November 2016 Grocery Challenge

alja

Had a little spend in A$da yesterday of £14.24, but this has stocked up the freezer with needed bits and I bought some value cereal bars to take to work. I've also got courgette, carrot, new milk, bananas and grapes to keep me going health wise in between other meals I already have stored.
Hoping I'll now have quite a break from buying foodie bits
I'm now off to see a fireworks display and will probably get some chips whilst there but won't count this in my general grocery budget as it's a treat from my "going out" budget.
I hope you all have a lovely evening

Rachiedabbler70

Afternoon all
I've done a very big shop to start my month so my freezer is full of chicken and beef, frozen veggies, homemade ready meals that I have batch cooked, wraps, hm pizza dough, hm pasta sauce and hm pizza sauce. I basically have the ingredients to make lots of recipes in the house. Only time will tell now if this method works for the month. 😀

Total spend of £134.93/£200

Franalamadingdong

Save dosh, I made a winter veg crumble as a side for our roast dinner but is was agreed it'd make a wonderful vegetarian main in itself.

I roasted 300g pumpkin, 300g swede, 150g carrot and 150g parsnips for a bit, then added a chopped onion and two sprigs of rosemary, some nutmeg and 2 cloves of minced garlic. When it seemed nice and soft I topped it with a crumble made from 150g plain flour, 100g butter with 75g oats and 100g mature cheddar (grated) stirred in and baked until golden. This is a recipe I adapted to suit us and what I had in, the original had 300g of butternut squash not carrot or parsnip and used nuts instead of oats. It was served with a dressing of 2tbsp balsamic vinegar, 2 tbsp olive oil, 1tsp demerara sugar and 1 tbsp wholegrain mustard.

It went down so incredibly well I was thrilled. And it meant we used up the last of the pumpkin! Hurrah!

It's a NSD for me today and I've freed up loads of fridge/freezer room using up stale bread I was keeping in the freezer for breadcrumbs for bread and butter pudding, which also used up the end of some dried apricots and sultanas, used the last of the pumpkin and an end of swede and some scabby cheese, the chicken was from the freezer too. I'll use the left over chicken and gravy for risotto tomorrow. I refroze the crusts from the bread to use for breadcrumbs. Is it ok to refreeze bread???

[Deleted User]

Franalamadingdong wrote: »

Save dosh, I made a winter veg crumble as a side for our roast dinner but is was agreed it'd make a wonderful vegetarian main in itself.

I never even thought about a crumble - sounds lovely. I have all those ingredients, apart from nutmeg, so might give it a try. I don't eat dairy, but can easily substitute the cheese & butter for non dairy versions. I will definately try this. Thank you.

Florence_J

Went to the shops to buy Bread and Orange Juice and came away with a Salmon ready meal, Garlic baguette twin pack and Cornflour as well!

£5.91 spent so £7.30 over budget now.

Littlefrugalcottage

Hello,

Please can I join? At £300? Already spent some money last week so will take that into account as it was in November!

Spent this week
Weekly Shopping £31.07
Pet's at Home £18.99
Holland and Barrett £12.02

£111.25/£300 left to spend £188.75

Caterina

Thank you Save dosh, it's very kind of you. Funny enough, I had squash, too, tonight.

Anyway, today due to my feeling under the weather we skipped the planned trip to the farmers market, made do with what we had and struck NSD no.4, for which I am well pleased.

Food today was as follows:

Breakfast: Porridge with chopped nuts, HM almond milk, sliced figs, chia seeds and maple syrup. DH really is the best porridge maker, he went to town to make it appetising for me after the bad night I had.

Lunch: also made by DH and it was lovely, boiled allotment potatoes dressed in olive oil, with chopped parsley from the garden, served with saut!ed peas and 2 fried eggs. It was just perfect! It really helped me feel better.

Dinner: roasted squash with a packet of (past use by date!) felafel, with some (gifted) sweetcorn relish, then mixed salad from the allotment, mixed with sauerkraut I had in the fridge. Apple, almonds, dried figs for pudding

Managed to go out to do the training for the church event after lunch and now we are just back from a regular discussion meeting we have at our vicar's house, where his wife served delicious mulled apple juice. I also had 3 pieces of fudge, yummy treat. No wine for me though, not for a long while!

Delighted to be feeling so much better. Good night!

lynnejk

Evening all and a warm welcome to the Fred LFC :hello:

On tablet so not enough patience for long post :rotfl:

Spent £17.44 in Al*i today so am on £45.69/200 atm

Hope you all have a money saving Monday
Lx

elsiepac

Slowly57 wrote: »

Note to self: use the kohl rabi that you bought out of curiosity.

Kohlrabi is great! Just cut the root off the bottom and cut the sprouty things off the top. Peel the whole thing.

Basically it tastes like broccoli but obviously the texture is very different. It's good grated into salads or slaw raw, or cubed/chipped and roasted! Easy peasy!

Today I made Potato and Leek Soup - it has fresh chives stirred through after blending and is topped with fresh dill! I ate one portion for lunch and have two left for lunches in the week at work.



I also made minestrone soup - it is super healthy and yummy and pretty easy too! It made 5 portions of which I had one for tea, I have 3 for lunches at work in the week, and one for tea on a leek and potato soup for lunch day!



On the downside, I did my very scripted/listed shop at Tesc0 and spent £19.87 - however I had £6.50 in vouchers, so from my (now minus figures) grocery budget it cost £13.37.

No more grocery spend days needed this week AT LEAST!

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)
6 Nov......Tesc0.....£13.37....-£11.50 (Proper grocery shop)

EverTheOptimist

Morning all

I've spent £120 out of my £230 budget. :eek: I've got into the habit of weekly shops whilst being on mat leave which i really don't think is conducive to money saving. Not for me anyway. I'm thinking of changing to home delivery when I return to work and then just doing a fruit and veg shop every couple of weeks. Anyway need to check my freezer today so I can write our weekly menu hopefully we have enough in the freezer for the week.

Thanks for the thread. Will be browsing the recipes over the next few weeks too.