June 2019 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Evening All

Hope your budgeting is going well and every meal you cook tastes marvellous. Congratulations to K9andFelines on the house move and the new job - hope both are great for you.

I have several spends to declare. We did our big shop last Thursday (where has the time gone?) , spending £70.09 at MrT’s. Is it just me, or are their own-brands getting sparser? Ours is a big store but there seemed to be fewer staples in stock.

I noticed a lot of prices have risen since the last time we did a big shop. Two examples: the Yeo Valley yoghurts I previously mentioned are £1.60 per 450g pot (up from £1.40), while pilchards in tomato sauce - the (usually cheapest) tinned fish - are now £1.79 per can, up from £1.09. The 2-for-£2 offer on Yeo Valley is most definitely off the books at MrT’s.

Weirdly, there was a big markdown on their own-brand Aspartame sweetener refills, the 500-tablet packs, normally £3.50-ish but were marked “to clear” at £1.22/pack. These were the new-style packaging, well “in date”, so we bought 6 packs (enough to last us 2-ish years).

The next shop was on Friday when, to solve the Yeo Valley Yoghurt crisis, DH dropped into A$da on his way home from work. They still have the 2-for-£2 offer. £5 spent on 4 large pots plus a big bar of chocolate for himself (the resident chocoholic).

Saturday, we spent the day up in London doing a Hidden London tour of Aldwych underground station followed by a showing of Darkest Hour at the London Transport Museum’s cinema. On the way home, we talked about getting a takeaway but, instead, dropped into another branch of MrT’s and bought pizza and garlic dough balls. We also stocked up on some YS items (strawberries at 27p/punnet, German pepper salami, Spanish omelettes). That shop came to £14.36.

Finally, our last shop was L!dl on Sunday. We bought coffee, cooking bacon, two vacuum packs of mussels in white wine sauce (marked down 30%), some Creme Fraiche and some onions (because we got back too late on Saturday to get to the farm shop and weren’t heading anywhere near there on Sunday). Another £10.51 spent.

The above brings our total spend for the month to £122.03/£130, leaving £7.97 :eek: for the rest of the month. I doubt we’ll get through to the end without going over budget. We’ll need fresh veg for a start.

Hopefully, this month is a one-off and not the start of something worse. I’m feeling pessimistic though, given the collapse of the Pound against the Euro and that we import 60-ish percent of our food from the EU. I expect prices to continue to rise.

- Pip

getmyacttogether2016

Evening

Couple of spends for me to declare, £3.79 butchers and £25.98 and £9.54 A1di so total of £39.31.

Total so far for month £85.67

Blackberry whiskey now made and may even try some sloe whiskey.

GMAT

elsiepac

Budgets updated to here

I'm currently just under £80 OVER my budget. This has been a terrible terrible month - did some massive stock ups but also really bought frivolously. Was just very very silly basically.

So, I have enough in for the rest of this week, and then next week I am doing a proper meal plan (part of my YouTube stuff) and I already have all the kind of basic stuff, so will just need fresh veg. I don't want to spend more than £15 between now and the end of the month, which for me the last day is 25th. As this will basically be on veg, this is totally do-able. I plan to use Ald1 - a couple of days ago I popped in for some top up bits and got a big bag of spring greens, 1kg each of white and red onions, 4 garlics, 1.5kg carrots and a punnet of chestnut mushrooms for £4.30 so it's reminded me how very affordable going back to basics is!

pamsdish

£59.03 between morries, lidl and aldi

thriftwizard

Dear Lord, please send us an Ald1! Or a L1dls, or a M0rrisons... we did have a Morrie's briefly, when they took over from Safeway's, but our little town didn't fit their "profile" so they sold it on to Co-op, who really haven't got the hang of fruit & veg down here.

And I'm gazing in horror at a W8rose receipt - our other choice, and closer to me - where I seem to have spent £32.19 on storecupboard ingredients that the sudden flurry of ice-cream making & baking has run us out of. Would have been cheaper at the wholesalers, and cheaper still (and better quantities) at the Grocers of Eastern Promise on the other side of The Forest, but I'm not currently in a position to get to either! Ah well... some of them will keep us going for a while!

Saver.The.Taste

Another small top up to account for of 6.68 taking me all the way to £112.23 of £175, reasonably happy, there will be a small shop next week to carry me through for the month but happy otherwise!

PipneyJane

thriftwizard wrote: »

Dear Lord, please send us an Ald1! Or a L1dls, or a M0rrisons... we did have a Morrie's briefly, when they took over from Safeway's, but our little town didn't fit their "profile" so they sold it on to Co-op, who really haven't got the hang of fruit & veg down here.

And I'm gazing in horror at a W8rose receipt - our other choice, and closer to me - where I seem to have spent £32.19 on storecupboard ingredients that the sudden flurry of ice-cream making & baking has run us out of. Would have been cheaper at the wholesalers, and cheaper still (and better quantities) at the Grocers of Eastern Promise on the other side of The Forest, but I'm not currently in a position to get to either! Ah well... some of them will keep us going for a while!

Thriftwizard, I'm curious. Who are the Grocers of Eastern Promise? Not WingYip, by any chance? (A lot of my bulk purchases come from there: noodles, dried pulses, washing-up liquid in the 4L bottle, ditto distilled white vinegar, rice (at 10kg a bag, etc.)

I'm working from home today and have sent DH off to work with the housekeeping purse. He is to buy fresh mushrooms on his way home. He will get a shock when he opens it to discover there's sod-all in there, just £7-something to last to the end of the month. We won't starve. Worst case scenario, we've got £30-odd in MrT's Clubcard vouchers to spend, but I'd rather buy my veg at the farm shop (they don't sell mushrooms).

- Pip

ETA: After I clicked Post, I had a brainwave and texted DH to tell him to spend a Clubcard voucher instead of cash when he buys the mushrooms. That will save the cash for a visit to the farm shop on Saturday.

Soworried

£212 of my £240 budget gone with still 2 weeks shop to go.

We ended up going to the Chinese supermarket and restocking all my spices. I find it much cheaper buying them there in 1kg bags.

Also bought 1ltr sesame oil and soy sauce and 1kg of raw king prawns which are a rare treat.

This weeks meals will look like this;
Steak, mushrooms and sweet potato chips
Chicken vegetable and potato curry
Prawn and chicken stir fry with garlic bread
Hunters chicken with mushrooms and garlic bread
Prawn fajitas
Cheeseburger, sweet potato chips and mushrooms
Pizza and garlic bread

All home made including the garlic breads and pizza bases.

I hope to have a spend free week

thriftwizard

Thriftwizard, I'm curious. Who are the Grocers of Eastern Promise?

An international - but mainly Eastern - food supermarket in the city 30 miles to the east of us, where DS3 is doing his PhD. (There's a huge Chinese supermarket there too, but I hesitate to go there without my step-sister-in-law, who is Chinese, as it's pretty - hardcore!) They have just about every spice, herb, flour, noodle, grain & nut under the sun, all at very reasonable prices.

Our "city" just has a couple of small Oriental grocers and their prices are much higher - there's a huge gap in the market, for anyone enterprising! By the seaside, too...

Eeek! Forgot to say, £45 spent at this morning's market. There will be about £25 spent over the next two days, too, on a big joint for a Father's Day roast & any outrageous fruit & veg bargains. That said, I still need to deal with the large box of oyster mushrooms I got for £3 this morning - I wonder how many I can fit in the dehydrator?

ETA: answer: all of them!

Scrimps

I had a mid week shop at Aldi and just did my weeks ahead shop at Aldi then Tesco. I have spent an extra £8.50 on cat food. I am now £7.17 over budget already! It was always going to be ambitious but I thought I would do better than this. I have written my meal plan for the next couple of weeks and whilst on paper I should be able to do it without any more other trips to the supermarket apart from milk...I don't think that will happen really. I'm still going to keep a tight reign on things but I don't want to scrimp too much on veg for the toddler. If i can only be £15 over budget due to unplanned cat food and mop purchase I will be well happy