November 2020 Grocery Challenge

joedenise

Change of plan and decided to pop to Aldi today instead.  Small spend of just over £6 in there plus £2.40 in Mr Ts for tahini as planning on making some hummus.  Chickpeas have been soaking since last night so will get those cooked shortly and then make the hummus.  Will only make half quantity as there's just the 2 of us now; the other half I'll make some falafel with but the recipe I use doesn't require them to be cooked before making, just baked once everything has been whizzed together.  Both make nice snacks for the evening.

quintwins

Few small spends on reduced items over the weekend that came to £8.85 all together. I"m going to need some juice and bread at some point this week but so far so good. 

£92.90/£450 so I have £357.10 left.

jam2019

Reporting a spend of £21.22 on my last shop - something about ordering online (splitting with the flatmate) seems to lend itself to spending a lot more on fairly random things... and also receiving some unexpected items! e.g. I ordered a couple of bags of rice and received brown rice instead of the white rice I was expecting. Much healthier and a bit cheaper but it does take about twice as long to cook and seems to need soaking in advance, which is a bit annoying. Did get myself a few snacks for before I go for my morning runs though, having discovered that running on an empty stomach just makes it a bit harder.

Doom_and_Gloom

We are at £167.05 total already.  Not good as our budget for the month is supposed to be £180. Loads of things needed to be bought at once and we still don't have a working hob so that doesn't help. Thankfully we have an electric pressure cooker, multi cooker and slow cooker we can use aswell as the oven. My OH also borrowed our next-door neighbours griddle/panini thing to help. 
We did the buying for chinchilla food, hay, treats etc. which accounts for a good chunck of the budget gone. 

OH dinner : large meat pizza. 
My dinner : sweet and sour tofu, vegetables and quinoa. 

£167.05/£180. 
£12.95 left. 

MrsDippy

So today I’m thinking about water.  Once I made my own brown sauce I realised I’ve been paying for  something that is a large proportion water being put into a plastic bottle, and I’m handing over my hard earned cash for it when I could go turn the tap on.  A while ago I switched to plastic free cleaning product company. They send me the concentrated cleaning products and I mix with water at home.  Happy greener Dippy.  So then I wondered what percentage of the food I buy is water?  Take those ready made curry sauces.   I know that they are supposed to order ingredients by quantity….so off to check jar…  yep just as I thought first ingredient – water.  They don’t show the % though.  But they do put the % of everything else, so a sum later, and yes 65% of the jar is water. Wow-wee.   This means cooking from scratch saves me buying dressed up bottled water.  Suddenly I’m motivated to make my own curry sauce.  Also I thought it was mostly tomatoes in that jar – nope 7% - like maybe one actual tomato?  Thinking is dangerous.  Must remain an uninformed obedient consumer.

lushlifesaver

Hello everyone! I meant to come back over a week or so ago but had forgotten my log in details ...oops! no t worry I'm back now!
Big changes a foot here and one of them is how I/we behave about money so this month we've started using a cash envelope system and doing a budget by paycheck method and so far so good!

In light of changes I'm moving to a weekly groceries/household budget. For November we're working on £50 per week as we have a mad amount of meat in the freezer that needs eating! 

Started last week and week one came in at £39! so that was £36.50 in asda and £2.50 yesterday in Tesco for the parmesan I forgot . I'd been planning on shopping on Sundays but due to lockdown weekends are manic where we go so as I had Friday off work I went then and spent £43 which covers us for all of next weeks breakfasts (me and little) lunches (me and oh) and evening meals (all three of us though oh has his at work) plus snacks so managing to rein myself in a lot!

elsiepac

Budgets updated to here! 

@MrsDippy you do make me chuckle

CRANKY40

Good morning all, 

£7.36 spent in Asda yesterday. £392.64 left but I have a delivery tomorrow of the heavier things that it is easier to have fetched to the door A little bit of space has appeared in the freezer. I made cauliflower cheese soup with some cauli florets that were in there and I've kept that in the fridge to use for lunches. I've hauled out some of the mini wrap mountain from the bottom freezer drawer to go with it. 

I make the courgette soup too and I add garlic cheese to mine. It's very tasty. No idea what is for dinner tonight, I'm waiting for inspiration to strike. 

Take care all of you

joedenise

Only made the hummus yesterday so am doing the falafels this morning.  They're resting in the fridge at the moment so thought I'd pop on with an update.  I forgot to say how much I have left when I posted yesterday so thought I'd do that now:  I now have £165.79 left for the rest of the month, which is at least 3 more shops but hopefully none of them will be big ones as have all the meat and fish we need for the month so it's mainly fruit, veg, milk etc.  Hopefully I'll easily come in under budget!

wishus

wishus said:

Total = £38.16

Two Aldi spends to add: £16.43 from Saturday, plus £14.32 today. = £68.91
Also, I have done a ,meal plan. We are thinking around 3 principles:

• WW smart points - green plan. 
• money saving
• Gut-kind!

OH has very sensitive insides and is currently highly susceptible to his main triggers of alcohol, chilli and legumes (booze, baltis and beans!). Possibly because of over indulgence pre-lockdown . Which means we have to also watch minor triggers of fatty foods and too many sweet fruits for now. Hence he's having extra protein for snacks where I can have things like banana or pineapple. I can't do my favourite curries and chillies. Boo!
So this is what I have planned:
Mon: b boiled egg, marmite soldiers, l tuna melt, d chicken leg, 'oven chips' (1 sweet potato plus garden spuds) peas. Snack - 1 pumpkin cookie.
Tue: b apple porridge with homemade chestnut syrup, l jacket potato, light cheddar, spring onion, d prawn risotto
Wed: b mixed berries porridge, l light cheddar and mushroom toastie (swapping for avocado, as I have a half to use up, d battered fish with some oven chips, some butternut squash chips, peas
Thur: b banana porridge, l homegrown pumpkin soup d gammon steak, pineapple or egg, chips, broccoli
Fri: b egg on toast, l pumpkin soup, d spag bol - with aubergine.
Sat: b pancakes, l leek and potato soup, d shepherds pie
Sun: b pancakes, l sardines on toast, d Sunday roast.
Lots of salad and veggies on the side, but have to be careful with my homegrown leaves as they are very hot mustard from a Spicy Salad mix packet.