August 2020 Grocery Challenge

mumtoomany

Hi, all. Top-up shop again yesterday, more milk needed! Sometimes I wish we still had a goat, then I remember all the times they ran away! Spent £15.11, total for month now stands at £172.99/£200. Leaves me with £27 to last till September. Don't think we need much, although if the slugs have been at the carrots again, when I dig them up, might need some of those and milk. Freezers still overflowing! Can't seem to empty them. Mumtoomany

PipneyJane

Belated catch-up.

I have shopping to declare from the weekend.  On Saturday, I dropped in to W8rose on my way home from seeing a friend. (Social distance was observed.)  Bought 4x500g bags of black turtle beans at £1.10/bag.  (W8rose is cheapest for these.)  Hoped to check out their puy lentils, since I'm running low on the Carrefour Essentials "Lentils verts" that I stocked up on in Calais last year (at 90 Euro cents a packet).  None on the shelf and a highly inconvenient "out of stock" sticker covering the price label.  £4.40 paid.

On Sunday,  I downloaded the new L!ld+ app, did a careful shopping list and drove to L!dl.  (The first time we've driven there in months.  Now we walk it.) We managed to spend the £25 necessary to get the £5 off.  We did stock up a bit on breakfast cereal and toothpaste in order to get over the threshold, but it'll be used.  £21.41 spent.  DH is now plotting to do the same, next time we shop.  We also scored a £2 coin in change, which gets treated like a spend.  (£2 coins go into the Running Away Fund.)

From L!dl, we drove to MrT's and spent a further £22.50, of which £6 was squash, £5 went on Options flavoured hot chocolate (to be padded out with the £1.60 plain hot chocolate), £3 on 2kg of small brown lentils (which will do instead of the aforementioned Puy lentils) and the rest was on yoghurts and peppers.    Since we had fresh milk in the car, this was an expensive flying visit and the big shop I have planned, didn't happen. 

Finally, from MrT's we drove to A$da, where DH bought some beers out of his own money and checked out the Yeo Valley Yoghurt situation.  It appears that the reason we'd been able to buy Yeo Valley so cheaply from A$da is because they were clearing their stocks.  They don't even have space in the fridge for Yeo Valley now.  (Parked under cover in A$da.)

The above brings our total spend to £97.78/£140, leaving £42.22 for the rest of August.  Still have to do the "big shop" and we'll definitely need more yoghurts, fresh veggies and fresh milk before the end of the month.

- Pip

thriftwizard

Need to find receipts & add things up properly, but I suspect I'm bust, and if not, I will be tomorrow! Trouble is, my squirrelling instinct has cut in early this year; I'm normally inclined to preserve everything in sight & make sure my store cupboards are as well-stocked as can be in autumn, but for some reason, I've gone into that gear early this year. So when I went to buy one tube of toothpaste earlier, I actually bought three, plus a large carton of vegetable stock which I know will last us several months. Well, the previous one was opened last weekend; I like to replace things once the last one is opened, to prevent extra shopping trips! Couldn't resist squirrelling some extra tea away when I popped into the supermarket for a tub of cream, to use up in ice-cream with any fruit (strawberries, raspberries & blueberries) left over from last weekend. And so on and so forth! It's playing havoc with the budget but it's all stuff that will be used up over the winter - except the ice-cream; that's gone already!

PipneyJane

thriftwizard said:

Need to find receipts & add things up properly, but I suspect I'm bust, and if not, I will be tomorrow! Trouble is, my squirrelling instinct has cut in early this year; I'm normally inclined to preserve everything in sight & make sure my store cupboards are as well-stocked as can be in autumn, but for some reason, I've gone into that gear early this year. So when I went to buy one tube of toothpaste earlier, I actually bought three, plus a large carton of vegetable stock which I know will last us several months. Well, the previous one was opened last weekend; I like to replace things once the last one is opened, to prevent extra shopping trips! Couldn't resist squirrelling some extra tea away when I popped into the supermarket for a tub of cream, to use up in ice-cream with any fruit (strawberries, raspberries & blueberries) left over from last weekend. And so on and so forth! It's playing havoc with the budget but it's all stuff that will be used up over the winter - except the ice-cream; that's gone already!

It’s understandable, @thriftwizard.  We all have the threat of a second Lockdown hanging over our heads, when the second wave of the virus comes through.  I have seriously been wondering whether we should have “Prepping for Lockdown” thread.  I don’t want to scare people and I don’t want to trigger another round of crazy stockpiling, but I do think we should lay in sensible supplies while the sun shines.

- Pip

thriftwizard

Agreed, PipneyJane! But it's also because the blackberries are festooning the hedgerows, the apples are starting to fall, my pumpkins are colouring up, the days are getting shorter & cooler; all things that say autumn's just around the corner, though I'm not yet ready to say goodbye to summer. They're probably there every year at this time, but as it normally rains right through August, not so noticeable!

Edited to add: the receipts from today's shops have completely vanished; I hauled my trolley out of the back of the van to examine them, but they're just not there. Baffling... so I looked at the items, and they don't have price stickers on. Looking at my banking app, I seem to have spent a horrendous £57.34... eek, less than £10 left. But I've just realised that the weekend after this will fall into September budget, as 31st is a bank holiday, therefore payday will be the 28th. If we don't have guests this weekend, I could still do that, with meat, fish & cheese from the freezer, veg from the allotment, and fruit from the garden, allotment & hedgerows. But if we do (not yet known!) I'll have to splash out a little...

JingsMyBucket

Well, I've gone over budget. It was a combination of re-upping things like deodorant and sanitary products for the next few months that tipped me over. That stuff alone cost about $44. It should last me the next 6 months though or even longer. So yeah, I had a Target online order that came to $71.60 for the GC portion of it including the items named above. I also put in my first order for the Imperfect Foods veg and fruit box and added a few other items to it as well. That including the $4.99 delivery fee came to $57.90.

I've attached an image of the list of what I ordered (I also added another $12.99 item after this screenshot) and some photos of the produce. The actual produce pack came to $16.50 and the meat pack (turkey bacon and the ground turkey) came to $10.49 so their initial estimates were correct. In terms of produce, I added strawberries for $2.50 and navel oranges for $1.50. Overall, I'm pretty happy with the box I received and everything looks good and pretty darn perfect as is. I may get some more berries next week but I may be done with shopping for the month.  

$363.99 / $300.00
12 NSDS
$63.99 over budget

Suffolk_lass

Saw these - Any good Pip?

Still pottering along with just milk and eggs left to pay for this month. Might need a bit of fruit (peaches) but the plums have arrived so very happy with those as an alternative

pamsdish

£17.01 in Aldi, did include 3 tins of corned beef, been out of stock for a while, I too making mini stockpile, 

PipneyJane

Suffolk_lass said:

Saw these - Any good Pip?

Still pottering along with just milk and eggs left to pay for this month. Might need a bit of fruit (peaches) but the plums have arrived so very happy with those as an alternative

Sadly, they're beyond my price range, @Suffolk_lass.  They look the same as the "lentils verts" that I buy from Carrefour for 90 cents for 500g.  The brown lentils that I purchased in MrT's are a fraction bigger but not huge (unlike "continental lentils").  They'll do for now (£3 for 2kg). 

I use these small lentils to make a Warm French Lentil Salad, (similar to this recipe but I don't bother with an egg and use a pepper not radishes).  I've made it a lot of itthis year, when we've had really hot weather.  In winter, I'll make this Spicy Sausage and Lentil Casserole.

- Pip

joedenise

Both recipes look good Pip and have bookmarked them.  I have some lentils vert which I bought back from France last year.  Think I bought too many as still have 2 boxes left!