April 2018 Grocery Challenge

tiredwithtwins

I think ive actually come in at way under my target (my april budget was 29/3-26/4) ... I need to add it all up again because im £55 under budget, that cant be right .. but it must be! no opportunity to go to the shops now so wont be spending anything else until payday on 26th!! Wow, ive impressed myself!!

MadamMim2013

Small spend of £13.38 on fresh fruit and items for a meal at my sisters tomorrow.
Adding to total now..
Been enjoying some lovely food over the last few days, tonight's meal was a smoked salmon pasta with creamy chillin garlic sauce and a large salad.:)

Highland_Fling

Good morning everyone
well after a beautiful day yesterday today appears a bit overcast. I suppose yesterday was our spring:).
I still have £50 left in my "real money" purse. My GC finishes at end of month and anything could happen between now and then. Especially since I am going to visit Ald+ today or tomorrow. I have my recipe plan and have written my shopping list containing only the items I need to achieve that goal. However you know what can sometimes happen when you are tempted to "shop off piste".
Will continue on this thread until I post my total.

P.S. Many congratulations to PG.

K9sandFelines

£45.97 to add to total due to s spend at Ocado. Don't think there has been any other spends.

selloptape

I seem to have spent around around £100 in the last week. Work was exhausting and I lost track of the meal plan. Feel refreshed today so hopefully will stay on top of things next week.

PipneyJane

To the Marathon Runners, how did you do??? How are you feeling now?

I have four Grocery Challenge shops to declare this week, all from the last 2 days. Two at Lidl (£14.69 and £4.02, respectively), one at Mr T!!!8217;s (£10.59 plus a £10 sack of rice, paid for by the Bulk Fund) and £7.30 at the Farm Shop. That spending comes to £36.60, which brings our total spend to £111.01/£120, leaving £8.99 for the rest of the month.

About Lidl, most of the second spend wouldn!!!8217;t have happened, if DH hadn!!!8217;t discovered their ice-cream. He only went in to fetch muffins for this morning!!!8217;s breakfast (39p/pack), but he!!!8217;d been there on Friday for mushrooms - on offer - and their Salmon En Croute. While prowling the freezer for the latter, he!!!8217;d discovered their posh ice-cream and bought a tub. As a result, the resident chocolate monster has morphed into his other !!!8220;form!!!8221;: ice-cream monster. < sigh >

Mr T!!!8217;s shop was mainly for peppers, this week!!!8217;s supply of yoghurt and cling film. The Bulk Fund paid for the rice: 10kg sacks of a name-brand basmati rice for £10 a good price, which doesn!!!8217;t come up very often. We!!!8217;re running low, so the offer was well timed. Less urgent for us, our local Mr T!!!8217;s is selling 10kg sacks of Atta/Chappatti flour for £3 (usually anything between £4-£6). This is a semi-regular offer that comes up every three or four months. I may yet go back and buy a sack - we!!!8217;ll probably run out before the offer comes around again. If I do, it!!!8217;ll be lurking in the corner for 2-3 months. (I only have four of the largest Lock&Lock boxes, each holds 5kg of rice or flour, but two are in use at the moment.)

The other spend this weekend was £43.06 from the meat fund (not counted in GC). We dropped into Costco and bought a large fillet of salmon, 10 lamb steaks and 6 pork shoulder steaks, which have been bagged, tagged and are now in the freezer. The salmon was cut into 8 fillets before freezing. My hands now reek of fish; I!!!8217;ve only washed them half a dozen times so far.

My menu planning is usually fairly rudimentary. Before I go to bed each night, I normally look at the contents of the fridge, see what needs to be used up, consider what we haven!!!8217;t eaten recently, take some meat out of the freezer to defrost and declare that we!!!8217;re going to have X for dinner tomorrow. This week will be slightly different, because we!!!8217;ve got a reasonable amount of fresh veg in stock and a few things that need to be used up.

- Dinner tonight will be lamb steaks and roasted veg salad.
- Monday will be a repeat of today!!!8217;s breakfast: Black Pudding !!!8220;McMuffins!!!8221;.
- Tuesday or Wednesday, we!!!8217;ll have Parsnip & Cashew Nut Roast with new potatoes and broccoli. (We have cashews in the fridge and bought a kilo of the last of the winter!!!8217;s parsnips at the farm shop. I!!!8217;ll make 2 and freeze one.)
- We have plain yoghurt in the fridge that needs to be used. I!!!8217;ll either make White Fish Curry or Mung Bean Curry, since both use yoghurt. (We don!!!8217;t have any white fish in the freezer and didn!!!8217;t buy any today because it would have defrosted before we got home..)
- Thursday or Friday, I will !!!8220;do something!!!8221; with butternut squash. We!!!8217;ve got one lurking in with the potatoes. There!!!8217;s a Weight Watchers!!!8217; Thai Green Curry recipe for butternut squash which I will customise.

- Pip

Tales17

Hi all, update for last week:

- £3.89 Graze Box

- £15 Fruit & Veg Delivery Box

- £104 Wine Delivery (using a £10 off voucher), hopefully stay stocked up for a bit!

- £9.66 small spend by other half, mainly for beer after a long week at work! (And he bought me the new Star War Bluray in 3D but that is under another budget pot!)

- £84.11 Tesco Click and Collect - bigger amount than usual this week but I stocked up on a few offers that were finishing this week so had to get them while I could!

Brings total for month to £425.69, so doing well with only one more week to go and should be under budget, next month will be harder as I need a meat delivery and have my daughters birthday party food to include as well!

thriftwizard

OH was seriously worried about the heat, Pipney-Jane - he flakes out at about 18 degrees C just gardening at home - so he went very cautiously & finished his 3rd London marathon in a slow but steady 4hrs 44mins. That actually put him in the top half of finishers and quite high up in his age group; he's not the only one to have described conditions yesterday as "brutal". But we had a lovely weekend up there celebrating DS1's birthday & supporting our hero!

caronc

£42 today but loo roll, toiletries & dishwasher tablets now restocked and fruit & veg supply no longer looking pitiful. Hopefully my final shop for April with a total of £164/£200

Puddleglum

The final shop for April (I hope) has come in at £30.55 which brings me in at £3 ish under budget for the month. I may have to reduce the budget for next month but need to consult the spreadsheet of optimism first.