November 2018 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

trulymadlyhannah wrote: »

PipneyJane - Thanks for the tip with kidney beans - Its actually never occurred to me to buy dried, we usually buy tinned!

My pleasure. Glad it helped. We gave up eating tinned beans when the value-variety were so badly cooked that they were still hard when I opened the tin. At that point, I worked out that I could cook the equivalent of a can for less than 20p including cooking costs and, by batch cooking, I'd have them in the freezer for when i needed them.

I have a spend to report, but it came out of the Meat Fund and not the Grocery Challenge money. (Every month we put £40 into the Meat Fund for shopping at the butcher.) Last Friday, I worked from home and popped into the local butcher during my lunch break. They're a lovely shop with a separate deli counter selling cooked meats, pies and sandwich-lunch stuff. Their meat is really good, too. This is the second time I've visited them during the week and, both times, I've walked in to a deserted shop, with the elderly butcher and his assistant (? wife) sitting quietly behind the counter waiting for custom. I bought a kilo of minced beef divided into 1/4 kilo bags (£7.99/kg), half a shoulder of lamb (£22 for the whole shoulder) and 500g braising steak (£13/kg, I think). For the whole lot, the butcher charged me £20.50 and one of the bags of mince turned out to be 410g.

I will most definitely be a returning customer. Although they're local, we'd previously gone to a butcher 10 miles away, who we'd been patronising long before we moved to this house. (With a freezer, we'd only shop for meat every 3-5 months.) That butcher sold up and the shop has recently closed.

- Pip

K9sandFelines

£1.24 spent last night.

Need a top up tin shop, but ideal online slots clashing with being in work; and i am not willing to pay for a silly expensive slot. So, i will have to hang on, or try and nip to the local shop as soon as i get a chance.

Greymalkin12

Hi
Please can I join starting today if not too late in the month. I would like a budget of £250 per month including weekly takeaways (bad habit!), Toiletries etc for me, DH and 4 month old daughter.

I've no idea how much we spend as find myself buying fairly small amounts very frequently. Today have spent £13.69 at Asda.

Thanks x

pamsdish

£12.53 in Lidl, went to the tip and returned home with veg and biscuits, but did get 2 lamb wellingtons £5.99 towards Christmas lunch.
Amended signature and added sack of dog food I had forgotten.

K9sandFelines

£3.54 spent tonight (yesterday in work) on some promo bits and ys fruit and ys Tropicana.

Chloris

Weekly shop was yesterday and our monthly total now stands at £402.55. This is better than most months, but I still want to do better.

Lid1 had a free promo magazine at the door last night with a £5 off £40 spend voucher valid 19/11 - 10/12. We picked up one for each of our weekly shops. Hth someone. They also had great big cauliflowers on special so I choose a HUGE one so I'll batch a cauli, pea, lentil and coconut milk curry - the ultimate comfort food.

We have visitors tonight so I'll be supervising teenagers making their own pizzas. Let's just hope my daughter doesn't vlog it (I accidentally made a guest appearance in the last one!) Xx

PipneyJane

Chloris wrote: »

Lid1 had a free promo magazine at the door last night with a £5 off £40 spend voucher valid 19/11 - 10/12. We picked up one for each of our weekly shops. Hth someone.

Did they? Thanks for posting about the voucher. We're away from 21st November to 7th December - going to New Zealand on holiday - but I will see if I can nab one for the weekend we get back. Not that I've ever managed to buy £40 of groceries from Lidl, even when I've found a jumper's worth of yarn there. The most I've every spent on their yarn was £24 and that was for 4 packs of their sock yarn (8 balls plain+8 balls self-patterning = 1 jumper, 4 pairs of socks so far and 6 balls left over).

- Pip

(Who is the god of Groceries? Do you think, if I pray to him, Lidl will stock their sock yarn again in grey, navy or black? It wears really well, makes very cosy socks and the plain colours are also great for jumpers.)

franticflyerSue56

Hi all! Last spend of the month today - so am posting my final spend! £344.93, so under budget. Pretty chuffed at that!

Doom_and_Gloom

£25.52 spent today.

2 mangoes, a papaya, 1kg red grapes, 410g easy peelers, 1,320g banana, 227g strawberries, 450g blueberries, 2 passata, 2 tins sweet corn, 2 tins beans, Gosh mint quinoa bites, rice cakes, 2L diet lemonade, 2 packs hippies sweet and smoking, 2L cola, crumpets 8 pack, rich highland shorties, 3 packs udon noodles, 2 packs smokey choritzo tortellini, mozzarella, 1L organic whole milk, beef mince and 250g double Gloucester cheese.

Vegetable curry for my dinner tonight.
OH is having smokey chorizo tortellini and cheese sauce for dinner, he'll be mak8ng up enough for today and the following two days.

Fridge is basically full. Won't need anything tomorrow or Sunday so both should be NSDs. Sunday will be as OH will be out and I'll be at work so can't shop. We're a little over for the month but should come in budget.

£137.42/£200.
£62.58 left.

JingsMyBucket

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

I love this post. Been on this thread less and less frequently since the chatter stopped and it seemed to become a drop point for people's shopping records. It used to be so much more about mutual support, advice and reassurance and it is lovely to see some posts like this coming back.

I agree and it's funny you mention this. Sometimes I feel like I may "chatter" too much or give too much detail or context but maybe that's okay after all?

MrsPoyser wrote: »

We buy a box from Riverford most weeks in the winter - I don't get the same one every week and pick and choose according to contents/how many I am catering for. It is very good quality and minimal packaging - better value the bigger the box (delivery is inclusive), or if you choose the homegrown box.

Speaking of Riverford, is there an equivalent to Riverford or Abel & Cole in Edinburgh, Scotland? I've searched the MSE boards and other sites and have found some local farms but a few seem to be hit or miss in terms of variety and quality. Ocado unfortunately doesn't deliver either. I know the big 4 stores deliver in Scotland but I'd like to get into a rhythm of getting a box and then topping up weekly at a grocery store or farmer's market. When I lived in London, I'd get an Abel & Cole box every 2 weeks and fill in the gaps with grocery store runs and YS deals.

I'll be moving there early summer 2019 so I have plenty of time to research but just wondering. OH will be going ahead to Scotland in February to look at places to rent before me so I'd like to give him a few ideas to possibly try out too. We're already looking at places to rent based on how close they are to Lidl, Sainsbury's and Waitrose! :rotfl: