July 2020 Grocery Challenge

SJAllicat

Can I please be put down for £250    

That from 1st July to 31st. I think this looks like an amount I can achieve going on last month and includes all food, alcohol, cleaning and personal hygiene products for 2 people.  

*snow*white*

Can I join in please. Managed to get a handle on things again this month,£320 after a horrendous £463 last month. Aiming for £300 in July. We are 3 adults &1 dog this is all food, household etc

lantanna

£8.10 tonight on a cheeky chippy tea. £16.36 left for the week

lushlifesaver

Please pop me down for £250

£50 increase as we have OHs birthday (20th and my birthday (25th) and we are hoping to have the garden done so we can have a couple of BBQs and hopefully lockdown restrictions are eased to allow more people so we can do one instead of three haha!
Budget to run from 1st to 31st and as last month alcohol, pets and toiletries are not included.

I'm in the midst of my monthly freezer audit and also have made a list of recipes to cook. my hope is each Saturday to batch cook at least 3 recipes and freeze to save time and money!


As an aside, how do people that batch cook find it best to freeze? is it a case of lots of individual portions or does anyone have any family size boxes/solutions that they use?

joedenise

As there are just 2 of us and we always eat the same I bag up portions for both of us.  I generally cook recipes for 4 or 6, although sometimes if I'm doing something in the slow cooker I'll make larger portions so I'll double up a recipe for 4 or 6 and have extra portions of 2 servings but I don't do that very often.  I tend to use freezer bags rather than boxes as they are much easier to stack vertically in the drawers of the freezer.

Aereon

Hi there Please can I be put down for £250 for the month for 2 people 
I'm excited to track our progress and hopefully keep this thread updated for once :P

Hettyhound

I am really going to try for £200 in July, I know I can do it as used to do less!

MazzieD

It's officially the start of my new month today, but as I tend to shop on Wednesday started yesterday!.
Spent £10 on 4 x 18 pack toilet rolls at FmFoods which was a bulk buy (saved £1.96 and only buy once a year!).
Stocked up on some vitamins/supplements at S*vers £6.96.

Big shop first thing this morning, for batch cooking this month, no meat or fish just mainly store cupboard, fruit and veg  £24.22 at Lidl.  No sign of any YS items.

Total spend: £41.18  so £58.82 remaining for rest of month.

Noticed some prices are rising and not just the odd 5p here and there.  The plan for the rest  of the month is to only take advantage of fresh fruit and veg offers as also topped up frozen veg and fruit - quite good and cheaper.  I allocate up to £20 a month from the budget for any bulk buys or stocking up but now have everything I would normally need including cat food.  Still got quite a lot of meat and chicken in the freezer from a large meat order in May.

Want to try and get back to shopping at Ald!, got put off by the queues and changes to opening hours.  Also recently discovered that there is a big Morries on the outskirts so might go on an adventure for my next shop..... 

PipneyJane

lushlifesaver said:

Please pop me down for £250

£50 increase as we have OHs birthday (20th and my birthday (25th) and we are hoping to have the garden done so we can have a couple of BBQs and hopefully lockdown restrictions are eased to allow more people so we can do one instead of three haha!
Budget to run from 1st to 31st and as last month alcohol, pets and toiletries are not included.

I'm in the midst of my monthly freezer audit and also have made a list of recipes to cook. my hope is each Saturday to batch cook at least 3 recipes and freeze to save time and money!


As an aside, how do people that batch cook find it best to freeze? is it a case of lots of individual portions or does anyone have any family size boxes/solutions that they use?

When I batch cook, I tend to make up “lunch boxes” with the leftovers.  Each contains an individual meal’s worth of whatever was cooked that night, so curry with rice or pasta with sauce or stew with potatoes, that sort of thing.   I use Lock-n-lock boxes for those.  They can be zapped from frozen but work better when the contents are defrosted first.  Lock-n-locks don’t leak, unlike some of the other containers I’ve used over the years.  (This is also portion control because my DH will happily eat double unless I’ve dished everything up into lunch boxes while serving dinner.)

If I’m batch cooking a a cook-now-eat-later type of meal, then I’ll use the largest plastic takeaway boxes you can buy.  I get mine in packs of 100 from Wing-Yip, the Chinese supermarket/cash-n-carry, but I also save the ones from the odd takeaway.  (We have less than one a month.). I bank on one box holding two-three portions.  (There’s only two of us.) They stack well in the freezer and, unlike the time I experimented with those gussetted freezer bags, don’t leap off the shelf at you when stacked.  I probably won’t need to buy any more boxes for at least a decade.

The other thing I do is a sort of batch meal plan.  I’ll cook double of something, say chilli, and then use the second portion in a different type of meal a few nights later (e.g. corn pone, which is chilli combined with baked beans and cooked like a pie with a cornbread top).

HTH

- Pip

ETA:  I forgot to mention that when I bake cakes, I usually bake them in loaf pans and bake two at a time.   Once cooled, I’ll tuck one into a freezer bag and freeze it standing on its end.  I’ll leave the loaf-pan liner on until it is defrosted, when I may peal it off if the liner is soggy from condensation.  (My primary oven is a microwave/convection oven.  It’ll take two loaf pans but not two cake tins at the same time.)

Suffolk_lass

taka said:

Thanks everyone for the food flask (and mini slow cooker!) suggestions. We had another online meeting about the return to work yesterday and frankly it left most people even more confused than before! We may have access to microwaves and definitely access to hot water but not necessarily in our normal work building - possibly we will need to go elsewhere on campus or even occasionally be in marquees between work sessions / during breaks etc. I think a food flask will be a good idea whatever it turns out to be and useful for days out etc anyway.

It is my birthday in Aug so I'd love to get something useful and usable like a food flask! My Brother & SIL have recently had a wee baby so are rather sleep deprived (and shell shocked!) & we are all trying to declutter (and since Dad passed away last month we have his larger, even more cluttered home to sort out too) so something easy to buy online that will actually be used will hopefully be a winner for all of us!

Bit late to respond but suggest you check out insulated bento boxes too (Amazing have lots)