February 2019 Grocery Challenge

pamsdish

Made an unscheduled trip to shops, Lidl, B&M and Morries, £40 in total, nothing not needed for stores.

Need2bthrifty

A small shop today of £6.46 on toilet rolls, fresh fruit and veg that leaves me £13.54 for the rest of the month.

I've drafted up a sketchy meal plan for the next 7 days so its likely to be boredom rather than lack of food that drives me to the shops

Ginmonster

Save_Dosh wrote: »

Glad you managed to get them. I would recommend cooking them longer than it says on the pack, really makes a difference, otherwise they taste mushy.

I'll bear that in mind. Thanks again. I didn't eat them yesterday as I had some leftover veg chili that needed to be used up but we might have them tonight with some home made wedges.

I bought bread flour and bananas today which we'll need by the weekend and also blueberries because they were cheap and tinned mandarins as we had them loads as kids and I had a sudden nostalgia rush. I have a packet of jelly in the cupboard so I can properly do childhood pudding. 😀

£4.54 spent so now at 115.95/120

YorksLass

Nipped out to the Co-op yesterday for milk - small spend of £4.29 for 4pts milk, a large ys cauli, a ys 4-pack of curd tarts and a bottle of lemonade. The milk will last us for a week, the cauli will do for 2 dinners (maybe 3) and the curd tarts will be nice with an afternoon cuppa.

I've already done next week's meal plan with everything coming from existing stores so you'd think I wouldn't need any more shopping, but no. There are bits and bobs I need so will be taking a trip to Sainsbugs tomorrow. I think my best plan of action is to take just enough cash with me to make sure I stick to the list. Oh, and leave my card at home.

MadamMim2013

Have used up odds n ends here so far this week.
Will need some basics, yet they can wait til tomorrow.

Made a random stir fry with bits of this n that.. was very tasty, even DS1 said he’s like that again

sinkorswim2018

Fairly on target with one week left of a 4 week month. £149.07/£200. Please as a week ago I was looking as though I might go over budget. Lots in the cupboards. Had a bit of a panic when my freezer partially defrosted. Took a day to work out what was wrong and get is working again. Good news is the contents are veggie to I will risk eating all that is in there. It's packed. I will.try to eat the contents before I restock if I can, or at least rotate draws so I eat the stuff that's in now first.
Realised I had been posting in the January thread, d'oh.

JingsMyBucket

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

JingsMB - I miss your posts. It is so exciting, setting up home in another country and really interesting to read about the differences in prices, availability of products and compromise choices, and so on!

@Suffolk lass thank you so much, that's so sweet of you! It's nice to be missed. And yes, it's rather exciting setting things up again back in my old Brooklyn apartment. Makes me realize what are my "must haves" versus things I can do without.

As for shopping, I'm using a bunch of resources. New York City can be a mixed up place when it comes to grocery shopping. You can have really expensive stores like Whole Foods (recently bought by Amazon), mid-range stores like Trader Joe's (a high end cousin of Aldi), and local NYC chains like Key Foods or Associated Supermarkets. There are also local fruit and veg markets.

I'm in a heavily West Indian, Latino, East Indian, Pakistani and East Asian neighbourhood. This means that there are "fruit and vegetable markets" usually run by Korean folks that sell produce on their edge of ripeness or just over ripeness. This is because these cultural communities prefer their food to be ripe instead of buying bananas from regular supermarkets when they're still green and heavily unripe or flavourless. This also means that fruit and veg can be really cheap at times. In one of the markets tonight they had bags of 4 or 5 yellow squash for $1.00! That was a good reminder for me to check in with these stores once a week or so.

On the flip side, Whole Foods currently has yellow, red and orange bell peppers on sale for 75¢ a piece for Amazon Prime customers ($1.25 regular sale for non-Prime folks). Those are going to be absolutely perfect bell peppers too. But one of the local markets has peppers for 69¢ a piece. I'd rather just get mine from Whole Foods for a few extra pennies in that case.

I'll write more about this later but, onto the spends! Yesterday was a NSD but I stopped at a few places on the way home from a meeting with a potential wedding photographer.

$3.75 at a local market for baby bok choy, scallions, and a Korean spicy ramen.

$1.00 at Key Food for a can of black beans.

$1.69 for a carton of strawberries at another local market.

TOTALS SO FAR:
$403.75 / $450.00
9 / 10 NSD

I have an idea for a meal/cooking plan for the next few days and I'll update that later.

Highland_Fling

Good morning everyone
thank you Pipney Jane and Save Dosh for your good wishes.
Pip: at least my post landed on GC doorstep just a pity it was last months
I will get back in the swing of things soon hopefully.
Made a list of everything I pay weekly, monthly and annually. I am having a close look at where all my money is going and not just with regards GC.

Highland_Fling

Pip: Oh my goodness, I have just reread your post. It landed on GC doorstep from last year.!!!:rotfl:
I must be in a worse state than I imagined.:D

[Deleted User]

With only the weekend to go until OHs payday I have £12 left in my budget. Food plans for the weekend are soup and HM bread and using up freezer bits so apart from some carrots for the soup we probably won't spend much.

OH and myself will work on next weeks food plan this afternoon and will shop for it on Monday or Tuesday evening.

Thanks to those who run this thread, although I don't post much being part of this challenge keeps me focused.