November 2016 Grocery Challenge

elsiepac

Caterina wrote: »

Very frugal eating too, breakfast was porridge with nuts, lunch bean and pasta soup with veg, some gf bread and marmite (me) and rye bread and jam (DH) and a piece of fruit each. Dinner was stir fry with rice and veg from allotment, plus beans from allotment, pudding chopped apple and oatcakes with tahini and (gifted) quince jam. All stuff I had in cupboard and fridge.

I love the way you eat Caterina, it sounds so healthy, hearty and delicious! And I'm very envious of all your lovely homegrown things! Keep posting your meals please!! :T

Save_Dosh wrote: »

'Cheat Tomato Soup'. It was so easy & quick:-

2 tins tomatoes
2 value veggie cubes
2 medium/large grated carrots
1 onion
Morrisons Savers Mixed Dried Herbs
minced garlic, pepper & a little shake of chilli powder and a little glug of light soy sauce.

Cooked up in the saucepan and blended.

Thanks SD - I have everything in for this so may make it later on my batch cooking spree! I may well add in a tin of beans for creaminess and to bulk out to make a meal soup! :j

I have had more spends than I really wanted to even though I'm struggling to think what I actually needed! Purely a lack of meal planning which is really annoying.

Date.......Shop.....Amount.....Remaining
26 Oct.....Ocad0.....£47.04.....£62.96 (Bulk cleaning products, tins etc)
27 Oct.....Tesc0.....£00.78.....£62.18 (Reduced organic carrots)
28 Oct.....Tesc0.....£08.15.....£54.03 (Veggies for treat stir fry etc - NOT NEEDED!)
29 Oct.....Co-0p.....£13.16.....£40.87 (Chips, strudel, treat food etc - NOT NEEDED!)
30 Oct.....Tesc0.....£04.94.....£35.93 (Bread, Tomatoes etc)
30 Oct.....A1di......£09.63.....£26.30 (Proper grocery shop, basically all veggies)
2 Nov......Co-0p.....£07.15.....£19.15 (Except for bread rolls for £1, I needed NONE OF THIS)
2 Nov......Tesc0.....£02.39.....£16.76 (Onions, parsley, spinach)
4 Nov......Tesc0.....£16.39.....£00.37 (Proper grocery shop - all veggies plus coffee)
5 Nov......0cad0.....-£1.50.....£01.87 (Refund for missing pack of tofu)


My Friday stock up of veggies includes M1ll1can0 on offer at £2.50 - I drink very little coffee at home so this is a nice treat and it was nearly half price which is why I got that one instead of normal instant.

So... £1.87 to last 3 weeks! That's not going to happen! :eek:

I have sold two items on eBay this week but they've done that annoying thing where I've sent the items, paid the postage, the buyer has received the items and eBay are holding my money. If I'd realised they would do that then I would have sold elsewhere.
Anyway, so I'm expecting £22.75 on 9 November to my Paypal, so that's really 3 days after that, and £45.54 to my Paypal on 23 November. Which by the time it gets to my bank will be into next month, so basically doesn't help me at all this month. Really annoyed at the whole thing as I'm actually down £14.50 from postage!

Anyway, this week I plan to make lemony red lentil soup, minestrone soup, potato and leek soup, wedding soup with bean balls and maybe the cheat tomato soup from Save Dosh earlier in the thread.

I need to buy celery and cabbage, and I've run out of chilli powder, olive oil, and cumin. That will all take me straight over budget. It's all damage control from here on in.

Have a great Sunday everyone.

LC

thriftwizard

Just £3 spent at market-packing-down time today; we just didn't need or fancy any of the things that had been reduced. So all we got was two punnets of blueberries for £2 & 4lb of bananas for £1. Off to see what I can do with bananas, apart from Banana Bread or custard!

elsiepac

thriftwizard wrote: »

Just £3 spent at market-packing-down time today; we just didn't need or fancy any of the things that had been reduced. So all we got was two punnets of blueberries for £2 & 4lb of bananas for £1. Off to see what I can do with bananas, apart from Banana Bread or custard!

Banana Pancakes or Banana Almond Oatmeal Breakfast "muffins"!

http://www.coffeeandquinoa.com/2013/09/banana-almond-baked-oatmeal-cups-vegan-a-giveaway/

kkffoo

Hubby's weekend shop;

• Moreishons £14.26
• £land £4.00*
• Greengrocers £15.40

=£33.66
£84.03 so far this month, meaning we are on target (spending £11.67 per day for a projected £350 total)

*I discovered from searching on mysupermarket that £land sell brazil nuts and dates cheaper than our usual shops. Some of the nuts are broken in half, but taste good. The dates are small, but also fine...result! Hubby tells me they stock other dried fruit also, so I'm going to check prices.

Caterina

Thank you elsiepac for your kind words!

Today might well be another NSD but not deliberately so. Thing is, last night after dinner we went to the post-fireworks party at the Vicarage and the wine was flowing! I had too much wine, ate cheese and wheat and sugar stuff, all the things that make me unwell, not to speak of the hangover, which these days is rather more severe than in my youth.

Cue a desperately bad night, a morning in bed, missed Church, which I feel bad about, and thoroughly regret my excesses of last night. No way I could have got up and gone to the farmers market to get pears and veg. We will make do with what we have.

DH (the saint) made me porridge with nuts for breakfast and I asked him for something really bland for lunch, so he is cooking allotment potatoes which I will have with eggs.

Nibbling on oatcakes and drinking hot water with ginger and lemon now to keep my wobbly stomach steady.

I hope I will be well enough to attend volunteer training for a church event in just over an hour. Luckily DH will drive.

No idea what dinner will be, probably roast squash or celeriac soup, something light and inoffensive to my troubled system.

Self inflicted, serves me right etc...but I can't help but feel a little spark of joy for yet another NSD, crazy or what!

Caterina

kkffoo wrote: »

Hubby's weekend shop;

• Moreishons £14.26
• £land £4.00*
• Greengrocers £15.40

=£33.66
£84.03 so far this month, meaning we are on target (spending £11.67 per day for a projected £350 total)

*I discovered from searching on mysupermarket that £land sell brazil nuts and dates cheaper than our usual shops. Some of the nuts are broken in half, but taste good. The dates are small, but also fine...result! Hubby tells me they stock other dried fruit also, so I'm going to check prices.

Check for freshness, sometimes places like £land have stuff at the end of the best before, and while a lot of foodstuff is not affected, nuts are.

I found out at my own expense by buying bulk nuts from approved food in the past and finding that they smelled rancid.

It is important to find good bargains but also good quality at the same time.

kkffoo

Caterina wrote: »

Check for freshness, sometimes places like £land have stuff at the end of the best before, and while a lot of foodstuff is not affected, nuts are.

I found out at my own expense by buying bulk nuts from approved food in the past and finding that they smelled rancid.

It is important to find good bargains but also good quality at the same time.

How awful Caterina, I must admit to feeling wary also. Sometimes I find an odd nut which tastes strange or mouldy even in regular supermarket bags, which are well within date. We tested a single £shop bag last week, thinking we would risk a pound to the experiment and they've been fine so far, thankfully.

Slowly57

£13.00 spend this morning on M+S YS chicken (bag of 7 chicken breasts) and a piece of pork loin that cut down into 6 chops. With my stock-up at the local butcher and other uncooked meat in the freezer, I'll deffo not need to buy meat until Feb now - so if I go over this month I'll feel the benefit later. I really focussed on what would be useful to me and didn't go crazy snatching up BARGAINS! like I usually do. A good feeling.

Cooked 1 chicken breast to slice thin and do for sandwiches in the week, made a big frittata out of 6 eggs that needed using + last weeks tomatoes and half of a batch of roasted peppers in the fridge.

4 items used from the zombie apocalypse store cupboard, milk use on-track - no fridge-emptier soup needing to be made this week!

I did good! :T

Note to self: use the kohl rabi that you bought out of curiosity.
Romanescu cauliflower doesn't taste as interesting as it looks.

Slowly57

Caterina wrote: »

Check for freshness, sometimes places like £land have stuff at the end of the best before, and while a lot of foodstuff is not affected, nuts are.

The way nuts/seeds have been stored is as important as the sell-bys (to avoid rancidity). If you can find a supplier that has a good turnover of stock - that's ideal.
https://food52.com/blog/11275-how-to-store-nuts-and-seeds

[Deleted User]

I

Caterina wrote: »

Thank you elsiepac for your kind words!

we went to the post-fireworks party at the Vicarage and the wine was flowing! I had too much wine, ate cheese and wheat and sugar stuff, all the things that make me unwell, not to speak of the hangover, which these days is rather more severe than in my youth.

Cue a desperately bad night, a morning in bed, missed Church, which I feel bad about,

I agree with elsiepac - your meals sounds lovely and healthy.

Sounds like you really put yourself out to help people, life happens, having a few too many once in a while is nothing to regret. I really wouldn't worry about missing church - god is everywhere, i'd blame the Vicarage - plying you with all that wine, shame on them :beer: - only joking, but don't beat yourself up, you've done nothing wrong.


Any butternut squash recipes - I would be so grateful - soup maybe. I find the ones i've bought very bland, but I have 3 that need using, plus broccoli, might do a soup with that also, not sure the 2 would go, but beginning to think that potatoes are bloating me, so kind of avoiding them, plus I don't eat meat/fish etc.