September 2019 Grocery Challenge

Saver-upper

Last night went out With the family to celebrate my birthday (Saturday) with a meal.
To save a little money,and because We were feeling a bit full,we decided against dessert.But there were complaints from a couple of the kids ,so partner told them we could get ice cream on the way home :cool:.
So that was two tubs of Ben and Jerry's ice cream,and also bought two bottles of milk,total spend of £12.20.
Total spend this month:£155.39/£250

JingsMyBucket

Hi gang, just a quick check in to keep myself accountable. In the past week we’ve spent £112.07 which includes more expensive items like laundry detergent, dishwasher tabs, shaving stuff for OH and him buying a few extras to stockpile. We also had 2 NSDs along the way.

TOTALS SO FAR:
£243.78/£170
6 / 10 NSD

Oof. I’m flying out in the morning back to the States for several months so I don’t think I'll have anymore GC £ spends other than water at the airport after security. I have my snacks packed and already bought some cheese to take on the plane. I’ll switch to dollars by tomorrow afternoon. Hopefully that goes better.

Merlin's_Beard

£12.04, bringing me up to £90.27 for the month, now. Not much wiggle room but doable. Going to try dumplings for a vegetable casserole today, so that will be interesting.

Update: no, I still can't make dumplings :rotfl:

thriftwizard

£8.13 spent today on mushrooms, rice, noodles & bananas. Inching upwards...

Safe journey, JMB!

quintwins

spent £7.34 in Asda on a few bits yesterday. £136.85/£150

joedenise

Another small spend of £10.44. 12 litres of UHT milk which should last for more than this month; the rest mainly veg some of which will be used this week and some of which will be frozen for later.

£116.44 left for rest of month.

Next shop planned for Thursday but hopefully shouldn't be more than about £25.

Denise

ditty1234

Spent £10 today on a bit of a micro top up on some vege and breakfast items. I'm hoping it will be good till Saturday except I need to get some toothpaste tomorrow.
So far I'm almost under my higher budget, t's not payday till Monday 2 weeks so it does seem like a very long month in some ways, but going back to work is definitely easier to have a few good NSD days here and there.
Keep it up.

elsiepac

Hey guys! Totally lost track again, but last week I spent £16 on my main shop and this week I spent £13 - both of those were essentially on fresh veg as had plenty of cupboard stuff (well, not so much now!). I have a week left until payday now. I have 7 meals in the freezer (2 quinoa and bean chilli pots, 4 jerk veg and bean stew, 1 green thai curry) and I have lunches done up to Friday in the fridge. Tonight's dinner I'll be at mums cooking for her (she's just had a bunion op and so is laid up for 6 weeks :eek: - she's already bored lol and it's been a week), and tomorrow night I am eating at a friends (I take my own, we just like to eat together sometimes and we both tend to prep) but have my veg prepared just need to decide what to do with it, may take veggie sausages from freezer.

My point is, I only need to think about meals from Friday dinner onwards. Ignoring breakfast, as I'll happily have porridge every day and I have enough oats and almond milk, that's 5 dinners (Fri-Tue) and 5 lunches (Sat-Wed), and next Weds I'll be at mum's again so that'll be something I'll need to make.

Just laying my thoughts out on paper here, sorry! But just realised that means I actually only need to think about 3 main meals! Score!!

Wed L: Vegetable & Lentil Soup and Salad
Wed Cooking for mum - fresh groceries from her and dry from my cupboard!
Thu L: Vegetable & Lentil Soup and Salad
Thu Steamed veggies with some kind of main - probably Linda M sausages from freezer
Fri L:Salad with some kind of "main" LO from last night
Fri Thai green curry from freezer with rice
Sat L:Make butternut soup as have one in cupboard
Sat Will make something fresh for "treat meal"
Sun L:LO butternut soup
Sun Jerk veg and bean stew
Mon L:Quinoa & bean chilli from freezer
Mon Jerk veg and bean stew
Tue L:Quinoa & bean chilli from freezer
Tue Jerk veg and bean stew
Wed L:Jerk veg and bean stew
Wed Cooking at mum's - don't know yet

October GC now up

joedenise

It's a great idea elsiepack to put up your menu plan on here so that you can refer back to it. When I menu plan I always try to use as much from the freezer as possible and then work around those meals to decide what to have for the other meals.

I'm currently menu planning for a month at a time but have been thinking I might go back to weekly and then I can make more use of Lidl half price weekend deals and Aldi Super Six. Will start that next month as have already planned until the end of September.

Denise

zafiro1984

That's a good idea Elsiepac
I do mine slightly differently.

I plan 8 lunches for the week, I keep it simple, soup, eggs, cheese, maybe a sandwich or leftovers from the previous night.
I do the same for dinners - 8 planned main courses but I always have something in the freezer eg breaded fish, fish cakes or cornbeef cakes just in case something happens.
We always have some form of dessert so I plan 8 desserts but always have yogurt or something easy like angel delight as a standby.

This means I have flexibility as sometimes the days do not go as planned and I'm either late, tired, busy or forgot to take something out of the freezer. it works well for me. Also at the end of the week I assess what hasn't been used and start my planning around those items lurking in the fridge.

As I said, it really does work well as I know life does get in the way of trying to plan things.

Today turkey casserole was on the list for dinner but I've slightly changed it. I've quite a few vegetables in the fridge that need using up so it's turkey casserole X soup, I've also used turkey stock, some herbs, lentils, barley etc and will put dumpling on the top to give it a bit of substance for hubby. It's all in the slow cooker.

Weekly shop at Lidl yesterday spent 52.96. That leaves £92.53 for the rest of the month - should be doable.