Family BBQ- The Charcoal Challenge

So a couple weeks ago I had my family round to take part in Moneysupermarket's competition The Charcoal Challenge! Moneysupermarket gave me £50 to host the ultimate budget BBQ and then blog about the experience. You can read more details about the competition here.

The weather has been a bit temperamental the past month, so I was a little bit worried that I'd have to put off the BBQ until the weather improved, but thankfully the summer gods blessed us with a wonderful weeks worth of gorgeous summer weather and project "Budget BBQ" was go. I had a few ideas planned out in my mind as to how I was going to host this BBQ, thinking of food took a little more planning as I have Coeliac Disease, which means I can't eat wheat or gluten, and a lot of supermarkets sell meat with traces of said ingredients. Gluten free food is generally more expensive, so I really needed to think about where I could go to buy a decent amount of meat within my price range. Thankfully Marks and Spencer's have an amazing meats selection that contain no gluten, what was even better that their meats were on offer for 3 for £10, which I thought was an absolute bargain!

When the day of the BBQ arrived me, my mum and my sister all took a wander into town with £50 in tow and had our bargain caps on. Our first port of call was Poundland where we trailed the aisles in search for some decorations, condiments and some cutlery. In total we spent £12 on plates, cutlery, decorations and some american styled condiments. At the last minute Mum found some Citronella candles in ceramic pots that apparently repel mosquitoes and other bugs, so we added those into the basket as out BBQ was going to take place around dusk, and none of the family wanted to be ambushed by bugs while taking a bite out of our burgers!

  The decorations in the garden and in the far right you can see my Brother in law trying to get the BBQ to work!

We then headed on over to Marks and Spencer's to stock up on meat, desert and salad. We took total 
advantage of their offer of 3 meats for £10 and bought a wonderful selection of cheese and onion burgers, Aberdeen Angus burgers, posh sausages, chicken along with halloumi kebabs, mozzarella and tomato salad, and finally some delicious potato wedges! As we were putting all the food onto the checkout I noticed that there was some gluten free Victoria Sponge cake reduced, so I picked a couple of those up for desert! All in all we spent £25 which left us with £13 to spend on drinks!

The incredibly tasty Victoria Sponge cake for M&S

In the end we only spent about £10 on fizzy drinks and squash in Tesco's, but as we were coming home Dad phoned us up to say the disaster had struck as he had the wrong regulator for the gas BBQ! Our final £3 was spent on buying a couple of cheap disposable BBQ's which ended up saving the day!

We resorted to using disposable BBQ's after Dad realised we had the wrong regulator for the gas!

We all had a lovely evening spending time as a family, we don't get to have dinner together often as work keeps everyone quite busy. The following Monday I helped my Sister and Brother in law move into their new home, which is out in the country, so after a hectic few weeks it was lovely to meet up, have dinner and relax in the garden!

My Sister Georgina, Dad, and my Brother in law Ben! Mum was busy in the kitchen.

Everyone thought the food was really yummy and not a single piece of food remained once the night was over! In typical Brooks/Brown fashion the evening ended with a bit of a prank as my Brother in Law bought out the water pistol and proceeded to ambush us all.

The food was really delicious!

All in all it was a fantastic evening, even though we all got pretty soaked from the water fight. Even if we don't win the competition lots of lovely memories came out of it which I'm sure we'll all treasure forever :)

We all got pretty soaked

Have you ever taken part in a blogger challenge, if so what did you have to do?