March 2017 Grocery Challenge

Dharma_Bunny · 3 March 2017 at 6:04PM

A few small trips since Tuesday, bringing my total so far to £55.62.
We've eaten all the biscuits and fruit, so will need to pop for some, and to the farm shop tomorrow for a big sack of spuds, but going ok with main meals.

Lauralozzle · 3 March 2017 at 6:54PM

Another grocery NSD! :j:j:j

Doom_and_Gloom · 3 March 2017 at 6:57PM

elsiepac wrote: »

You are good with your portions; I'm terribly greedy so I always try and get 2 portions out of a block, but somehow end up sneaking back to the kitchen for extra slices! Thanks for the tips, I will give this a go next time I buy a block, as this will help with my portioning also!

OH keeps me from eating way too much. I used to, years ago, get two portions at most from a block but as I'm disabled I can't eat like I once did and so OH makes sure my portions are suitable. Though if doing tofu steaks that uses half a block! I overdo it on the vegetables instead. OH always says how full the bowl/plate is due to all the vegetables I want to fill me up

.

Spent £6.23. Pizza (for OH who has already scoffed the whole thing), beans, parsnips, spring greens, cucumber, soup (reduced and in freezer for when I'm having a bad day and OH needs a rest from cooking), oranges and cola.

Dinner : pizza (OH). Sweet and sour vegetable tofu, rice and seaweed.

Need to get vegan sausages out of the freezer before bed tonight. Tomorrow is going to be vegan sausages, beans, sweet potato tagliatteli and vegetables.

£35.77/£155.
£119.23 left.

JingsMyBucket · 3 March 2017 at 8:50PM

Happy Friday everyone! I'm so glad the evening has started. I just pulled a delicious apple and pear crumble out of the oven that used up two ancient apples and a recent pear. The topping was made with the last bit of bulk oats that were languishing in the pantry and some slivered almonds. It could have done with a bit more butter in the topping but it's still so good.

Anyway, the first two days of March were NSD for groceries. Today is when I finally did some shopping for the house:

Picard (a French frozen food chain): €14.95. I got frozen aubergine, sliced mushrooms, some breaded chicken tenders, and two small vegetarian entr!es for OH to take to work when he doesn't have time to make his lunch. I totally overspent here as I only meant to get the aubergine and the mushrooms. I justified the other three items when I could have put them back. That said, the only real overboard purchase was the chicken tenders, possibly. Oh well, I got them so I could have a high-quality easy crunchy chicken.

Lidl: €27.29 This was also an overspend but I bought a butt load of vegetables and bought two packs of pork chops that were on sale. I've been thinking lately about how much I have to even out my spending of meat vs. vegetables for OH. It feels like I focus heavily on meat sales so have been trying to buy him an almost equal amount of vegetables out of fairness. I planned to spend €20 – €25 but went over. This is going to be it for the next week though. We have enough fruit and veg to last us to at least next Thursday.

Bol (a Dutch online store like Amazon): €19.95 2 bottles of that great Dettol laundry sanitizer stuff. We ran out a long time ago and haven't been able to replace it. It was in that debacle of an Amazon order I placed about a month ago but it never arrived.

Total spent today: €62.19. I'll spend another ≈ €13 tomorrow to replace my big bulk shower gel and that will be it for the rest of the coming week in terms of groceries. I've been good lately about packing my lunch and so has OH. €200 - €62.19 = €137.81 for the rest of the month. If we take an estimated €17 off there for my shower gel and toilet paper, that should leave us with about €120.00 for the rest of March. I'm going to try my darnedest to only spend €20/week from here on out on vegetables and such.

Off to the freezer and cupboard challenge thread to sort things out...

purpleybat · 4 March 2017 at 2:25AM

Flat_Eric wrote: »

I did shop on Tuesday but only spent £4.80 on breakfast bars and 70p on cat food. No other visits.....

I'm trying to (plan) and base meals on what I've got in the cupboards and freezer.

Took out lamb rack for dinner tomorrow and doh it wasn't suitable for freezing according to the packaging. It's now in my fridge defrosting. It's m&s rack of lamb with a rosemary lemon and garlic crumb. Surely this will be fine to eat once defrosted and cooked?

itll be fine, just maybe not 'at the best' had you not frozen it

Fruittea · 4 March 2017 at 12:51PM

Well I'm up to £90.64 after my veg and fish box arrived so not the best start but I should need anything more for a while. Apart from eggs. Now the carpeters have gone I have the kitchen back so I'll be baking bread again and I have a tonne of flour. So I'll focus on the freezer from now on in.

JensFeet · 4 March 2017 at 2:11PM

Hi all and welcome to all newcomers...

I'm just back from my week away which was lovely! OH did brilliantly and stuck to his list (mainly) and March spends have been £1 on fresh bread yesterday. x2 NSDs so far.

Meal plan for the week are written but I need to do a new freezers and fridge audit as I suspect my list is wildly out of date. Still concentrating on using up my stored freezer items and focussing meal plans on these.

Looking forward to seeing how we all get on this month.

Suffolk_lass · 4 March 2017 at 3:50PM

Fruittea wrote: »

Well I'm up to £90.64 after my veg and fish box arrived so not the best start but I should need anything more for a while. Apart from eggs. Now the carpeters have gone I have the kitchen back so I'll be baking bread again and I have a tonne of flour. So I'll focus on the freezer from no on in.

Ooh, fish box - is that from a local place or a web provider please?

JingsMyBucket · 4 March 2017 at 5:01PM

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

Ooh, fish box - is that from a local place or a web provider please?

That sounds like Abel & Cole. I used to get their meat and fish boxes when I lived in London. Sigh. I miss food in the U.K. a lot sometimes. A & C introduced me to a lot of British food when I first came over.

Here's what they offer: https://www.abelandcole.co.uk/boxes/meat-boxes. The contents change every week so it's nice to try something different each time.

More specifically, here's the fish box: https://www.abelandcole.co.uk/fantastic-fish-box. Coming up this week it's haddock, rainbow trout, and Cornish crab.

Islandmaid · 4 March 2017 at 5:18PM

Spent £17 in Lidl today, that included stocking up on bin bags - I like how thick there's are.

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March 2017 Grocery Challenge

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