January 2018 Grocery Challenge

ma-ri-ella

Ended up way over for the month at £64.19 - however there has been massive stockpiling taking place plus some non essential not every day buys such as new clothes due to weight loss - so i will let myself off with that :P.
I am going to try pretty much for a low/ no spend February!! my problem is going to be milk mainly - i love a nice cup of tea plus any fresh fruit i want - not going to grudge that its all about health but really i should be sticking to veg portions rather than fruit (less sugar) and i have loads of veg in freezer...I will try with the herbal teas instead but sometimes a cup of Tetley i sneeded #1

purpleybat

cw18 wrote: »

I'm actually wanting to put the eggs into the freezer (it's that or throw them away), but I'm not sure how best to split them up after whisking to try and reduce waste after defrosting.

I don't keep yoghurt in the house. I can't have normal stuff (I'm lactose intolerant, so should avoid dairy), and only buy soya (not sure how that would work) if I'm on muesli for breakfasts - and I've a lot of other stuff in my food mountain to use up before I buy any of that.

Cornflour probably isn't a good option - I've never been able to mix it into a smooth paste, so gave up using it for anything years ago.

you could dry of your fish with kitchen roll, spread with mustard and press crumb onto that.
Dijon works with fish cos not too hot

cw18

purpleybat wrote: »

you could dry of your fish with kitchen roll, spread with mustard and press crumb onto that.
Dijon works with fish cos not too hot

Wouldn't have ever thought of mustard, but then again I don't like it

purpleybat

cw18 wrote: »

Wouldn't have ever thought of mustard, but then again I don't like it

i didn't think you could taste it that much, but then I use a really herby crumb mix so its probably over powered. thinking about it, i'd imagine you could use anything like ketchup.


did my last shop of the month on weds, £20.52 at lidl. takes my months total up to £124.69, I could've spent less but i'm a big snacker, I should really cut them out.

lynnejk

Evening all

Spends today in Morries = £34.52 and Li*l = 10.35, but did include some stock things, salmon and chicken, lots of veggies and cheese.

Now at 156.44/200

Still hoping to come in under budget fingers xd

Hope you all have a lovely weekend
Lx

JIL

Husband picked me up after work and we nipped to a frozen superstore, it's really Iceland but it sells some other strange things, like vacuum cleaners and slow cookers in random places throughout the shop. I got milk, veg, tomatoes, cooked meat, prawns, gravy granules and crisps. Just less than £17. It was in danger of being more, they had many Christmas items reduced, one was 99p for two miniature ports, with oatcakes and two miniature jars of relish. Husband was my conscience, asking what I would want them for. So they went back on the shelves, along with the chocolate biscuits that we also did not need.

£3 left.

Grannymolly

Spent £27.61 in Mr A, that should be enough to go a little into Feb but I’m calling it here.
Feeling like the £250 is pretty accurate for us, this month was good but it was hard work, cooking mostly everything from scratch, a lot of homemade soups etc.

Takes me to £225.94/250 for Jan!

See you all over in Feb GC :j

Faete

My OH and I are both down with the lurge so no big shop today, he's popped round to our local Co-op and picked up some ding meals as neither of us feel like cooking. £22.13.

Fae xx

PipneyJane

Good morning all

Two spends to declare for the last week. DH and I popped into L!dl on the way home one night. £10.23 spent, mainly on two of the frozen salmon en croute. Still can’t find their cooking bacon. This wasn’t our usual branch, either. We’ve got into the habit of stalking L!dl; if we pass one on the way home from somewhere, well drop in because, although I get their email newsletter, I’ve found they put many things on offer via stealth. For instance, we only use recycled toilet paper and last February, I found them selling recycled, 4-ply toilet paper in 16 roll packets, at less than £2 a packet. This isn’t a regular product for them. It wasn’t advertised anywhere - I checked both their email and their paper newsletters.

Second shop was Sainsbugs on Thursday for some eggs. £1.10 spent (90p for half a dozen eggs and 20p on YS hot crossed buns). There’s a Sainsbugs on one route home from work, so I thought I’d combine my journeys and save fuel. (I dislike Sainsbugs. Their store layouts annoy me and I find them more expensive than MrT’s, but I’d promised to take an apple cake when we visited friends on Friday, we only had two eggs in the house and my apple cake recipe involved opening a jar of stewed apple that’s big enough to make 3 cakes. My plan was to make 2 cakes and freeze the remaining apple, hence we needed eggs.

In the end, I could have not visited Sainsbugs. By the time I’d finished DH’s tax return, it was after 9 and I couldn’t face dealing with my temperamental big oven. (The stove has to be replaced at some point). At 6.30am on Friday morning, I made one cake using my microwave-convection oven (which gets more use as an oven than as a microwave, but can’t take two cake tins). The cake was voted a success.

The above brings my spending to £85.84/£120 with £34.16 left in the kitty. We will need to a small shop this weekend: mainly the farm shop for veggies and the supermarket for yoghurt and mushrooms. We’re also running low on coffee. Costco have an offer starting Monday, so I’ll price up the equivalents today and see if it’s worth it.

Looking forward to £50 February, there’s one known spend that I’ll be excluding from the challenge: we have a family party in Scotland at the end of the month, so I’ll be ordering haggis - 2 left feet and 2 right - from the butcher up there, together with some steak bridies and black pudding.

- Pip

pamsdish

£13.45 in B&M and Home Bargains, needed coffee and a few dog treats, wasn`t planning on going to town but cross with my neighbour as apparently, my admittedly, 12 year old mini is on it`s last legs because the remote control door opener has stopped working, would cost a minimum £50 to repair so going back to just using key to open car. Starts first turn of key, no dents or rust, just usual gravel chips, she had gone shopping elsewhere on the bus in pouring rain, if she wasn`t passing narky comments about my car, not big enough, too low to ground, last legs etc I would have taken her, she does drive I won`t put her on my insurance, she wanted to lease a car with me going halves, but I bought my well maintained mini off my daughter.