January 2020 Grocery Challenge

nannygladys

Hi everyone
This week is going fine, I seem to be able to keep within the grocery challenge but have problems in others areas!!
Dinner is in the slow cooker, another bean stew but this time besides using my butterbeans that I cooked yesterday I added some washed baked beans that were lurking in the fridge after I fancied some the other day. I don't have any bread at the moment and didn't want to buy any today, so had a hunt in the freezer and found a couple of pittas - problem solved!
New week for me starts on Wednesday so the leftover money from this week will be added to the holding pot, ready to divide out into other pots at a later stage!
Nannyg

elsiepac

Welcome frugalhome, Jacs205,
BelleBaluu, GlendaSugarbean, Toonie, Greenglockenspiel, jak, jasminesaver and supersaver1000

Welcome back franby64, IslandMaid and candygirl

Jacs205, I like to use cash personally as I "value" it more - I also (somewhat unreasonably) feel much more comfortable if I have it in cash - in the bank I always feel like it could be taken away from me - I'm not 100% sure where this fear come from lol!

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I can't be bothered doing my little table thing right now lol, but basically I have £25.50 left for the month and 10 days left to go. I do however have a rammed fridge with fresh veggies and a few meat replacements (but a few need using the next couple of days).

I also have £9 in Club card vouchers if I get stuck.

It's my birthday on Friday - last number on the roulette wheel! - and my parents are taking me out for tea just the 3 of us which will be nice. I'm also out for a meal over the weekend with friends, but that comes form a different budget and I've got that put aside.

Yesterday we went out for our joint family birthday meal for me and mum's birthdays (including my sister) and we were all at my house first. I did loads of crudites, houmous and olives and had a ton of leftovers (plus my fridge was full as I thought it would get eaten so I had bought extra!)

I chopped up the crudites and added to chickpeas with some fresh basil and mint to make a salad, and cooked some bulgar wheat with lemon and stock and then stirred the end of a jar of sundried tomato paste through it. Divided that into two pots, topped with the chickpea salad, added the leftover marinated olives and a dollop of houmous in the corner and I had two very delicious and easy work lunches made!

candygirl

That all sounds delish ELSIE:p I love chickpeas, n often roast them in my air fryer

[Deleted User]

Declaring a £18.43 spend for this weeks food which brings my total spend for the month to £89.20/£150.

We have £60.80 left with one full week left after this week as my 'month' starts on 25th. I am optimistic that I'll have some left to add to the savings pot at the end of the month.

Will update total in sig. shortly.

boultdj

Bad news for me is OH is getting over his vertigo, which mean's he's coming round the shop again, so got everything on the list and more besides, took my shop up to £42 and still need satsumas.

Suffolk_lass

I have bought milk (£2.09) but that is all so far in the last few days (mind you, my humungous spend last week means my fridge is still fairly full) - hopefully just bowl fruit to buy at some point. I have also taken out fruit, courgettes and lamb chops from the freezer so this has comfortably padded out what is there. I have a bag of wonky peppers (25p each) to use and so I think I will be making a ragu sauce and stuffing some of them, but probably leek and cauliflower au gratin tonight as the cauliflower is looking so sad that DH prepped it and discarded two florets!

I really must do a proper freezer audit and make a record and organise it better. So much "freezer surprise" lurking with no idea and no labels!

zafiro1984

Suffolk_lass wrote: »

I really must do a proper freezer audit and make a record and organise it better. So much "freezer surprise" lurking with no idea and no labels!

I used to suffer the same way but I now use the small freezer in the kitchen under the fridge to house all open packets, leftover bits etc. Every few weeks I have a session of only eating out of this freezer. It usually works well but once I used what I thought were baby onion in a casserole only to find out later they were gooseberries - we had egg on toast that night!!! I'm still not good at labelling things.

No shopping over the last few days and hopefully I won't need to do any until Fri/Sat.

Merlin's_Beard

£28.87 spent yesterday at T's. I'm hoping that that is the main shop done until the end of the month (spending some time away) but I might need to do some top up shops later on.

I've got £21 of my £100 left, so doing okay so far.

bett_rhy

Did a small weekly shop at Sainsbobs

£43.68 :T it's going down :rotfl:

£103.54/£240

GreenFairy

€70.36 to add to my total after the weekend. Two big bags of pet food (pets are bloomin' expensive!), a side of salmon, bread, assorted dairy, and a pack of digestives.

Had most of the salmon baked (used up a lemon), and roasted a couple of white potatoes and a giant sweet potato to go with them.

A tub of hummus and a bit of a tub of cream went to the great fridge in the sky. Other than that and the compost peelings bin/dogs, there's been no actual food waste since Christmas. Hurray!

I've still got some sprouts lingering. They look perfectly fine, but I've not had a chance to do anything with them. I'm planning to fry them up at the weekend with a couple of chopped up rashers, but have to figure out what they can go with. Other than that, it's a lump of ginger, a lemon, 4 limes, half a tub of mushrooms and a butternut squash in the veg drawer, and onions and a couple of spuds in the press.
Determined to cut down on the f&v waste this year!