October 2016 Grocery Challenge

scottishbrummy

Hi all!
Why have I only just discovered this thread?! This is brilliant - will help keep me on track if I know I'm coming back to report on here - don't want to let anyone down! I get paid 4 weekly so will start from next Friday - not sure of budget, but I'm thinking 120 a month to start as I live alone...

pinkypig

£28.04 in Aldi on my last big shop of the month. This has everything for the next 2 weeks meal plans in it so I'm hoping to get away with some fresh fruit, veg and milk at the end of next week but that needs to be it if I'm going to come in on budget.
PP x

Slowly57

Ah - I've busted my guesstimate budget - but only on things that will future-feed us. It's that time of year when we both keep odd hours and seldom eat together, so I need to have some good tasty HM meals in the freezer. At the mo it is full of elements (meat, veggie, fish) that I bring together with fresh veg/salad/rice/pasta. I need to have some all-in-one meals so neither of us succumb to toast-as-a-meal lol

I have a milk glut that I'll use up with instant mash and use it to top:
chicken, mushroom + broccoli
chicken + gravy
sausage + gravy
root veg in sauce
cauliflower cheese

And I can deffo do without a farm shop this week as the fridge is stuffed.

I have learned so much this month - not least, the fact that I am a sleepwalking FOOD HOARDER. I'm using stuff left right and centre from my stash and freezer. Next month I'll nail the budget and then try to gradually reduce.

Today I bought
bacon chops (for pea + ham soup - to give to my Mum as she loves them)
a kilo of chicken breast inner fillets from the market
tray of low-fat pork sausage from the market (OH struggles to digest a lot of fat)
a couple of small loaves for next weeks lunches
mushrooms
Liddle instant mash (which is lovely - I thought it would be gross)
small cheese sauce
brown rice (running out of)
apples
grapes
yoghurt
bananas
red peppers (super cheap so bought them to grill/freeze)
tunnocks wafers (OH lunch treat)
chocolate (do I need to explain?)
ice cream (shut up)

For a spend of £42.81 - I'm done until payday

ab_saver

A few spends today - some YS bargains and some totally unnecessary chocolate - adds up to £1.89

New total spend: £15.62

PennyGrabber

To make myself feel better after my freezer debacle, I have treated myself to a pie maker. I know, I could make them myself, but that means turning the whole oven on for one thing, plus it always feels a bit of a faff. Anyway, it was reduced from 80 to 30, so I thought why not?! I'll be making leftover pies, eg chicken casserole, etc. So, my question is this - what is your favourite/easiest/cheapest/quickest pie filling? (It doesn't have to fulfil ALL of those criteria at once!!)

PG x

Ps - savoury or sweet!

lynnejk

Evening all

Managed another NSD here :j

Hope you all have a super Saturday
Lx

Nicki_Sue

Morning all.
Spent a little yesterday, not all on food but it has to come out of this budget this week because I've not set up a "spends" budget at the mo. If anything it'll help rein spending in on food and ad-hoc items.

So...
£80.00
-2.49 Paint for Husband
-6.95 Gift & Card at local shop
-16.08 Heron (inc. saver stamp)
-2.00 Cokes @ Corner Shop (Doh, 17p for 2 litres at Mr T, spendthrift!)
£52.48 to last until Friday.

We're out at the library today so will pop into Mr L to get coffee, fruit, crisps and milk and get ourselves another scratchcard. I'm saving them up to redeem at once. I have 6 x cokes and 1 pack of chunky chips to claim so far.
We've odds and sods in the chest freezer so we're having a use up week which will hopefully keep the spends down.

Have a good Saturday all x

t14cy_t

nsd yesterday, yipee!! x

thriftwizard

I'm sunk. Although I bought less stuff at the market yesterday, it cost more - a whole lot more, in some cases. It's a combination of seasonality - summer fruit & vegetables are ending now - and wholesale prices skyrocketing, with the pound plummeting; market traders don't have the - ahem, influence - that supermarket buyers do. So instead of £50, I spent £70, on stuff that would have cost me £50 last week. And it's not likely to ease up; sometimes prices do leap upwards before falling back down again, like lamb at Easter or turkey at Christmas, but usually it's individual items and I can choose to buy something else. This, however, was pretty much global; just about everything except eggs had gone up, and we keep our own chickens!

I'm lucky enough that this isn't disastrous; there's slack in the system and my targets are a challenge to myself, not an absolute necessity. Also that there is light at the end of our personal tunnel; DS2 & TDiL are currently negotiating to rent a nice little house of their own, and our bills will fall dramatically when they leave. But it's a slap in the face, budgetwise. We often observe, as market traders, that we're very much at the sharp end of the economy; price rises & falling confidence hit us first & hardest, and there's no safety net. People rightly have choices & will go elsewhere if we can't keep our prices reasonable, so when our suppliers jack the wholesale prices up, we're toast. The high street "names" will fight to keep prices down, betting that they'll even out after a while; we haven't the resources to do that. Fingers crossed for all our sakes that this is just another blip. I very much doubt it'll show up on the official inflation figures!

VickyV

Well, Mr V is in trouble. Unbeknownst to me, he's been raiding the food purse for bus fares and bits and bobs. Since I didn't keep receipts - you know, since I have a special purse for keeping track - I've had to estimate so up to yesterday, I reckon I'd spent £120.

Bought some ham, mince and completely unnecessary chocolate for 6.43 so spent £126.43/320 and have enough in the house to need only eggs, milk and squash for the week now!