February 2021 Grocery Challenge

flossyblog

First week feb spend comes in at €38.94, mostly for stock and long term use.  We have approx 34 meals in freezer.   Special offer this week on soup sees us stocked up for emergency lunches.  I have some  cooked & portioned soup base in freezer for lentil soup.

I want to spend the least amount of time cooking and spent time planning how to do it efficently.  

We drew up a list of meals we both like and cook those on a regular basis  the freezer plays a large part as this makes it more cost effective and efficient.  I batch cook bolognaise and chilli con carne for easy dinners. I freeze chicken fillets and steak bought on special offer which are usually eaten with salads or veg. Lunch is always soup and snacks are always fruit.  We always ate out on a saturday but that has stopped for the time being.

K9sandFelines

K9sandFelines said:

\@elsiepac Please can i put my budget back to £380? . I've had a few bulk purchases already this month; which will last ages; but have made things a bit spendy. I probably should have considered this when i dropped my budget for the month.
My other spends have just been little bits, in Aldi/Lidl etc; although tonight i have a big Asda order estimated at £74.97. I will amend and add this later, as DD1 will owe me for a few bits; and i am unsure whether anything will be substituted or missing 

@elsiepac
It turns out I got the wrong day for the Asda shop and its this coming Wednesday. I have however got a Morrison's shopping on Sunday. Mainly because I am still struggling to get reasonable priced milk in bulk, especially as we go through 2 litres a day. So being limited to 10 or 12 online, only sees us through 5 to 6 days.
I have had a few L!dl spends, which I will update at the same time.

Suffolk_lass

We have our monthly click and collect on Monday but an amber weather warning for snow. The hedges are so poor here that if the snow settles, it usually blocks the road because it drifts off the fields and banks up in the roads which are in a bit of a gully. Deep joy!

Doom_and_Gloom

Spent £3.18 at L!dl, was £5.18 before voucher.
That included 2 packs of meatless farm burgers (both packs now in the freezer for 99p/pack), pot of soya yogurt (85p) , 4 little flavoured coconut yogurts (39p each, nice for a treat) and a pack of baby corn (79p).

OH made himself a loaf of bread today. 
OH dinner : beef stew with mashed potato. 
My dinner : beetroot burger, roasted sweet potato and salad. 

£100.96/£150.
£49.04 left. 

moneyonmymindsam

Hi I made the mistake of going to shop for sugar and spent £2.69 on bread, milk and sugar so budget completely spent for week 1. £25 on the dot total for Feb so far. 
Hmmm edit that Actually that's a lie plus one has today picked up a box of YS big eggs 42p.
So minus 0.42p off next week. 

This might make you laugh plus one gave me a biscuit that an old lady had given him at work so kettle on and he ate one, I then ate one it was OK, thought a bit soft so looked at date and it was 2008 we laughed our heads off. Best laugh I've had all day. It was so funny I didn't even feel sick at the thought, too late as we'd eaten them. 

Hopefully I shall still be alive tomorrow. How is that even possible to keep a biscuit 13 years 
Sam x

pamsdish

£21.17 In L1D1, needed chicken for the dog, pleasantly surprised when I looked at my L1D1 app to see a £5 off voucher, £25 is easily attainable with £10 going on a months chicken thighs for wammal, got some pork chops and belly pork, other bits for stores.

Finstickle

They say don't shop when you're hungry, I would add don't shop when you're 'on' as you will want to eat everything and therefore buy everything!!!!   Definitely don't add a screaming toddler to that situation either as it only gets worse 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️

Lidl and veg shop brings my total spend to £186.51/£490.
£13.23 spent off-list, and all meals planned for the week.
I've started using up some of the more random purchases /store cupboard items (home made veggie burgers for tea last night).
Happy with where I am budget wise - some extra cake is not pushing me over budget which is the main thing. 

candygirl

FINSTICKLE , I was always the same, at that time of the month, especially with choc 😮🤣

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

How’re is your February going?  Are you coping with the bad weather, the never-ending Lockdown and the inevitable tightening of belts?  I’ve always found February to be a tougher month, financially, than January.  In January, you run out of cash early because you were paid before Christmas and end up in debt/overdue on payments; February is when those debts have to be paid back.   (Things are much better for us now, but it’s one of my motivations for doing the Grocery Challenge.)

I have a couple of spends to declare from this past week.  The C0-0p had an offer:  spend £15 and get £1.50 off.  Another one of their offers was 50p off their fresh pastries/quiches/pies.. Our local C0-0P is too small to do a proper shop, so taking advantage of the first offer required a bit of planning.  After checking out what they had available meat wise - no YS items - in the end, we decided to buy two large Steak Pies - really good quality - at £3.70 each, a couple of pizzas and a bottle of wine, with the “Date Night Fund” coughing up to pay for the latter items.  The pies got allocated all the discounts, so £5.40 was spent from the Grocery Challenge money.  One pie will be dinner tomorrow night, while the other is now in the freezer.  (Date Night on Saturday was pizza, red wine and three episodes of The Mallorca Files.)

Yesterday, we drove to MrT’s and stocked up on the items we can’t buy in L!dl.  £40.70 spent.  Their 4 tins-chopped-tomatoes-for-£1 offer is back.  They also had a half-price Clubcard offer of 3 packet of Kleenex tissues for £2.50, which is cheaper than we’d normally pay in C0stc0, so I picked up 2 lots.

Throw in the £2 spent on crisps today - so that DH has something to nibble on while he’s watching the Super Bowl tonight and chatting to his mates doing the same, via SKYPE - and the above brings our Grocery Challenge spend for February to £81.86/£142.30, leaving £60.44 for the rest of the month.

We also went to the Butchers’ yesterday, spending £55.70 from the Meat Fund.  Since our meat shopping is all about getting the biggest bang for our buck, I thought I’d share what we bought, what the plans are for it and how many portions we’ll get.  The butcher doesn’t do an itemised bill, so I’m only recording prices where I saw them and can remember them.  Remember, there’s only two of us in this household.

1 large roasting chicken - £7.99 - dinner tonight (we’ll eat the legs), chicken fajitas on Tuesday and chicken risotto on Wednesday.  That’s at least 10 portions, plus stock.  

1kg minced beef - at least 16 portions when padded out with veg, lentils/beans, etc

1 rolled, stuffed, boned breast of lamb 1.2kg - £13.60 - minimum of 4 portions of roast lamb.  The butcher cut it in half for us, so we have two roasts.

8 chicken breasts, average weight 200g each - between 16 to 32 portions, depending on whether I double up in a recipe.   I usually only use one in a stir fry or chicken pasta dish that serves 4.

8 large chicken thighs - 8 portions of chicken tray bake.  

4 pork chops - two will definitely be served as chops, while the other two may get chopped up to make pork-and-beans and a stir-fry.  Either 4 or 10 portions, depending on the outcome.

That’s between 54 and 80 portions of meat-based meals.  As I said, it’s all about getting the biggest bang for our meat-buck.

With the exception of tonight’s roasting chicken, I have just finished shoehorning it all into the freezer.  Everything has been “bagged and tagged”.  I had to do it in stages to maximise space/freeze things in shapes that will stack and fit together, especially since the freezer was pretty full already with lunchboxes, tubs of soup/cooked pulses/homemade ready meals and sauces, not to mention the haggis that threatens to leap out at you... The mince was divided into 4 and carefully stuffed into freezer box to form 4 rectangles.  The chicken breasts and chops were bagged separately and frozen to be as flat as possible.  The chicken thighs were bagged in fours, while the lamb was stood on its end, to freeze upright.  

As you can see, once again, I win at freezer Tetris.

• Pip

Its_time

Hello all!  First shop of the month £2.10/£300.00 my daughter in law did her weekly shop so I just tagged on and bought 3 things, will probably need to tag onto my mums shop on Tuesday which will tide us over for another week or so.  Trying to eat out of the freezer as there is stuff in there that is nearly a year old