July 2019 Grocery Challenge

Suffolk_lass

I shopped a bit early this week as we had run out of fruit for the bowl - spent £18.08 on groceries, £3.10 on stores items and £18 on treats! :eek: No wonder our weight is not reducing. Our new addiction is to some cheese straw things with garlic and parmesan that are superb crumbled in soup as croutons, as well as going very nicely (thank you) with a glass of beer or wine. Ahem, confession over!

Soworried

Can I be in again please with the same budget? £240

This is for 3 adults plus 5 more adults on a Saturday for all food and toiletries and cleaning supplies.

CRANKY40

Hello all,

Thank you for your kind thoughts Pip.

I did my first weeks shopping on Friday then completely forgot to post here because the House Troll had an inset day from school and I also had a parcel to collect from the post office. I needed to leave the house to go to work at 11:30 so it was a bit of a rush job. Anyhow, my first week's grocery spend was £40.40. So far so good.

We're going to London in the middle of the week (there one day and back the next) but I have a separate budget for that. We're not going on holiday this year so we will use the money that I save for holidays and any food that we have while we're away will come out of that.

JingsMyBucket

Happy Sunday everyone. We returned this afternoon from our weekend away and upon looking at the fridge realized I actually should go out to get some more groceries. We brought back home some of the food we bought for the trip but now it feels like we can make some complete meals.

£35.49 at Waitrose for 2x strawberries, bananas, 2x mango + watermelon combo, zucchini, dried spices, eggs, herbs, bulgur, frozen Asian veg, 2x packs of chicken leg quarters, a nice fatty rump steak, YS ground pork, YS ground beef, and some paper towels.

One of the packs of strawberries was YS as well and I wanted to try that strain. The frozen Asian stir fry veg looked really good and OH likes making stir fries. The YS meat was a bit hard to resist but I have enough meat in the freezer now to last me a while.

Our closest stores are an M & S Food Hall and a medium sized Waitrose. I’ve noticed their YS deals aren’t that great, only 30% on average. It would be interesting to visit other branches to see if they’re getting better deals. Our monthly food budget feels expensive and I’d like to try reducing it. Tomorrow evening I’ll head to one of the Lidls in town for the first time. There are a few things there I’d like to pick up including some spice racks they have on sale for £9.99.

Here are some rough ideas for cooking this week; it finally feels like I can plan a bit:

• Bulgur salad w/tomatoes, olives, arugula, etc
• Chicken and rice using this recipe and adding more spices, etc.
• Lentil dip using this recipe

TOTALS SO FAR:
£137.49/£300 and €0/€200
3/12 NSD

Doom_and_Gloom

We have spent £9.99 since last post.

£32.39/£200
£162.61 left.

dan958

1 week into my first monthly budgeting challenge. I set myself a goal of £120 for the month, and I have spent £7.20 so far. £112.80 left for 3 more weeks.

elsiepac

Thanks Rachiedabbler, Suffolk lass and LizzieM!

Suffolk lass yes I'm trying to really not buy anything for the cupboards or freezer - I'm definitely doing better as I want to use up as much as possible before I move to make it easier! I'm actually pretty low on tins - I only have one tin of beans left - butter beans - so I'll need to buy more as I go through them like nobody's business! But definitely trying to run freezer down and use up all the half opened condiments in the fridge!

Suffolk_lass

JingsMyBucket wrote: »

Our closest stores are an M & S Food Hall and a medium sized Waitrose. I’ve noticed their YS deals aren’t that great, only 30% on average. It would be interesting to visit other branches to see if they’re getting better deals. Our monthly food budget feels expensive and I’d like to try reducing it. Tomorrow evening I’ll head to one of the Lidls in town for the first time. There are a few things there I’d like to pick up including some spice racks they have on sale for £9.99.

You are right about a lot of their YS deals - it sometimes depends on the store manager but bread is drastically reduced before the store closes - in fact I have once or twice been paid by Waitflower to take their bread away - on getting home I found the "nn for £nn" offer had been applied at the till for rolls that had been reduced from nn pence each to np.

Lidl is usually good for instore bakery and paper goods in particular, but you need to "move away from the aisle of temptation"! :rotfl:

Doom_and_Gloom

We have spent £4.85 today.

I had a delivery from A&C. As I was buying items not included in the grocery budget and I decided to get 450g UK wonky strawberries from them as a treat (delivery charge put in different budget as this was add on). Yes expensive for strawberries but they are very tasty and they don't come in plastic.
Happily still in budget.

Will be doing a big-ish shop tomorrow, bulk and most the week fresh items. Hopefully no more than £60 but it will include most of the bulk items for the month so we'll see.

Tonight we are going out to eat with a friend but that comes out of the entertainment budget not the grocery budget. It will be cheaper than it should have been as we got a deal online :T.

£42.24/£200.
£157.76 left.

PipneyJane

One tiny shop at the weekend of £0.93, which was my husband buying a YS quiche from MrT's for his lunch yesterday. That's it for the Grocery Challenge spend.

We did do a small stock up at Carrefour in Calais on Thursday -
mainly wine, two bottles of Extra-Virgin Olive Oil, some vinegar, and a couple of Camembert - however that's all coming out of the Bulk Fund and not the GC kitty.

Anyway, the above brings our total spend so far to £63.38/£120, leaving £56.62 in the kitty for the rest of the month.

- Pip