April 2020 Grocery Challenge

Jacs205

I'm going to have to unfortunately give up on April.  My sister hasn't been able to work because she's a fitness instructor so I've said I will buy nappies, wipes etc for my toddler nephew and friends who have all the symptoms have asked me to get baby formula, nappies and wipes for their wee girl a couple of times.  I'm saving on petrol though, son (biomedical scientist at the Edinburgh Royal) needs driven to work at the weekends because the public transport is rubbish and I'm only in once a week at work now to hand out the free school meals but other than that the budget is gone to hell.  I'll focus on the 1p a day challenge for now and hopefully be back to trying to challenge next month but will keep looking in to see how everyone is doing.

PipneyJane

thriftwizard said:

Laughing gently at your freezer tetris, PipneyJane; I've been doing something similar when DD1 brings back YS readymade veggie indulgences from the supermarket she works at. I made it clear long ago that I had no objections at all to my DDs "going veggie" (10 years in with DD2 now, about 5 for DD1) but I wasn't going to shell out for expensive readymade veggie dishes when I don't buy readymade meat meals either but make just about everything from scratch; the result of that is, of course, that they now regard those readymade bean burgers etc. as the ultimate treat! However last night's campfire cookery session may have injected a small dose of reality; never mind the leg falling off our beloved ancient pot-belly BBQ stove halfway through (a scientist friend who's a blacksmith in his spare time has offered to mend it, thankfully; it's a very useful beastie as it does much more than just BBQ) as the curried lentil burgers just basically disintegrated on the grill. We've had many a good BBQ with home-made chickpea burgers, which taste great, cost pennies & somehow manage to stick together perfectly well, but these things, which would have been about £5 for 4 at full price, had all the integrity of mashed potato & simply fell into the fire. 

Anyhoo - £66 spent today, £45 at the market on fruit, veg, cheese etc. & £21 at the butchers on a chicken, some pork chops, bacon & liver, which should keep us going for another week.

I won!  I even managed to squeeze 4 additional lunchboxes in, although my DH is making me swear that I will stop cooking meals for four-six now. 



As well as a lot of meat, in there are tubs of goose fat, stock, and cooked dried beans together with cheese,  heels of old bread, and “spare” litres of milk.  The silver tray contains the bagged pulp of 8 bananas - two to a bag.   There is virtually no space left, only wriggle room.

Message to DH:  we do not need any more sausages, bacon, minced beef, paneer or haggis.  (There are three ball haggis in the meat drawer.). If we find YS faggots at MrT’s, we have two in the freezer ready to cook.

- Pip

snowbird20

pip, looks just like my freezers altho mine aren't nearly as tidy as yours!
but who doesn't always need more haggis! 

bett_rhy

Well did my first semi shop of the month
unfortunately only got £50 for 2 weeks :O ( at least i'll be under budget lol )
spent £24.78 so far   

Hope everyone is staying safe 
xxx 

pamsdish

O.M.G. Pipney jane, how tidy it looks, I am starting to see some space in my freezers, or at least the drawers seem to close without my shoulder pushing them.

PipneyJane

snowbird20 said:

pip, looks just like my freezers altho mine aren't nearly as tidy as yours!
but who doesn't always need more haggis! 

Oh, I agree re Haggis - we’re having one for our tea tonight - but the truth is, DH’s best mate is babysitting several for us at the moment plus a full black pudding in his freezer.  He went home (Dunfermline) for Hogmanay and we haven’t been able to arrange a handover.  Just as well, really, since we have absolutely no space left.

- Pip

Merlin's_Beard

Pipney I have absolute freezer envy, both in size and in neatness!

Suffolk_lass

Err Pip, you could empty those plastic boxes into bags and stack those in the same place - you would lose all the air in the boxes that way. You do need to remember to but them back into boxes to defrost though - lots of re-used bags with tiny holes or tears here has taught that lesson the hard way. I'm not showing mine on here as I have one in the shed that is maybe a third empty now and two fridge-freezers - the second being officially for ice and beer but now mostly veg and freezer surprise, the other is stuff in progress like opened bags

PipneyJane

Suffolk_lass said:

Err Pip, you could empty those plastic boxes into bags and stack those in the same place - you would lose all the air in the boxes that way. You do need to remember to but them back into boxes to defrost though - lots of re-used bags with tiny holes or tears here has taught that lesson the hard way. I'm not showing mine on here as I have one in the shed that is maybe a third empty now and two fridge-freezers - the second being officially for ice and beer but now mostly veg and freezer surprise, the other is stuff in progress like opened bags

The lock-n-locks are lunch boxes - different sizes for me and DH.  I’ve still got 2 of each size left.  He’d go spare if I liberated any from the freezer.  (I’ve had to promise not to cook anything else that creates lunchbox leftovers.). Everything else behind them, above or below them is full to the brim, either takeaway boxes or ziplock bags.  

I am still mourning this fridge-freezer’s predecessor, which had one more shelf in the door and one more drawer to this one.  The shelves were deeper, too.  It held considerably more and, up until the month that it died, didn’t coat everything with frost.  Doesn’t matter if it’s in this new freezer for five months or five minutes, everything comes out covered in frost.  (The old one died after 16 years of service.  Sadly, they’d stopped making that model.  I had to buy this one online with no notice, in the middle of the 2018 heatwave, or lose a freezer full of food.)

FWIW, the container between the two bottles of milk is used to collect the excess sauce from cans of baked beans.  You know how cheap baked beans always have too much sauce?  Well, I drain the excess into there - it’s full after 5 cans - and, when full, use the sauce in a chilli.

I have a small shop to declare from today.  We walked to MrT’s Express to buy the paper and, while there, picked up 6 bottles of cider and a bag of new potatoes for £11.  I was quite surprised at how well stocked they were.   (We subscribe so get vouchers for the Sunday paper.  I’m not counting it in this spend.)  

This brings our total spend for April to £116.76/£130.96, leaving £14.20 for the remainder of the month.  That total may change because we argued on the way back about reimbursing the housekeeping for the cider and agreed that, if we did run over, we’d each put in a Fiver. (Alcohol doesn’t normally get purchased from the Grocery Challenge kitty.)

- Pip

Doom_and_Gloom

We have a delivery coming tomorrow and if everything arrives as it should it will be a total of £67 to add to (take away from depending on how you look at it) the budget.
I've ordered a large fruit and vegetable box and a cooks ingredients box for this week coming; will photograph the contents of both and put them up tomorrow. Hoping we get onions in one of them as between us today we are consuming the last onion; it's rather large thank goodness. There is a leek left from the other weeks fruit and vegetable box but OH won't eat leek so that's for me to work into something.

OH is making shepherds pie (mince from the freezer).
I'm having vegan pizza (using a bfree base from the freezer and vegan cheese that needs using from the fridge), spicy potato skins (the peelings from the potatoes OH uses to make the mash top to his shepherds pie) and a chickpea salad.

We'll both have some banana cake/bread after dinner, this was made yesterday and OH was very happy for it.

We're doing our best not to waste anything. Thankfully our appetites have come back as they reduced quite a bit when we were ill with what was very likey that dreaded virus! We still have coughs, headaches and it's a little harder than normal to breathe but the worst seems to be gone. Not had fever for a while now so yay for that. Hoping I'll be going back to work for my next shift.

D&G