August 2019 Grocery Challenge

Fairie

Save_Dosh wrote: »

Sounds lovely. You can make a white sauce the same way as usual, just swap out the ingredients. Make a roux with flour and dairy free spread. Flora Buttery dairy free is my current fave, and add milk, soya is probably best as it has a neutral taste. If you wanted to then make the white sauce into a cheese sauce, just add nutritional yeast, or dairy free cheese, makes it a lot more cost effective than using nuts and just as tasty imo.

Unfortunately I stopped buying soya milk due to the tetra packs but we had a lot of success with making oat milk, so shall do this.

I think I shall try using oil instead of a spread as I don't have any.

Good shout on the nutritional yeast, I used it yesterday for the lasagne and it worked really well so shall add it again for a cheesy sauce for the pie. Thank you.

I don't mind using the nuts occasionally as they give us a lot of good fats and protein, as we don't often eat meat (and then it's only chicken) and partner doesn't eat diary I think it helps to keep our diet healthy. Making it from oats will bring the cost down and still give us lots of good benefits though. 🙂

[Deleted User]

Fairie - I'm not sure if homemade oat milk would work, but you can try, it won't do any harm. I would be interested to know how it turns out - oat milk thickens up a lot when heated (homemade anyway), so it could be wonderful. I make my own oat milk and one day went to make a drinking chocolate with it and it turned out the consistency of thick moose. Mistakes are how discoveries are made. I now put oat milk in a bowl, blitz in the microwave remove, add coco powder & sugar, mix - back in the microwave, mix - you get the gist - viola - chocolate moose. I have played around with it and refined it, but that's the bare bones. I agree with less packaging, though Tetra Paks are recylable (according to Tetra Paks). You can alway make your own soya milk if the oat doesn't work.

CRANKY40

Good afternoon all,

Thanks for the thread Elsiepac, please could I be put down for£240 this month as it's a 4 week month for me.

The HT (14 year old son aka the House Troll for new people) and his best friend were happy to spend the money that I saved by doing the grocery challenge last month while we were on our zoo trip on Tuesday. My friend who came with us doesn't have children and was amazed by the amount of foood that I took with us and also by the amount of extra stuff they managed. They're both good and the HT has had a few letters home from school praising him so it was nice to be able to treat them.

I've missed a week or so with our meal plans as I was still on the July thread but I don't think many other people were.... Todays food is :-

Breakfast - cereal for the HT, egg on toast for me
Lunch - cheese and ham toastie for HT, fruit an yogurt for me
Dinner - half an Asda pizza for the HT, chicken salad for me
Supper - satsumas for me, mini ham wrap and a packet of space raiders for the HT

[Deleted User]

If you would like a spreadsheet which works on Open Office let me know and I will let you have mine. I have been using for years and if you want to you can feed it into an annual sheet (I do not particularly use that, just monthly)

zafiro1984

Another NSD so I can carry my daily food money allowance forward which makes 38.58 I can spend from tomorrow and not a penny more.

Breakfast in this house was porridge
Lunch:- leftovers from last night plus fruit
Tea:- (in about half an hour) Home Made KFC using turkey not chicken plus lettuce and anything else I can find in the fridge

Fairie

The hm fish pie using hm oat milk went down a treat. It was a little stodgy for me, but the rest of the family loved it so shall make again, but will try to make the sauce a little thinner next time.

The girls are unexpectedly off to nannas for a couple of nights tomorrow so less mouths to feed. Normally we would treat ourselves to a takeaway, shall have to find something easy but tasty to do instead so we don't fall down that trap. We have new potatoes with chicken in a bbq sauce on the meal plan so that should do us tea tomorrow.

Maybe a stir fry or Chinese style dish for Sunday would do it. We have rice, and a variety of veg. Maybe if I grab some beansprouts and a pak choi it'll feel more like a treat. I need to grab some milk anyway so can get some whilst I'm out along with a sauce. Oh just remembered we have some veg spring rolls in the freezer too, so that would work well. 😊

Graciefields

Please can you put me down for £125 for the month of August please? I was doing really well but have lapsed over the last few months. This includes Groceries, toiletries, cleaning supplies and dog food. Excludes alcohol which is an issue for another time.

Cheapskate

Well, I managed to not shop at all yesterday, so 2 NSDs in a row. Will have to get milk and a few other bits today, but should be less than a tenner.

My average daily spend for August is about £9.60, so the longer I can go without spending the better! We're away for a week, half board, so that will help this month's figures. Planning to come in under budget for the first time ever - will be a boost before the kids go back to school!

A xo

pamsdish

£49 spent in town yesterday 45 chicken thighs, 1 per day for the dog, and an odd 1 or 2 for me, bottle of brandy, hic, some sterile strips for my mandolin sliced finger, and a few other odds and ends.

FoxFace

Clocking in for the day, with a total of £8.68p. That was £3.98 on 2 tins of jackfruit for through the week and £4.70p to feed us lunch and dinner today... a huge improvement to the amount I have been spending on Saturday lunches recently.

I also really wanted to go to C0sta but made myself come home and make a coffee here, small wins and all that.

I've dragged out the old bread machine to make some pizza dough for tonight, rather than buying a couple of pizzas in (we usually have pizza and a family movie on a Saturday).

That leaves £71.32p, which should be easy enough... also I forgot how satisfying it is to count up my cash when I get home and balancing everything

We are at a wedding tomorrow, so NSD logged for yesterday and hopefully tomorrow will be too