December 2016 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

Kind of lost track here; the last 3 days have flown past in a complete whirl of things like getting my chickens under cover. Whilst it's been far from spend-free, as far as I can remember i haven't spent anything at all on food, drink, toiletries or cleaning stuff since the weekend, which would make 3 NSDs on the trot. I have a feeling that's a record! I'm off to my mother's this evening; she's having a cataract op. tomorrow morning, so I'll be looking after her until Sunday, and the troops at this end are saying they'll eat from the freezer, though DD2 will stock up on veg at Sunday's market.

So I shall buy a little bit of fruit today, and some bread to take with me as Mum doesn't eat bread any more, but there are some more NSDs in the offing... can't believe how much difference not having Ds2 & TDiL in the house is already having on the budget! Not blaming them, but suddenly we can cope without, say, sliced bread for a day or two...

kkffoo

Save_Dosh wrote: »

It makes a ton - I also grate in some beetroot which is nice. For the houmous, I don't really make a proper one, but it tastes nice (well did this time), I've only made it a couple of times before. I blitz a tin of chickpeas with a bit of water, some minced garlic and a teaspoon of peanut butter (instead of tahini) and I added half of a roasted pepper (out of a jar). Seasoned and added a tiny bit of chilli powder, probably better with roasted paprika, but it was all I had. It was really nice.

I bet it tasted good! Looking back at recipe I've seen I realise it was the unobtainable/expensive tahini which put me off. It sounds like once you have the chick peas and peanut butter you can use what you have at hand and experiment with tastes :T

Franalamadingdong wrote: »

No spends today and the nausea has finally gone! Hurrah!

:T

PennyGrabber wrote: »

Tonight I'm working late, but already have some potato peel soup that I made Tuesday, so hopefully ill be able to stay away from the lure of morries ys!....
Partner and I are planning to hit the sms on Xmas eve, to try and get ys meat for next year. We've not done this before, but I've heard of people who've done really well with this. Any tips? Best time, best shop, etc?
PG x

Using my peelings has been a really useful tip from this forum, but I struggle with potato as I can end up with sludge* if I have too many in the mix (*tasty sludge though). Do you do something special with them?
Christmas Eve meat. We don't do it, but my friend and partner have made this a festive tradition. They walk 3 miles down to the Co-op on the afternoon, chatting to everyone they meet, and then buying up whatever is discounted in the meat cabinet. I think they aim for 3pm, but warn that some years they haven't got much.

Spends, £4 in £shop. £1 worth of useful needed dates and two bags of cashews and a bag of almonds to add to our nut mountain.
'I see we already have cashews', he says. 'Yes', says I. '..and quite a few other nuts', says he. 'Yes says I'. We don't talk about lists, and sticking to them, as he is generally very good, and I have realised that nobody but myself has any breakfast cereal for the coming week. In fact when he walked in to mention that, I was sitting looking at a page full of breakfast cereal on mysupermarket.com.
Despite A$da being the cheapest place for our cereal, somehow when I did my online shop I wound up buying lots of nuts, instead of wheat bisks. Aaargh. :mad:

However, good thing...the £2 large turkey drumstick yielded a lot more meat than I had hoped. After steaming in pressure cooker, and slicing off any I could get to, I added the bone back to a pot of soup thinking it would add flavour. Thirty minutes later the loose thin wing bones just pulled out, and all the rest of the meat almost fell off. It makes me wonder just how much turkey we have thrown away after Christmas in the past, thinking it was all done.

thriftwizard

£6 spent up town on fruit & bread to take to Mum's tonight. I'm leaving some cash for people to buy anything that's needed whilst I'm gone, but it seems that they're mostly out this weekend, so it should be a fairly cheap one!

elsiepac

Save_Dosh wrote: »

Desperately low on hummus, but I will just make some - I don't really like it as much a bought - needs working on.

Save Dosh, Personally I find that making it without tahini (which is the money saving way really!) massively impacts on flavour, so I always make mine with tahini as it just gets wasted otherwise!

kkffooYou can just make it without tahini or peanut butter if you like - just add a little water maybe if it's too thick. Tahini is expensive, but I don't use huge quantities at a time. T3sc0 do it at £2.50 a jar which always makes me wince, but I buy it because I'm a captive audience! I probably buy one jar every couple of months. I make other sauces with it too though, I love it so much!! Must look into buying a larger thus cheaper per weight jar/pot/bucket!

My basic recipe is here, it's nothing special, this is just the quantities I find work every time
200g dried chickpeas, cooked (I think this is a little more than two tins worth, but I would sub 2 tins)
50g tahini
2 cloves garlic
2 lemons worth of juice
1/4 tsp cayenne
1/3 tsp salt

kkffoo wrote: »

(*can you tell that my hubby provided that figure? I'm going to do something exciting with that 8p, like buy a onion and put some tinsel on it )

Phew! Made a four week menu plan using above criteria. It only took me two days to do

kkffooYour post made my day, crying with laughter!
Also, I'd be really interested to see you r 4 week plan if you feel like sharing? I love seeing meal plans, it gives me good ideas and things I can adapt!

Not doing too badly on grocery budget this time... I've not really meal planned but I had so much in that I've just deliberately been avoiding the shops for little bits and just using what I have in... except for my planned shops of course.
Still haven't ordered another veg box as STILL have bits left... I'm struggling with so much root veg. I think it's because it fills me up more than the lighter veg I would usually base my meals around. Also I'm not as keen to have it so regularly, I think because it's sweet and I like savoury!! But maybe I'm just being fussy.
Avoiding shops again tonight... I still have a few potatoes, a butternut squash, a spaghetti squash, a whole cabbage, a big parsnip, celery, some carrots and a couple of onions.
It'll be a bowl for tea based on that... nice and easy roast squash, sauteed or lightly boiled cabbage, brown rice, tofu or chickpeas and I'll just make a sauce to make it exciting.
I'll use my celery, carrots and onion in wedding soup with bean balls, but I need lemons for that. Might pop to c0-0p today just for lemons and limes and coriander which will liven up more meals I can make with my store cupboard stuff. I'm thinking a bean chilli.

Anyone got a nice recipe for parsnip soup? Not curried preferably. Don't worry if not vegan, I can easily adapt for my own use :j



Date.......Shop......Amount.....Remaining
25 Nov.....BF........£53.11.....£106.89 (Health Food Stock Up Shop)
26 Nov.....Steve.....£01.00.....£105.89 (for crisps)
26 Nov.....Mark......£01.50.....£104.39 (for bakery)
26 Nov.....T3sc0.....£21.18.....£83.21 (proper groceries shop)
5 Dec......T3sc0.....£22.95.....£60.26 (stock up grocery shop - baking things, tins, salt, stock cubes etc)
7 Dec......T3sc0.....£01.94.....£58.30 (croutons for me for a salad at lunch - last minute using up iceberg which I never normally have! plus rice for my boss... hopefully I'll get that 84p back!)

pamsdish

£3 in morries on ys items.

Franalamadingdong

Well! I have a lot of cake/biscuits left! These old ladies only have a little bit. Banana bread freezes up great, as will the biscuits, but I don't know about Victoria sponge, no buttercream, just jam. Any advice gratefully received.

We had our fish and chips. They were delicious! Spends came out of eating out budget. It was going to be out of November's budget, but I just calculated our overall November budget credit/debit (+£64.11). So I've taken it from December's eating out budget, which the £64.11 credit available should we overspend on anything this month.

Also popped to the co of Tes and spent £7.66 on groceries. Got some ys bread, which is good because we'd gone in for that. Picked up a few bits not on the list though (oops), but our butter was on offer, bread was ys and pop was cheaper than normal (but not on offer) too, so a good shop. Not planned next week's meals yet. I'm happy to report that the freezer is looking increasingly bare.

Total: £59.54/200

PennyGrabber

Well, I did go to morries. I spent £3.37, £2 of which was on two cheese truckles for Xmas. The rest was ys bread,cakes and meat. 10p for 4 blueberry muffins- why thank you!!

Not too sure what I'm doing for dinner for the children tomorrow. Haven't actually written my December meal plan yet, shock horror!!

I think I'll look through my cupboards and then have an early night with my planning journal. I'm thinking very little needs to be bought because I have a ridiculous quantity of stuff in stock!

Partner gets back from his holiday on Tuesday, so I expect I'll be feeding him weds and Friday. I'm letting him take me out for dinner on Thursday! Children are with their dad for a fair bit of the holidays, which I hate, but I know it's really important for them.

Kkffoo, thanks for info re Xmas eve meat. I think we'll do morries, @sda and m&s, and see what we can find. Re the soup, I just used 3 spuds' worth of peelings, an onion, a stock cube, a stick of celery, and a sprinkling of herbs. Left it for a while, then blitzed it. Seems fine, tastes ok, although not the most colourful thing ever!!

PG x

t14cy_t

nsd yesterday, yippee!!xx

kkffoo

PennyGrabber wrote: »

Re the soup, I just used 3 spuds' worth of peelings, an onion, a stock cube, a stick of celery, and a sprinkling of herbs. Left it for a while, then blitzed it. Seems fine, tastes ok, although not the most colourful thing ever!!
PG x

Thanks PG I think maybe just tried to use too much, plus adding extra potato...and expiring salad tomatoes making it extra gloopy and an unattractive salmony pink colour. I am getting better though at being more selective with soup ingredients and realising 'everything left in the fridge' is not the best way to go

elsiepac wrote: »

....
I'd be really interested to see you r 4 week plan if you feel like sharing? I love seeing meal plans, it gives me good ideas and things I can adapt!

I try to keep most evening meals during the week fixed, with one main meal batch 'cooking day', and one batch soup making day. This is a bit boring but saves insanity;

Sun night -pasta and bought sauce with veg and grated cheese
Mon - fish + potatoes + veg plus instant white sauce
Tues - vege burger, bun, oven chips + veg (was omelette before hens went off-lay)
Wed - recipe meal + carbs
Thur- leftovers from prev wed (frozen) + carbs
Fri - basic pizza + oven chips + veg*
Sat - alternates fresh pasta / fresh salmon*

Lunches are similarly limited in scope;

Mon- Salad (or toasties if it is perishing cold)
Tues - HM Soup (frozen)
Wed - Salad (or toasties if it is perishing cold)
Thurs - sandwiches*
Fri - HM soup
Sat -sandwiches*
Sun - sandwiches*

*means another family member is partly, or wholly responsible for this meal.

We have fruit and yoghurt (with seeds, milled linseed, bits) every lunch
& a plate of fruit, nuts and small sweet-treat at tea time.

Salads are varied as much as possible, as are recipe days and soup. I use leftovers to gussy up the pizza.

edit:
1st week recipe roasted veg parcels, soup turkey
2nd week recipe stuffed peppers, soup mushroom
3rd week recipe veg & lentil casserole, soup (not soup veggie pate !)
4th week recipe sausages (not a recipe due to Xmas), soup chicken

Some ingredients work through multiple meals, eg a small tin of sliced olives has already been used five times (just now on pizza). The leftover ingredients from the recipe go into the soup (eg this week leeks).
Sometimes previous nights carbs go into salad..eg potato or rice salad.
I make some of the bread and all of our yoghurt and stock (and now coleslaw...hummus coming soon )
For some meals I make two options..tinned tomato soup is the lump it or leave it alternative to home made.
Fish fingers is the alt to meat, or fish.
Baked beans are the ultimate alt to main meal or veg (son had baked bean and turkey pie last wednesday)

edit again:
Áldi top up shop £11.99, now on £83.85/£273.08

Mrs_Cheshire

Hi all, I joined in again back in October I think but lost the way with keeping track of spends. Will continue reading the threads and get back on board when my husband gets paid again. He gets paid 4 weekly though so gets paid on the 16th Dec so not sure whether to do December or Jan thread