May 2020 Grocery Challenge

Chloris

Trip to the local c0-0p for baking supplies and paid our milkman (also delivers juice, eggs and bread) brings me to £119.24/£600. The local health food store is due to deliver tomorrow too. Unfortunately they are out of the vegan squirty cream which was my luxury item for our cream tea on Friday. Oh well, we will have to make do with just jam with our scones. I've ordered some gram flour to experiment with vegan quiches too.
Tea tonight was hm bean burgers and coleslaw. I have been so lazy recently buying frozen ones when hm is so cheap. 
Hope everyone is keeping well and managing their purses😁

snowbird20

we had to travel out of state for medical visits this week so while we were in bigger towns, we went shopping.  We went to A!di first...$69.77US....lots of chocolate!!  Then a local Market $213.xx for meat, lots of fresh veg.  There is strong talk of a meat shortage coming so I did some panic buying of beef and chicken.  So I'm at $283 which leaves me only $117 for the rest of the month but we should only need eggs, milk and yogurt.  

Aliliva

One week in and we've already spent £70 out of our £300 budget - and in the fridge we have one lonely avocado and half a tub of yogurt, nothing more! Honestly, how can two people eat so much in such little time?
Anyway, big shopping again tomorrow, with supplies for the weekend and some home backing (if eggs are available), but hopefully we can keep it under £50 and balance out last week.

Stay safe everyone and enjoy the long weekend

jenni_fer

Our Asda adjustments processed from last week so the total shop came to £173.58. It was supposed to last us 2 weeks but a couple of the missing items meant I ended up popping to Lidl yesterday. I thought we needed so little that I didn't bother with a list...BIG MISTAKE as I spent £53.64. That means we are over half way through the budget I set and only 7 days into the month!!!!
There were so many Tesco slots available when I was looking for my parents last week that I booked one for us for a weeks time. with the hope that this and one other small shop will take us til the end of May.

£227.22/£450

snowbird20

jenni_fer, i'll be doing the same.  Starting a shopping order for next week.  when slots WERE so hard to come by, having them available makes it difficult to pass up.  

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

How are you coping with Lockdown?  I was talking to some colleagues earlier and we all decided that it’s come to something when a visit to the supermarket is a BIG. EXCITING. EVENT!!!! But that is how it feels now-a-days.

I have two shops to declare.  Monday evening, DH and I walked the 2 miles to our local A$DA.  We queued for 30-ish minutes then I lurked outside, while he did the shopping.  £10.80 spent, mainly on 450ml tubs of Yeo Valley yoghurt, which they were selling for £1 each.  Even the Greek-style yoghurt with honey was £1.  DH bought 8, which should last us through to the end of the month.  The rest of the money was spent on eggs (£1.18 for 15), tagliatelle and low-fat plain yoghurt.   (The whole trip took nearly 3 hours.  We clocked up over 4 miles of walking.)

Today, DH did his regular, weekly, morning walk to L!dl.  His goals were to swap the light soft muscovardo-type sugar he bought on Sunday for the dark variety, to collect a refund on a duck purchased last month (it was sold “with giblets” but there weren’t any in the packaging, so he complained and got a letter to present for a refund), and to buy an 830g block of their mature cheddar.  Swapping the sugar and getting the refund (£6.99) were easy; the cheese proved difficult. They still don’t have large blocks of mature cheddar.  He picked up a few other things that had been lurking on the shopping list (sunflower seeds, more mushrooms, black bread, fresh milk), spending £8.91 in the process.  He also went looking for baking powder for one of my colleagues, but they had none in stock.  

Once a £2 coin and some coppers are deducted, and a £1 coin found in the street added, the above spends bring our total for May to £85.80/£123.60, leaving £37.80 for the rest of the month.  We’ve spent 69.4% of the month’s budget. 

A couple of people have commented that we’re only 7 days into the month but they’ve already spent more than half their budgets.  I can almost feel the fear in their posts, as they worry that they’ll run out of money and food before payday.  So I thought I’d share how we shop, in case it helps/inspires others.  There are two adults in our household and we take our lunches to work every day.  £120 grocery challenge budget covers everything except meat bought at the butcher (the Meat Fund gets a £40/month contribution).  We also contribute £40/month to a Bulk Fund, which is set aside for purchases of 10kg bags of rice and flour, wine, spirits, visits to Costco and WingYip, etc.  (I always add any GC money left over from last month, to this month’s GC budget.)

We generally do one large supermarket shop a month, with a couple of small top ups for fresh veg, milk and yoghurts.  Prior to Lockdown, we bought our eggs and the majority of our fresh veg from a  farm shop 5 miles away.  (It’s closed because it is inside a National Trust property.)  There are some things that I’ll only buy in L!dl because they’re cheapest, e.g. tampons, sanitary pads, mature cheddar, cooking bacon, freeze-dried instant coffee, muscovardo sugar, rolled oats.  (We’re going to L!dl more frequently now, because it’s within walking distance.)

My meal planning usually consists of looking in the fridge, identifying what needs to be used up, and then consulting contents of the freezer to see if I can make whatever recipe springs to mind.   For instance, dinner tonight will be spaghetti bolognese because I defrosted minced beef last night and we have an aubergine and mushrooms that need to be used up.  (Very little gets thrown out because it’s gone off or is growing fur.) 

I try to apply the “Pantry Principle”, i.e. I keep a well stocked pantry and buy to replace items as they are opened or used up.  For example, if I open the 2kg bag of split red lentils, I will add them to the shopping list and purchase them next time I shop, so that there is always another bag in storage.  (“Storage” is a former banana box on the bottom shelf of a bookcase, plus the shelf above it.)   It might be a year before I need to open the next packet but, for dried or tinned goods, a few months make sod-all difference.   

The list for the next shop starts immediately after we walk into the house with the bags from this one, when I‘ll turn the notebook to a fresh page and list anything that wasn’t available/was too expensive this time around.  Some items, I will only purchase if they get down to a certain price: e.g. cans of chopped tomatoes, which I only buy when they are on offer at 4-for-£1, at which point I’ll spend £6 and buy the shrink-wrapped package of 24.  Ditto for toilet paper, toiletries, etc.

There is always food in the house but it might be tinned, dried or frozen.  As long as I have an onion or garlic, fresh water and a working stove, I can make a meal from it.

- Pip (hope this helps someone.)

ETA:  Always check your cupboards, fridge and freezer before you go shopping.  If you can get an idea of how much you use in a week or a month, it’ll help you know when you need to restock and by how much.  I label and date packets of things once opened, so now I know it will take 3 months to use a container of talc, approximately 6 months to get through 10kg of chapatti flour, and that we go through 8–10 tins of tomatoes a month.

Herbyme

PipneyJane, thanks for sharing how you work your system, it makes so much sense and you're so well organised! (Sounds like you also have a well-trained OH! Mine would freak if I asked him to source baking powder!)

supersaver1000

Thanks Pip, its helpful to read about how you are so organised and great that you have DH on board with the shopping.  My DH has been on board with sticking to a menu plan for a while now, but is not a great planner or shopper, so the mental load is all on me.  Shopping is stressful enough at the moment but having DD home has really scuppered plans as she thinks its a 5* hotel where you order dinner when you are ready to eat (choosing a meal even a few hours ahead seems to be an impossible task for her).  We are 2/3 of the way through our usual monthly budget for two.  I know we have to increase the budget slightly to fit a third person in, and there's more coffee/tea/milk/loo roll/soft drinks being consumed, but last month it was double!!  For the rest of the month I am meal planning as normal, then DD can either fit in or hot foot it round to the shops herself (with her own money)!!  This kitchen is closed for a la carte!

joedenise

You definitely need to close down the a la carte kitchen!  Even when my kids were young they ate what they were given or had a sandwich if they didn't want it.  After sandwiches for dinner for a few days they soon started what was on the menu!

PipneyJane

carolinerunner said:

PipneyJane, thanks for sharing how you work your system, it makes so much sense and you're so well organised! (Sounds like you also have a well-trained OH! Mine would freak if I asked him to source baking powder!)

I had to write on the shoppng list “Please check to see if they have baking powder”.    (My colleague lives a mile or two away.  He just wanted to know so that he didn’t waste a journey.). 

My husband is lovely but he needs a list.  The kitchen is a blind spot in his memory.  For some reason, I remember what we have in stock and he doesn’t, even if he bought it.    True story from a minute ago:  he asked me to make up a vitamin C drink for him.  (We buy the ones that dissolve to make a drink.). When I did, he was surprised that it was a Lemon-and-Lime one.  He had no recollection that, when he brought them home from MrT’s, he commented that “this was all I could get” and apologised that they weren’t orange!

- Pip