January 2016 Grocery Challenge

Mrs_Cheshire

Hi everyone, I have played along with this challenge in the past but haven't done so for probably about a year. Since our 3rd son arrived on 29th October things have been a little lax so I want to get on top of our grocery spend again.
I would like to set my spend to £420 for January
I get a bulk deal from the butchers once every couple of months so will include that in January's calculation as I've not used any of my late December delivery yet. I will also add any purchases in the freezer that I bought in the last few days. I'm also going back to meal planning to stop spontaneous shopping trips.

lynnejk

Evening all and a warm welcome to all the new peoples and returners.


Well - here we go with the new year and a new January challenge.


I'm looking forward to


making the most of my time this year
being generally as frugal as possible
hoping to keep the freezers stocked with HM meals and
I'm determined to try one new (to me) recipe each fortnight - hoping I can get DH to try them :rotfl:


Into the freezer today went four portions of HM Lasagne and three double portions of Bolognese sauce. I also made a chicken curry for dinner and a double portion of that went to freezer.


Have started the year with my first NSD. I count my NSDs when I don't spend anything on this challenge - not counting things like rent and DDs. I will have to shop over the weekend for F & V, milk and stuff for pack-ups for next week.


Hope you all have a super Saturday
Lx

Snottycat

Happy New year everyone!

I am another returner that needs to reign it in big time and take responsibility for my spending and groceries is a good place to start. There are 2 adults, 1 DD 5(almost 6) on school dinners and DD 3 that had meals paid for at nursery in our household and as an estimate this month would like to achieve £300 until next pay day at the end of the month. This is to include all household shopping i.e. food, toiletries, cleaning stuff and drinks. Not sure if this is going to be my regular amount but need a starting point.

Debs

Lynxe

Was hoping for a NSD today but suddenly realised the dogs had no food! Argh! A quick dash to Tesco, and my first £4.21 spent! Damn. Never mind!!

summerlady_2

Happy New Year everyone.


NSD today.


I have found a notebook to start a spending diary, so that I can work out where I waste money.


I'm going to try to put together a loose meal plan for a month - I tend to eat meat and potato type meals, but I'd like to add in a few more vegetable days and fish days.


I've just pulled something out of the freezer for dinners at the weekend - not sure what it is yet - could be a chilli or a curry or a mince-based dish. I forgot to label it.:)

mrs-moneypenny

Can I join again please.

I'm aiming for £400 for Jan but plan to keep it tight and use up a lot of what in the cupboards and freezer.

Thank you to everyone who contributes to these threads and helps keep us on the right path

Happy new year all

cabsy83

Hi,
Back to the grocery challenge for me! Can you put me down for £350 this month til I get back in the swing of things. I'm taking it from the 31st December. That's for 1 adult, 3 kids (one in nappies) and 2 cats. Aiming to up my nsd and make the most of the stuff in my store cupboard
Thanks!

ChihiroSen

Hello and Happy New Year!

I'm a long time lurker, but this year I seriously need to get my act together. So I would like to be put down for £200 between the 5th-31st of January. I am moving house and need to replenish stock cupboard and freezer this month, so I'm hoping it will get a lot lower over the year.

Thanks

Zed42

Evening all ...

So, day one done ... and a NSD from me

And more amazingly, DH was on lunch duty, whilst he struggled as we had no "obvious" bread products available, he rustled up a rather great HM tomato soup, combining two random HM unlabelled soups from the freezer and a collection of mini pitta breads and rolls ... so a win there, as normally he'd have nipped to the SM to buy bread.

Dinner was sausages, roast tatties, broccoli spears, chantonay (sp?) carrots with some leftover gravy. DD asked if this was a YS dinner, to which I managed to claim the carrots, tatties and carrots as such

Tonight, we've made in the SC leek and potato soup, to be blitzed in the morning and will use some of the gallons of cream we have lurking in the fridge

My intention is to do a larder and freezer inventory, make a meal plan for the week and traipse to the SM to source that, with the aim of doing some pre-cooking on Sunday. My normal issue is that I run out of steam during the week after work, so if I can do some of the slog we have more of a chance of HM meals ....

I've realised that not only are we out the final w/e of the month, but we've the panto the w/e of the 16th and we will be going out for dinner after it, so I do need to budget that in.

jollymummy

Hi can I join in please? I must get back into the swing of cooking from scratch and using food up, I hate waste. Our monthly budget needs to be around £360 to start with, cheers ��