November 2019 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

Hello & welcome aboard, bett_rhy & peenywisesheeb!

I've invested another £65 on most of what we'll need for the coming week; it bought us two chickens, bacon, ham, cheese, three trout, a loaf of sourdough (I don't have time to make any until next week) and vast quantities of fruit & veg. There will be a few other small items bought tomorrow, as I forgot to see what I've got in stock before making mincemeat, Christmas cake & puds next week. Almost anything else we might need, we can find in the freezer so fingers crossed, I'm not too far off track - yet!

PipneyJane

Evening All

VanLady - glad I could help. Virtually all my recipes start “fry onion with garlic, add mushrooms”, so if I score a glut of YS mushrooms at the supermarket, I’ll cook up loads of that “base” and freeze it in small takeaway containers. My husband jokes that if a recipe doesn’t start “fry onion with garlic, add mushrooms” then it must be a cake.

StripeyTightsSpottySocks - I can’t see why stewed pears wouldn’t work just as well.

I’ve got 2 spends to declare. Monday night, my husband went to Lidl to buy sandwich stuff - meat, salad leaves and a creamy dip - for Tuesday night, when we went to see A-Ha perform at the Royal Albert Hall. (Excellent concert BTW.) We alway make a picnic for nights like that and RAH let you take in plastic bottles of drink (squash in our case). As well as sandwich stuff, he also picked up 3 of their 200g bags of sunflower seeds, which I add to cakes, cookies and my breakfast every morning. He spent £8.88.

We already had wraps for Tuesday night. The leftover creamy onion dip formed the sauce base for some pasta last night. The only fresh veg we had left in the house were onions and garlic, so I fried them up, added a slab of salmon fillet, plus a cup of frozen mixed veg and then tossed in the dip. Cooked some pasta, stirred the sauce through and served. Amazingly, it worked well.

After dinner yesterday, we did our monthly “big shop” at Mr T’s, spending £40.37. The big score were three bags of YS mushrooms for 21p, 22p and 25p respectively, so I’ll be cooking up base in bulk on Sunday and freezing. Nothing much else was memorable. We did hold back from buying some items, in order to get them at Lidl instead. We’re going to take advantage of the £10-off Lidl voucher in today’s Metro paper (as mentioned in Martin’s email this week), which has a £40 threshold. I made a special dash to the local station on my way to work this morning, to pick up the Metro.

The above spends bring our total for November to £49.25/£120, leaving £70.75 for the rest of the month. We have a farm shop planned for the weekend and will also be checking out a new-to-us butcher, one that I drive past regularly on my way to work but is never open at the time.

- Pip

sarahj1986

Hello all

Yesterday is classed as a no spend day. We were out all day registering our marriage with the Spanish government so ate out. We rarely eat out and when we do our girl loves it so we class it as family time.

Today I spent €39.60

I needed more nappies (which are expensive here compared to the UK), toilet roll,stuff for lunch tomorrow and Sunday I’m doing a roast so needed the meat, veg and potatoes for that. I also found a reduced price Halloween panettone which was €4reduced to €1.50, its quite big but it's got pumpkin in it which I think my girl will love. Also got ingredients to make a cheesecake at the request of my husband who is missing cheesecake. It’s not really a dessert over here so I said I’d make one.

€152.21 left

boultdj

Another 29.94 to my total, which includes furry owner's treat biscuits which seem to be getting harder to find.

franby64

Morning! I managed a couple of low spend days but the cupboards and especially the fridge were looking a bit bare by last night. There were complaints ie.'there's no bread, me: there's 3 slices, what are you on about'!
So today I bought bread, cheese, eggs, toms, milk, lettuce and yogurt.

A question I wonder about, though I feel a bit daft asking it, is how do people keep tea towels clean? My light coloured ones always seems to get stained and I don't know how to shift it.

XSpender

Went to Asda with DS so a few little extras slipped into the trolley. I am working away a couple of nights this week and DH is no cook so a couple of ready meals and a frozen pizza were needed to feed him and DS.

Total spends now at £173.38/£400. I am aiming for £100 week and went over a bit last week so hoping to pull it back this week. I have picked up one of the £10 vouchers for leedle but will have to use this Wednesday as this is the latest day I am at home before it expires. My intention is to use this for the 2 alcohol purchase limit, packed lunch stuff for DS who is on a school trip next week, GF cereal, chicken and a gammon joint.

DS favourite homemade chicken and cheese enchiladas for tea tonight, it is bitter cold today and we need warming up. I didn’t want to buy a joint when I am away early in the week so we will have sausage, mash and veg tomorrow followed by one of the apple crumbles I made from next doors apples.

FullMoon

Can I join please? I used to post here a lot a few years ago but can't remember my username or old email so have had to set up a new account. Dc4 is due in the next few weeks and I'll be giving up my part time work so really need to scale back.

We currently shop at a fairly expensive supermarket, but can't change as they are the only ones who deliver to our house and my back isn't the best so find it hard to manage a trolley in store. Should be able to make cutbacks on branded on convenience foods though.

Anyway! Could you put me in for €450 please? Hoping to cutback further as I go along, but will also be picking up bits and pieces for Xmas as I go

Vanlady

Welcome fullmoon!

franby64, regarding tea towels. My way round that problem is I only ever buy black ones, never a stain to be seen . Maybe you could try soaking them in washing soda crystals? Ive started using that now for so many things, great for removing tea stained cups just by soaking for a few hours, so it might work for tea towels??? Plus more environmentally friendly than bleach etc.

Well, I've scuppered a nsd today by spending 85p on a tin of anchovies for my pizza tonight.

Bonfire night has now gone and Xmas has hit the shops, so i swayed and tapp danced my way around the Isles. ....I cannot resist Michael bouble''s Xmas crooning, gets me every time

thriftwizard

An accidental NSD here today. Sadly that means I'll end up spending more in the supermarket early next week, as I missed the chance to go & buy things at the market, partly because I needed to iron approximately 100 vintage headscarves before tomorrow's fair, but mostly because it was tipping down with rain!

jenni_fer

Checking in at £54.71/£300, spent more than necessary yesterday in Lidl as had one of the £10 vouchers.

Will probably have an expensive couple of days as we need to do a branded trip to Asda in the morning and I've got another Lidl voucher to use but then hopefully that'll do us pretty much until the end of the week.

1 week in and no work lunch spends which is good. Next week I'm away overnight though so will have no choice but to buy something for lunch.