March 2019 Grocery Challenge

shirlgirl2004

EdithB wrote: »

Hi! I'm new and I'm in for this month's challenge. I've got a budget of £395 for two adults, one teen, one tween and a cat. It ought to be very doable judging from most of the posts on here but I'm out of practice when it comes to restraint

I've set myself a spreadsheet and am going to have a look through all the recipes at the start of the thread for inspiration.

Anyway - hello and nice to meet you all :hello:

Hi I'm in a similar position to you. I'm still in my first month which runs 15th Feb -14th March but for March (15th March - 14 April) I am aiming to spend £360 . This is for 2 adults a teen and a tween plus an adult that doesn't eat at home much (but uses washing machine etc.) In terms of animal food the only thing extra is veg for the tortoise all other food is bought separately.

I haven't dived into the recipes yet but the teenager is very fussy and has her own meals which is a significant addition to the budget.

Lifeisforliving19

Had plenty in the freezer this weekend and only spent £20.11/£180. £1.69 of that was a bottle of Ginger Ale that OH wanted to go with his gin...so technically he should give me that money and it shouldn't really be out of my budget. I'll see what I can get him to buy me later in the month to balance it out...:rotfl:

MadamMim2013

A NSD for me.. phew.. Have decided to challenge myself to beat 11 NSD’s (JAN) :T

ditty1234

NSD day today, except I had to spend £2 further to get the right bulb for headlight, but then that's not edible, and essential as it's still dark out there.
Batch cooked from megashop yesterday min 11 dinners int eh freezer.
I'm ready for the week.

JingsMyBucket

Evening all! At first I didn’t think I had actually bought anything on March 1st but remembered my Amazon order. Here are my recent spends:

$28.61 at Amazon.com for 2 12-count boxes of nut/snack bars. It’s a Subscribe & Save purchase so it’ll come every month until I cancel it. I actually do eat these bars almost every single day and the 24 of them should last me the month.

$24.00 for the part of a large order at Target.com that I’m actually willing to count toward the GC. That consists of toilet paper and some laundry stuff. The rest of the order is mostly household goods like floor cleaner, hand soap, etc along with hair stuff. The good thing about this order is that I got a $15 gift card for spending a certain amount on household goods.

$6.25 today at the Target superstore for cashews and medical stuff.

TOTALS SO FAR:
$58.86 / $300.00
0 / 12 NSD

I’m going to try ratcheting down my spending this month as I have a lot of wedding expenses to shell out for along with some large payments like quarterly health insurance, etc. This week I’d like to focus on using some of the meat in the freezer but also want to check grocery stores for any sales on corned beef brisket so I can make corned beef and cabbage in my slow cooker. I haven’t had it in so long and I love it.

Cooking wise, tomorrow I'll cook up some jarred marinara sauce with ground beef and some salad mix that needs using up. I’ll have a think about what to do with the asparagus in the fridge but I may do some kind of stir fry with some of those plus the mushrooms that are slowly dying. :rotfl:

ma-ri-ella

in for another month.last month i focused on cutting down on takeaways - worked quite well so the next step is taking a packed lunch to work - for lunches /dinner time anyway as breakast is cheap.. I would also like to defrost my freezer around easter as work normally do a double discount for staff week .so its work on the stuff in their - seem to take one yellow sticker out and replace with 2 lol . Aiming for 20 nsd not including yellow sticker bargains which i might limit to about 10 quid

Suffolk_lass

ma-ri-ella wrote: »

in for another month.last month i focused on cutting down on takeaways - worked quite well so the next step is taking a packed lunch to work - for lunches /dinner time anyway as breakast is cheap.. I would also like to defrost my freezer around easter as work normally do a double discount for staff week .so its work on the stuff in their - seem to take one yellow sticker out and replace with 2 lol . Aiming for 20 nsd not including yellow sticker bargains which i might limit to about 10 quid

You could consider a freezer-week for every other week, so you can still satisfy your desire for bargains but you meal plan based on using up the bargains.

I bought an officially humungous shoulder of lamb with a YS and I will have to combine moussaka with shepherd's pie and roast lamb or it will be a waste as we will eat more than we need.

PipneyJane

PipneyJane wrote: »

I have a spend to declare: £33.52 in Lidl yesterday, of which £4.99 was a new shower curtain. We also stocked up on pesto (3 red, 3 green at 69p each), mixed nuts (which I add to my breakfast cereal), their “Simply” baked beans (4x22p) and splashed out on one of their Salmon En Croutes for dinner (£3.99).

The above brings our spend for the month so far to £91.78/£162, leaving £70.22 for the rest of the month. I’m off to the farm shop in a moment (expect to spend about £7), while DH is going in the opposite direction and will check out a new Lidl that’s just opened about 3 miles away in order to stock up on their sugar-free hot chocolate (our local branch didn’t have them).

- Pip

I spent £7.90 in the farm shop, which included two lots of broccoli, a kilo of carrots, a dozen eggs and quite a few onions. With the exception of the eggs, it was all grown on the premises. (The eggs come from a chicken farm tucked up behind RAF Northolt.) Meanwhile, DH visited two branches of Lidl and neither had their low calorie/low sugar hot chocolate. (We will continue to stalk them for it; they're the cheapest.)

The above brings our spend for the month to £99.68/£162, leaving £62.32 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

Lifeisforliving19

A trip to the Co-op £4 and picked up my fruit and veg order (with eggs and a loaf of crusty bread ) £8.16
So total spend so far this month is £32.27/£180. Feeling really good about this month and am determined to come in well under budget.

taka

taka wrote: »

Need a few bits of fruit & veg and some bread so hoping this week will be low cost one... Famous last words! :rotfl:

Hmmmm it was indeed...

My Dad is in not great health so needs a bit of help these days. Every 2-3 weeks we tend to do a "big" shop at Aldi or Lidl as those are where he prefers to shop. I thought it would be next week or the week after as we last went on the 24th but no he decided on a Lidl shop yesterday. We haven't done a big Lidl shop for months so I ended up getting much more than I really needed as there are a few bits I prefer from there so I stocked up. £22.83 exited my purse so I've spent £32.53 so far out of £161.20 which is worryingly ahead of where I'd like to be so close to the start of my grocery (calendar) month! :eek: