertheless, I am still disappointed to have failed.  Mostly because I know that with more prep and less emotional buying, I could have actually done it.  But various events and factors collided to make it just too tough.  I had unexpected guests, went shopping on the busiest day of the week (saturday) at the busiest time which was also the time when I should have been preparing that evening's meal, and on an empty stomach with a baby in tow who, although very quiet and happy enough, I was aware would need feeding and changing real soon.  Then came half-term holidays and I had even more unexpected (though very welcome) guests......I cannot have people in my house and not feed them.  I am a feeder I admit it!  So the food challeneg has filed.  But I have learned some very valuable lessons.  Here they are, not in any particular order...:

1. When I stuck to the budget, by the end of the week the cupboards and the fridge were bare.  But no-one had gone hungry and very little food was wasted.  When I went over budget, food was wasted and I still had food in the fridge at the end of the week that I then needed to find ways to use up without us getting too bored of eating the same things over and over.
2. £100 is too low a budget.  In order to make it succeed, you would actually need to do a 'store cupboard' shop probably once a quarter (or more often if you don't have the storage capacity) I found that I went over budget when I completely ran out of items such as olive oil (ok, I could have just used vegetable, but I just can't bear to cook certain cuisines without it!), flour, butter, sugar, tea bags....basically your basic grocery items.
3. The more food I had as a result of going over budget, the less organised I was in terms of menu planning and the less inspiration I had - hence the waste.

Overall though, despite the overspend, my shopping bill was approximately HALF what it normally is - even with the guests and holiday.  I'm therefore going to take the lessons I learned and try to be more organised with meal planning and when I go shopping, in order to keep my food shopping expense lower.  Why? Well, because this month I got to splash out on some really cool retro lunch tins for the kids, a cabinet from IKEA, and a few lunch dates (once I'd already blown the budget mind), not to mention hair cuts, cinema and Macdonalds trips for the kids and some beautiful baby clothes - all stuff I normally don't do too often because my food bill eats into my budget!