September 2019 Grocery Challenge

Doing_it_my_way

Ha Joedenise I don't know! I mean I should have a cupboard full from Aldi for that lol!!
Small shop again in Aldi yesterday coming in at £5.72 so that leaves £56.10, oh dear that's going down quickly There will be another small shop later from Aldi, we need milk and a few bits to last until we leave on holidays
On a good note, our DD has invited all the family over to hers tonight and is cooking a meal so that's one meal less to account for in the budget. I am taking mine with me though as being good on my diet
Re the ham question, I use smoked Aldi gammon and put it as it is in the slow cooker and it's lovely but I did buy one from Iceland and did the same with it and it was so salty we couldn't eat it, I think it may be trial and error.....

JingsMyBucket

fairy3 and Doing It My Way thanks for answering my ham question. I bought a smoked ham at a butcher today and when asked if I need to soak it she said no. She said she boils their ham straight and it’s not too salty. I’ll start that tonight after we come home this evening. We’re back home for a quick pit stop before running back out again.

£17.89 at the first butcher for a 1.2kg ham (£10.60/kg) and a big steak pie that OH picked out. He’s been experimenting with meat more lately and I think he just craved a good pie.

£3.50 at another butcher for 300g of smoked streaky bacon.

I’d been meaning to check out both these butchers because I’ve only been buying meat from Waitrose and M & S. The first butcher definitely had prices similar to the supermarkets and even cheaper for some in-house made items. I’ll definitely return to try their chicken thighs. At the second I mainly focused on their sausages and bacon but did note they have nice overall cuts of meat. Didn’t take notice of those prices though.

TOTALS SO FAR:
£96.30/£170
3 / 10 NSD

Doing_it_my_way

Just a quick update for tonight, Aldi shop of £2.88 this afterenoon, that should be it now for a week or so as we are away, good luck this week everyone, new motto a heavier purse is a happier me

JingsMyBucket

My last update for the day. We got a few more things after visiting a gallery today. All the talk of sugar and chocolate yesterday made want to search out low sugar alternatives. This combined with the ham seeking seems to mean I’m really susceptible to suggestions right about now. Nobody ask me for my bank account numbers!!

£5.97 at Holland Barrett for a sugar free chocolate bar, a 2kg bag of high protein muesli mix that was marked down, and a 1kg bag of muesli base. OH will add them to All-Bran to mix as his morning cereals. I wish him good luck with his gut! :rotfl:

£5.74 at Sainsbury’s for YS ground beef, a Lindt 90% chocolate bar, some creamy mushroom cooking sauce, and milk.

TOTALS SO FAR:
£108.01/£170
3 / 10 NSD

Tomorrow we’ll be bouncing around town like the botanical gardens and a pub. At some point I'll take OH to the good sized and extremely clean Lidl I found. We may get a tub of his favourite peanut butter there and other bits. I’ve also boiled the ham it’s cooling now. I’ll roast it tomorrow to get some good colour. So far, so good. Have a good night everyone! :j

PipneyJane

One small shop from yesterday to declare, £4.76 in Lidl for 2x£1.29 packets of almonds and something to eat for lunch. (It was 3pm and we were starving.). That brings our total GC spend to £59.68/£121.20 leaving £61.52 for the rest of the month.

Jings, thanks for the insight re sweet stuff. My first ever migraine was triggered by the overtly sweet icing on a British birthday cake.

Merlin’s Beard, apologies for the delay, I thought I’d blogged Pipi-An years ago, but it turns out that I hadn’t. Here’s the recipe:-

Pipi-An (Philipino Peanut Chicken)

Feeds 6-8 but easy to increase. I usually make this when we have a crowd of people over. Serve on rice or bulgar wheat.

Ingredients

8 chicken thighs or 24 drumsticks or 6 chicken breasts cut into chunks
250g-500g cooking bacon, cut into chunks
1 tablespoon oil
1 large onion, chopped
1-2 large cloves of garlic, crushed
100g-ish mushrooms, sliced
2 large carrots, sliced
1 can chopped tomatoes
1/2 cup (approximately) chunky peanut butter (you can use smooth)
1-2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon chilli powder
1 chicken stock cube
Boiling water

Method

1. In a saucepan, layer the chicken. Sprinkle over the chicken stock cube and the chilli. Pour over just enough boiling water to cover and simmer for 20 minutes.
2. Meanwhile, in a large, deep pan, heat your oil and fry the bacon until the fat runs and the chunks have partially browned. Remove the bacon from the pan. Pour off any excess fat.
3. In the remaining fat, fry the onion until it is transparent. Add the sliced mushrooms and crushed garlic. Fry until the mushrooms have made water and most of it has evaporated.
4. Stir in the sliced peppers and continue to fry until they are soft.
5. Return the bacon to the pan. By this time, the chicken should be ready to stop simmering. Carefully pour the chicken and its liquid into the main pan. Add the remaining ingredients. Simmer for half an hour, stirring occasionally.
6. After half an hour, if the sauce is too runny, add more peanut butter. If too thick, add a little boiling water. Taste it and add more soy sauce if necessary. Put your rice or bulgar wheat on to cook and serve when done.

Note 1: this was originally made with salt pork. I’ve always used cooking bacon for convenience.
Note 2: if you only have smooth peanut butter, it’ll taste the same but lack the small “beans” that the chunky adds, giving an extra textural element.

- Pip

joedenise

Another small spend on snacks for DH of £1.55, leaving £152.77 for rest of month. Must stop these small shops but so easy to just pop in while out and about at weekend. Not so bad during the week as we live quite a long way from the shops.

Denise

jam2019

Just spent £5.59 on some fruit and veg - still need to buy milk this week but £26.03 left for the month. So far so good!

thriftwizard

Hanging my head in shame here - a massive £105 spent this weekend, £65 at the market on a Friday and £40 at W8rose yesterday, on extra supplies for today's meal for 10, like wine!

It was all home-cooked & two of the puddings based on entirely free resources - windfall apples and blackberries from the garden & the riverbank - but still somehow worked out much more expensive than I'd bargained for. So I'm more than halfway through my budget but less than a third of the way through the month. A month I'd hoped to allow myself some leeway to stock up a bit towards a period of uncertainty...

Belt-tightening time...

PipneyJane

Thriftwizard, don’t beat yourself up. You are a very skilled cook; I’m sure you’ll recover.

I have a small spend to declare for today: £8.30, which included peppers, YS sausages (marked down to £1.88), 2 lots of mushrooms at 71p, yoghurts and some milk. It brings our total spend to £67.98/£121.20, leaving £53.22 for the rest of the month.

My BIL is staying with us for a couple of weeks, so I’m pushing the boat out. I’ve done a reasonable amount of cooking today: black pudding “McMuffins” for breakfast; three tubs of tomato sauce made from the tomato plant in our garden; a warm lentil salad for lunch; banana bread for nibbles; and a roast chicken dinner accompanied by home grown roast potatoes and carrots. The chicken was a near disaster. I am not sure why but it was only partially cooked, when it was due to come out of the oven. The only thing I can think of is that it wasn’t totally defrosted, yet I put it in the fridge on Friday to defrost.

- Pip

Cherry_Burton

Hi all,
So by the end of today, I have spent £25.48/£175 or 14.56% while 26.67% through the month. I visited ALDI today and spent £17.66 on milk, mince, mushrooms, tea, biscuits, ham, oats, bread, bananas, washing up liquid, icecream, washing up gloves and pop

We are currently eating things from the freezer but also it is the peak harvest time on the allotment. We are enjoying tomatoes, beans, beetroot, cucumber, potatoes, broccoli, cabbage, carrots, onions, courgettes (so many courgettes!) sweetcorn, chad, herbs and raspberries all from the plot. Soon the apples, sprouts, kale and leeks will start. I am frantically blanching, freezing and jam making with the excess for the cold dark winter

Happy days.

CB