October 2020 Grocery Challenge

Merlin's_Beard

£100 for this month. I've dropped off the radar for a few months - rest assured I've been doing badly! Will try and be better this month.

Doom_and_Gloom

£37.64 spent so far this month. 

OH dinner - beef stew and mashed potato. 
My dinner - vegan sausages, mashed potato, carrots, cauliflower, peas and beans

£37.64/£180.
£142.36 left. 

thriftwizard

Eek! £132 has vanished today, between the market, the butchers & an Amaz0n delivery of cat food. So we're nearly halfway through the budget on the 2nd of the month - ooer, not good! And I've just realised that it's a 5-Friday month, so I might need to ask you to adjust my target to £450, please, elsiepac. Sorry to be a pain - should have looked before getting too ambitious!

goldfinches

Did a top-up shop today for milk and radishes which was £3.75 and then bought 300g of Stilton, 2 bags of lambs lettuce and 2 bags of precut sweet potato fries for £4.80 all reduced and fitting into my meal plan bringing me to a total of £8.55/£190 for this month. 
Have decided to keep the shopping list items bought and the y/s ones in separate totals at home to keep better track and only to buy reduced items if they fit in the existing meal plan rather than rejigging all the time. That should now be all the shopping until I need more milk and at that stage I might even buy some to freeze to reduce my shopping trips, we'll see.
Night all and sweet dreams, goldfinches.

joedenise

Needed to pop our to the Farm Shop to pick up some more potatoes so while I was there decided to pick up some extra veg to batch cook a veg curry - 8 portions ready to be bagged and put in the freezer.  Two portions will get used some time this week so another 3 meals worth in the freezer for next month or December, alongside the 3 meals worth of beef stew cooked yesterday.

So another £4.99 spent.

Need to check my YNAB to see how much I have left for rest of the month but it's still over £200.

mumtoomany

Hi, JustMum,  joedenise and anyone else interested. Some of the ways i spend so little. Firstly my normal spends per month, before rejoining the grocery thread were more like £300 per month. I'm presently trying to cut down to empty the freezers. We are fortunate to own a smallholding, 13.5 acres and have a large polytunnel. We never need to buy eggs, never buy lamb or mutton. At present we've got two pigs, they will be going for slaughter this week, hence why i need to empty some freezer space, we also eat any spare cockrels. 
Locally we have an amazing greengrocer, here I buy potatoes two sacks for £10, carrots £2.50 for 10kg, onions £6 for 25kg. They also sell £1 boxes, these are different each time but will contain 12-13 peppers, or 10 grapefruit, or 18-20 apples,or 6 lettuce, etc. I will buy several boxes each time I go there and base the weeks meals on the contents and/or freeze them. 
I have a daughter who works at Farm foods and am able to use her staff discount,15%. So a whole chicken the £1.99 less discount, £1.69. Milk two 4pint bottles for £1.28. Butter 84p. Another daughter works for Tesco, 10% discount, she visits two or three times a year and i stock up on cupboard items when she's here. The local cash and carry sell dented canned food and frozen food with damaged packaging reduced, we usually shop here each month too.
Back with some more tips later. Mumtoomany.

joedenise

Wow that greengrocer sounds brilliant.  I have to pay more than that for one bag of potatoes, at the moment they're £12.  Never seen onions that cheap either.  Think the best I've seen are 5Kg for £1.  You also get an amazing amount for £1.  The nearest I can get to anything like that is if I hit Lidl at the right time and manage to get one of their £1.50 boxes but that doesn't happen very often.

Don't feel quite so bad spending as much as I do as you have some brilliant bargains and also the discounts for supermarkets via you daughters.

goldfinches

I'm also very envious of your greengrocer, they sound wonderfully resourceful and obviously know their customers well too. That smallholding sounds like an awful lot of hard work though, you must have incredible stamina. 
This rather feeble townie is off to bed now, sweet dreams to all you hard workers, goldfinches.

mumtoomany

Hi, back again. Some tips on spending less on groceries.
1. Know the cost of everything, or the cost you are willing to pay. For example a single packet of crisps costs 10p, (in my head at least) so if i see multi packs that are "bargains", I only buy if less than this price. If they are real bargains i but as many as we will use before they go off. I have a pantry, huge kitchen and storage in the barn. So crisps 10p, chocolate biscuits 10p, individual yogurts 20p, cheese £4.50 kg, quality sausage £2 for six, etc.
2. Cook from scratch, (obviously) but adjust the ingredients according to cost. So in Bolognese sauce, 250gms mince, 1kg onions, tin of chopped tomatoes(catering size tin 2500gms!) Six of seven peppers, frozen fresh tomatoes if you have a glut! Half kg mushrooms, handful lentils,(don't tell son-in-law!) two big handfuls of oats, garlic from outside. Cook it all up. This serves 8 as bolognese, then use some to make lasagne for 8, then add beans and chilly powder to remainder for a third meal for us all. The oats cook to look a bit like mince!.
3. Throw nothing away. I have a "soup box" in the freezer. Any leftover veg including salad, any meat, goes in here. When full of it gets blitzed and becomes soup, or a base for curry. EVERYTHING freezes, some things don't thaw well! But even frozen cucumber is invisible in soup. Single portions of meals are frozen too, then we'll have a "use it up" night, each choosing their own "ready meal".
4. Don't offer choices at meal time, I have in the past had up to 14 mouths to feed at every meal, (hence the user name). Everyone eats what's on offer or starves! Nobody has ever gone hungry, they all choose to eat.
I'll update if i think of more. 
goldfinches, yes it is hard work. 42 sheep, at present, two pigs, a dozen chickens and a polytunnel. Also we provide the childcare for three grandchildren under seven and trying to get the place into good repair, (very rundown when we moved in). We are both the wrong side of sixty and have never worked so hard, for so little money, but would not change a thing. 

On the grocery front, first spend yesterday, £1.28 for 8 pints of milk, DD3 brought it in from work, or car off the road for MOT. That should save us spending!
Hope some of this is useful, mumtoomany

Narola1976

£9.95 yesterday at Waitr*se with DD’s staff discount. Off to Aldee today. my aim is spend no more than £70 but hoping to buy enough for 2 to 3 weeks as I loathe weekly shopping. Will report back