November 2018 Grocery Challenge

Suffolk_lass

JingsMyBucket wrote: »

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?

It is for me! Others helped me enormously once I stopped thinking I knew best and opened myself up to the ideas others had adopted. An example I follow is my stores - it is my version of the second purse system and means I can satisfy my hoarding instincts by using a specific budget for it, rather than maintaining a separate view where I pay my stores when I use them (I never have time or even remember to do that)

JingsMyBucket wrote: »

Re Edinburgh - 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:

My Mum moved to Scotland in the late 80s and there was one Sainsbob, no Waitflower (one JL in Glasgow) and Lidl's had not arrived yet :eek: She uses a very good Asbo and a local Tosco now, with Aldo's in the town where my Sister lives. How times change!

There are some lovely local butchers in Scotland (all over) and they are well worth trying too, if you eat any animal products.

Highland_Fling

Good morning everyone
well another dry day here. Two in a row, wooohooo!!!
I am just taking a break from ironing the clothes I was able to wash and air dry yesterday. I also made shepherds pie yesterday. So ate one for dinner and one for freezer. It was lovely, simple comfort food on an autumn night. One of life's little pleasures.
I treated myself yesterday and ordered a Kitchenaid in Curry's sale. Reduced to around half price.
Have a peaceful Sunday everyone spending time with people or pastimes you love.

CRANKY40

Morning all (just about). I've been guilty of not posting this week - it's been one of those weeks that you look back on and think "Did all that really happen?"

It started Monday morning when I looked at the book of farce and discovered my friend's sister had died. I live next door to the great granny of the late sister's son so I trundled round that afternoon to see if she was OK. Great granny was not ok. There is something very wrong. She's 94 and for the last couple of weeks everything she eats comes back the way it went in. The daughter that sees to her food delivery lives abroad so normally I'd phone her great grandson who I do know although we're not close friends but calling him was out of the question so.....

To cut a long story short, a grandson will be taking her to the doctors tomorrow, I binned all the dripping nasty stuff in the fridge on Tuesday and bleached the fridge. Her daughter abroad arranged a fresh food delivery on Tuesday and I put everything away in the clean fridge and in the freezer. In the midst of all this I'm still upset as her great grandson's mum was only a year older than me and her family are devastated. Oh and the House Troll has been off school with a tummy bug since Wednesday. As I said, it's been a helliuva week.

Anyway, I went shopping on Thursday. After adding the milk money in the total spend is £39.17. I'm happy with that although my little fridge gazer commented that the fridge looked a bit bare yesterday. That'll be because I have made all the things that were in it into meals and I have frozen them son.

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

Apologies, I haven’t read yesterday’s digest email yet, so if I’ve missed anything momentous, I’m sorry.

As predicted yesterday, we’ve done our last shop for the month: £10.83 at MrT’s, picking up some travel toiletries, YS stuffed mushrooms (lunch) and some peppers for roasting for dinner (we’re having tuna steaks). DH had to stop me stocking up on other RTC items for the freezer. I am, therefore, declaring at £77.60/£120 leaving £42.40 to roll into December.

Time to start packing. I’ve spent the last half an hour notifying the banks that we’re travelling, adding my “travel credit card” to my iPhone wallet for ApplePay and generally planning what to wear/take with me to knit, read and watch.

- Pip

Suffolk_lass

CRANKY40 wrote: »

Oh and the House Troll has been off school with a tummy bug since Wednesday. As I said, it's been a helliuva week.

Anyway, I went shopping on Thursday. After adding the milk money in the total spend is £39.17. I'm happy with that although my little fridge gazer commented that the fridge looked a bit bare yesterday. That'll be because I have made all the things that were in it into meals and I have frozen them son.

You might have had a bad week (and I send you any hugs you might need, to help you over the inter-web) but your sense of humour is intact. House trolls and fridge gazers are going straight in my little book of phrases to plagiarise! :rotfl::rotfl: I think they may feature in a staffroom near me when DH is next frustrated. He nearly spat his coffee out when I read him that bit of your post. I love Sundays, time to read and enjoy!!

CRANKY40

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

You might have had a bad week (and I send you any hugs you might need, to help you over the inter-web) but your sense of humour is intact. House trolls and fridge gazers are going straight in my little book of phrases to plagiarise! :rotfl::rotfl: I think they may feature in a staffroom near me when DH is next frustrated. He nearly spat his coffee out when I read him that bit of your post. I love Sundays, time to read and enjoy!!

The House Troll became a house troll when the teenage years hit. He'd been Grumpy the house elf for ten or so years before. Teenagers really are in a class all of their own. He's 6 inches taller than me and perpetually hungry. He also has his and someone else's share of "lazy" hence the gazing in the fridge waiting for things to call his name or magically transform into something he only has to take the lid off. I should add here that I made him scotch pancakes and brownies yesterday. They're in tubs on the side and they don't even have a wrapper that he has to take off but who am I to point that out?

The sense of humour is a blessing and a curse, not everybody understands it. Most people for instance put their sad faces on when I tell them that the late MrC died 12 miles off the coast of the Falkland Islands on a big grey ship (heart attack, nothing to be given a medal for). I have one friend that I went to school with who said "Wow, did that cause a great big fuss?" I answered that it did. Her next question was "Would he have been proud of being an almighty nuisance?". I answered yes to that too and we stood laughing at the thought. It was his own fault - he volunteered to go there so he could see the penguins. If he'd made do with the penguins in the zoo up the road and stayed a bit closer to proper medical facilities he might have still been with us today.

I bet the people who said they liked chat on this thread are sorry now huh? If it helps the house troll had a roast chicken dinner today and I had cauliflower cheese with roast potatoes

candygirl

I can't believe the HT is now a teenmonster:eek:What a journey you've had hun.Mr Cranky will be so proud of you :A xx

pamsdish

Returned to Morries as the lamb goes off special today, arrived just after 10 am, staff desperately filling shelves with the fresh delivery stock, butcher stocking chickens, no lamb on meat display counter, only on the shelving pre-packed, £8 kilo, butcher arrives near me to put some chicken on shelving, so I inquire if they have any of the £6 kilo as advertised on his electronic display, he pointed to the lamb I had already examined, told him priced £8, at which he tutted loudly and said if you select some I will reprice it for you, which I did, don`t think he was intending to do the other pieces though, then called Aldi as I came home wanted some more lemons while still on offer too.
Total £29 78 spent which takes me over budget but quite a bit of stock piling.

Mrs_Cheshire

Just done a tally of the last few days spends, we're now up to a total spend of £252.63 with 12 days remaining. Should be able to stay under the £400 as we've got plenty of meat, toilet roll etc.
Will need to get washing powder and the usual bread, milk, fruit and veg.

Interestingly this evening, my 7 year old was looking over my shoulder whilst I was updating the spreadsheet, he read my total figure and hubby said 'how much'. I was surprised and replied 'we spend £400 every month', he had no idea and thought it was a lot less. Think I'm going to have to show him the spreadsheets more often and perhaps let him do a full weekly shop so he has more of an idea.
He only ever goes shopping with me, or picks up a few bits probably less than £10 in one go.

JingsMyBucket

PipneyJane wrote: »

Good luck with the turkey. My French is terrible. It just doesn’t come naturally to me, and yet I’m the one who always talks to the shopkeepers/stall holders when we’re in France.

I can’t help re an organic delivery box in Edinburgh, but I can recommend a very good butcher a few miles north: Johnson’s, in the high street in Dunfermline. Excellent haggis, black pudding and Larne Sausage. When we go up to visit the family matriarch, we order in advance and collect our frozen goodies on the morning of our departure. (As does the rest of the family.)

This weekend OH and I decided to not rely on that the halal store for the turkey and we'll go to the Brit expat store on Tuesday evening to get a turkey. We'll pick up a few other items as well.

Thank you for the tip about the butcher near Edinburgh. I looked it up this weekend and it would be a nice day trip into the town. @Suffolk lass, I'm also excited to seek out local butcher shops in Scotland. The meat there seems to be of great stock.

@thriftwizard Phooey. That's really frustrating especially if it's supposed to be easier.

Saturday and Sunday were GC NSDs for us. This afternoon I made a lentil soup with puy lentils from the cupboard which tasted fabulous. Between our seconds and apportioning a chunk for OH's lunch tomorrow, we completely finished it. I'll make another batch tomorrow and thankfully that'll finish up all the puy lentils in the cupboard. I also pulled two pork chops out of the freezer to defrost and eat the next couple of days. Little by little, the stores are being whittled down. I also binned some flaked hot smoked salmon from M & S that was in freezer; I made peace with the fact I wasn't going to eat it and none of my friends wanted it. The flavour was "honey smoked" and it ended up being really sweet. I hate my meat/proteins being sweet so knew I couldn't use it.

As for Thanksgiving dinner, my shopping list is planned and the estimate for everything will likely be €150 and will tip me over. We'd still have a week left in November to buy items like fruit, yoghurt, etc. Let's see how much I can rein in the dinner shopping and conserve as much as possible.

TOTALS SO FAR
7 / 12 NSDs
€160.18 / €300.00