August 2018 Grocery Challenge

Hopeless_Case

I've totally lost track of what I've spent so far so I'm going to bow out and restart in September - I'm not happy but I can't see any point in doing it if I've not got the right figures.

The issue has been that I've been using cash and I had a big clearout in my bag and threw my receipts away.

We've taken £50 out over the last couple of weeks but it's gone on lots of things, so athough I know I spent £22 yesterday I can't even begin to remember what I spent last week (doesn't help that it was a really stressful week at work so I didn't record the spends at the time and they've been pushed right out of my mind!)

So good luck everyone and see you next month! (That's only Tuesday for me as my month goes from 28th, so not so bad )

berries

elsiepac wrote: »

Hi berries and welcome!

If you head on over to the September thread and pop your budget goal in there, I will add you to the list of the challengers at the top of the thread. Great to have you with us

___

I've broken a toe bone! Not a toe itself - but the bone actually back into the foot, right at the base of it, nearly all the way through! My first ever broken bone (at 34 years old!) which I don't think is too bad. Slipped in the bathroom and ended up almost doing the splits and landed on my bum, but my whole weight was behind my right leg which slammed into a corner of wall - VERY painful!!
So movement is limited and I'm supposed to be resting it - I have crutches as not supposed to put weight on my foot (not that I can right now) but they are a pain in the backside!

Anyway so I've done a very simple meal prep for this week - had virtually no money so great chance to use some freezer meals, which all seemed to be curries lol! So for the rest of this week I have:

2x chickpea and lentil curries
1x sweet potato, chickpea, red pepper and spinach curry
1x another curry I can't remember!

I've cooked up some rice in a stock cube and got it in the fridge ready, and washed and chopped 2 broccolis (£1.10) - so each evening I need to remember to get out a curry from the freezer for the next day, then on the evening dish up some rice, add the curry, add some broccoli, cover in cling film and nuke, which should steam the broccoli. Simples!
I also made a one pot thing for lunches - let's call it:

Harissa Butternut Soup
Makes 4 good portions and if you're on SW it's syn free)

Ingredients
2 small or 1 large red onion
3 cloves garlic
1 "rich and smoky" stock cube (I get these in Tesc0)
2 tsp Harissa seasoning (in powder form - you can absolutely use the stuff in a jar but if on SW be aware it has syns then)
4 tbsp tomato puree
Water
1 large butternut squash
2 tins borlotti beans (I wanted to use pinto but didn't have any)
1 big bag spinach

Method

1. Put about 1/2 inch of water in a big saucepan and water saute the onion and garlic for about 10 minutes, adding splashes more water when needed
2. Stir in the stock pot and enough water to make about an inch in the bottom of the pan and stir until it dissolves
3. Add the harissa seasoning and the tomato puree and mix well
4. Now add about 1 pint of water and bring to the boil while you chop your butternut into small ish cubes and add them to the pot
5. Drain and rinse the beans and throw them in
6. Bring to a low simmer for about 15 minutes, stir in the whole bag of spinach and cook for a further 5 minutes
7. Enjoy!

Thank you. Just done it. Looking forward to planning and seeing where my pennies goes!! Ouch to your toe! ! My horse stod on my foot leaving me with a open fracture! !! Painfull! ! Hope you recover quickly

pamsdish

OUCH Elsiepac

caronc

Shop today of £27 bringing total for August to £96/£140. Planned extra spend this month not now needed but will be next month instead. Hoping this is more or less my last GC spend for August.

PipneyJane

berries wrote: »

Please can I join this for September. I get paid Friday so I will be trying my best not to waste my money away. First time doing this i am normally carefull . Just lately I seem to be going into my overdraft and getting some charges so wasting pennies there!!

I normally budget £25 per week. I have plenty of meat fish in the freezer so it's the fresh items etc. I work in retail so get some really good bargains which I only buy if it's needed or can go into the freezer. I'm currently off work sick with purlese so feeling pants can't do normal things as docs said must rest hence trying to get keep my brain busy.... Nothing better than pulling finger out of !!!! to sort this out and stop wasteing my pennies!!!

So I'm hoping £100 month will be enough. There is only me and my 3 dog's which have their own account so food comes out of theirs. Raw food too which I need to stock up on this month so that could be £60. Haven't sat down and worked out what I'm getting them this month. Job to do today.

Gosh sorry for rambling on I get carried away at times! !

Hi Berries. Welcome to the Grocery Challenge. May I suggest that you join the September thread? It can be found here. Most people who start their month in the middle/towards the end of a calendar month will post in the next month’s thread. (The current one will become a bit quiet once September starts. )

I have several spends and a near disaster to declare. More on that later.

We did a little bit of shopping, two weekends ago, spending £8.01 in Mr T’s (lunch stuff & some veg), followed by £9.47 in A$da (yoghurts, mushrooms, peppers) and £4.40 W8rose (4x 500g dried black turtle beans.). Nothing purchased since, so that brings our total GC spend to £112.63/£120, leaving £7.37 for the rest of the month.

Last Monday night, we went to Costco and purchased 3 trays of meat: 10x lamb leg steaks (£16.19), 8 x pork shoulder steaks (£8.23), 9x chicken breast fillets (£15.84) and a tray of marinated, sliced belly pork (£13.23). Total spend from the Meat Fund £53.49.

Got home and started the bag-tag-and-freeze with the lamb. The freezer was nearly full but I had part of one shelf where I could freeze the lamb flat. The plan was that, once frozen it’d get moved to the meat drawer, then on Tuesday morning, I’d freeze the pork, followed by the chicken that evening. Tuesday morning, I put the plan into action; most of the lamb was frozen stiff, but a couple of pieces felt a little softer than expected. Still, I’d already bagged the pork, so into the meat drawer they went. I remember noticing that a couple of other items in the freezer were a bit frosty...

Got home Tuesday evening and realised that disaster had struck. Our freezer had stopped freezing things. The display still quoted the correct temperatures, but the pork wasn’t frozen. We initially decided it must have been because DH got home early, put the freezer block from his lunch box into the freezer and hadn’t shut the door properly. Put the freezer out Quick Freeze; nothing happened. While nothing had defrosted, the pork was still not frozen on Wednesday morning.

Panic ensued. There was considerably more frost on items, but nothing looked like it was defrosting. I went to work, while DH worked from home. He tried solving the problem via the internet but eventually phoned me and broke the news that it wasn’t easily fixable. He asked what was the most important food to save; I replied “The haggis, followed by the black pudding** and the fresh stuff we bought on Monday”. He knocked on the neighbours and begged some freezer space. He also put the chicken in the neighbour’s fridge.

We cooked the pork belly for dinner on Wednesday evening.

Meanwhile, I ordered a new fridge-freezer, for delivery on Thursday. By the time I got home, the freezer was reading -2C while the fridge was quoting 10C. Thursday morning, the freezer was reading 2C and the fridge 15C. My turn to work from home. I packed everything into cool bags and started praying my delivery would turn up early. It did, but they made me promise to let the fridge settle for 6 hours before turning it on.

Luckily, we have a large, heavy duty cool bag, which is almost ridged. Anything that had remained in the freezer, went in there. It wasn’t just meat. I almost cried, when I realised how many frozen lunchboxes and portions of cooked dried beans, tomato sauce, onion-and-mushroom base could have been lost. All that work gone to waste.

I used an almost frozen bottle of milk to cool another freezer bag, into which went the cheese, the yoghurts and the eggs. Everything else had to fend for itself but that was mainly fresh veg.

2.30pm, the timer went on my phone and I plugged the fridge-freezer in. DH came home soon after and we repacked the fridge and freezer (probably against the manufacturer’s recommendations to do it so fast).

We lost a couple of items. The breadcrumbs didn’t survive. I threw away bags of fresh-frozen herbs (coriander, fenugreek, tarragon). “ice cubes” of ginger were also chucked. Pretty much everything else has survived.

- Pip.



*I don’t track Meat Fund spending. It accumulates at £40/month and we can go months without buying anything.

** Both come from Johnsons’, the butcher in Dunfermline, and would be difficult to replace. We live in London but visit family up there about once a year. We phone in our order and they freeze it solid for us, for collection on the day we depart. (This year, that coincided with the Beast from the East, so no chance of defrosting.)

thriftwizard

Oooh, elsiepac, that sounds really painful! Hope you have a chance to rest.

Welcome, berries. Hope to see you in the September thread to see how you do, in the nicest possible way... ;-)

I've added £10 to my total, which is a rounding-up of three small spends today which I can't find receipts for, having "tidied" my handbag. It was bread (x 2) bananas, ice cream, some YS strawberries, frozen peas, etc. Altogether it was definitely under £10 but not much - our supermarket's YS prices are pretty close to other supermarket's everyday prices! And one of the loaves of bread was an "artisanal" sourdough - a bit of a treat - and we don't really "need" the peas, as we're drowning in beans, courgettes & assorted leaves from the allotment - but it is nice to have a change.

elsiepac

Thanks everyone, and berries that sounds SUPER painful!! Way worse than mine lol!!
I'm already getting my head around what I need to order on stock up for next month, and what kinds of things I can plan for meals.
I need to get my head round being organised, I've coasted for far too long!

PipneyJane

elsiepac wrote: »

I've broken a toe bone! Not a toe itself - but the bone actually back into the foot, right at the base of it, nearly all the way through! My first ever broken bone (at 34 years old!) which I don't think is too bad. Slipped in the bathroom and ended up almost doing the splits and landed on my bum, but my whole weight was behind my right leg which slammed into a corner of wall - VERY painful!!
So movement is limited and I'm supposed to be resting it - I have crutches as not supposed to put weight on my foot (not that I can right now) but they are a pain in the backside!

Hi Elsiepac.

Apologies for missing your post yesterday. I’m really sorry to hear about your foot. Having done something similar 2 years ago, you have my deepest sympathy (mine was an avulsion fracture of the 5th metatarsal on my right foot). I well remember the frustration. Elbow crutches are impossible. You can’t carry anything. Even making a cup of tea requires military planning. It took 4 moves to get the milk from the fridge and into my mug of tea; plus another 4 to put it away.

Do you have a follow-up appointment booked? I had to go back to fracture clinic after 2 weeks, which is when they gave me a boot. It immobilised my foot and allowed me to put some weight on it, so I could hobble short distances. And I could balance! Hopefully, you’ll get one at your follow-up.

- Pip

thriftwizard

Sigh - another £8 has just trickled away, on several varieties of green tea, which seem to be necessary to the DDs' well-being. I'm not despairing yet, we should still come in under budget and certainly could if it was absolutely necessary as there's plenty in the cupboards & freezer. But at times like this I can see it - yes, trickling away!

elsiepac

Hi Pip

Thanks for the kind words and yours sounds awful! There's no follow up appointment for mine sadly, as I really wanted to ask about a boot - it's ridiculous really, I can get about better (if more painfully) without the crutches, but they said I had to keep the weight off it. No indication of how long or anything - wonderful! I'm using the crutches outside of the home but at home I don't bother as my house is pretty small so it's only ever a few steps and also there isn't a lot of room for crutch use really! I am in a pretty bad mood with it all to be honest, as I'm missing all the gym classes I usually do, I do 5 a week normally so I'm really feeling the loss!