February 2020 Grocery Challenge

pamsdish

Had to do an Aldi dash last night, alcohol supplies, separate budget, picked up denti stix for wammal, another budget, did get a decent sized celeriac 75p.

jak

Another £26.09 for me bringing my total spend to £46.09 for the week. I’m hoping I won’t need anything else now! X

Islandmaid

Well back from a £44.88 spend at Aldi, mainly on junk, having a house full of builders does the biscuit budget some damage:D

Will add £45 to spends

Merlin's_Beard

I feel your pain with the fridge/freezer, elsiepac - I was living with similar in a previous rental and it completely wrecked my ability to plan.

And re the stress/random crying - ask for help if you need it! From experience, soldiering on often doesn't go well.

lantanna

This month is dragging in for me, I have a hefty bill for car repairs looming over me. Head hasn’t been right since the wind the other night. Joined the team in a chippy lunch today, fiver spent.

nannygladys

Hi everyone
Shopping today in tesca and £36.56 spent, but that includes things like sauces, coffee and toilet paper, so I didn't do too badly. I went through the cupboards etc and made a list which I kept to!!!! So that's the food purse shut tight now and the menu plan put in plain sight by the kettle so I can see it.

I have a voucher for tesca but I wont be using it this week or next, but I will use the one for the week after as I can do a stock up of dried goods, I might even spend my money vouchers that I received last year and forgot about to bring the bill down further.

Nannyg

Doom_and_Gloom

Spent £4.17 today.
20g ginger, specialty mushrooms, orange juice, 800g giraffe bread and shortbread.

I'm having vegan nabe for dinner.
OH is having beef stew and mashed potato again.

£27.13/£216.22
£189.09 left.

purpleybat

hello all,
oh dear! 5 days in and 4 shops done
3 in lidl, i must stop going in for other people cos that would have saved me £5, but the reason i did my listed shop over two visits was that i went to work with out my brain (notebook) and in it was my shoppings list so forgot half of what was on it. luckily i only bought 1 item not on the list so not too bad.
over the 3 visits i spent £23.77
my other shop, £36.25, was my monthly morries delivery.
i'm trying to lower my cholesterol a bit throo diet so my GP has advised lots of pulses and beans. luckily i like most of them so i don't feel this is a hardship (as my friends faces suggest they would) so i have stocked up on lots of dried ones that should last a few months. i have a pressure cooker so cooking them quickly and easily is no problem. i have been looking at new recipes to try, esp ones for chickpeas that i'm not a massive fan of but am training myself to like.
my teeth have now all been done and apart from £1500 that i borrowed from my sister are all paid for. 16 full crowns! just waiting now to pick up my new night guard so i don't knacker them like my real teeth. its so lovely being able to eat all foods pain free for the first time in 3 years. have just eaten an apple without worrying that the acid will set off sensitive teeth or break off small chipped bits.
i only have £60 til the end of the month and there's no way i'm not going to go over unless i do some serious bargain hunting, so damage limitation i think again this month for me.

Herbyme

Suffolk Lass, thank you for explaining how your £200 a month stretches as far as it does. It wasn't boring in the least. It's made me realise that part of the reason I spend so much relative to many is that our appetites are relatively large - that amount of chicken and other things would make far fewer portions for us, maybe less than half. Amazingly we are all slim! I know it's not about comparing, we are all different, but it does help me make sense of how much I spend!

My efforts to get the other adults in the house to cook were mostly successful - DH made a veggie stew/curry and DS2 did baked potatoes (I know, not a big challenge). DS1 however goofed up a cheese sauce for mac'n'cheese, threw it away and treated us to a takeaway instead. Which was very nice! and he paid for it. An awful lot of cheese went into the binned sauce though.

Last day at work tomorrow, holiday starts very early friday morning. I have bought rolls and I will be depriving RA of any more money by taking my own in flight food (even if no one else does! That's out of their budgets not mine. I cannot understand why you wouldn't take a nice home made sandwich instead of eating the ones you get on planes)

Then I will have to dig in again and meal plan for the rest of the month when we get home. At least there will only be about 2 weeks left of Feb by then.

elsiepac

Amazingly no grocery spends for me the last few days - in fact I don't think I've spent anything since Monday except for filling the car up! Have been working late every day though so does limit things somewhat but I still have plenty in! Made a lovely bolognese on Tuesday that I had with linguine and some very nice asparagus (thank you Lid1!) and last night I tried a new "recipe" which was lovely but hardly a recipe lol - basically roasted veg topped with a quartered aubergine smeared with Moroccan paste and roasted for 50 mins then served up with coconut vegan yoghurt and coriander. Only occurred to me while I was making it that there was not really any protein or carb element, however I ate so much of it it was fine and I have leftovers. Was very nice to try a different way with aubergine.

Tonight I need to inventory the fridge as like I keep saying I do have a lot in and I absolutely do not want to risk wasting anything!

Is everyone excited for the new forum? Will be live tomorrow! :T

Thanks Merlins Beard - I too know from experience how these things can go so I am "monitoring" myself very carefully - I know when it is going to a bad place and I have things I can do