May 2021 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

Aaargh, aargh, aargh - £70.33 spent today between the butchers, the bakery and the supermarket. There'll be more spent tomorrow on fish, cheese, fruit & veg. Not happy, it'll be a miracle if I don't go a fair way over target this month; not helped by everyone deciding to come & celebrate the semi-lifting of lockdown in our garden next week! (Though it will be lovely not to have to say sorry, or we'll be over the six/two households.) So I had to buy an extra-big joint for the Sunday roast - there'll be 6 of us for that anyway - so I can make several big left-overs dishes to entertain the troops during the week.

Maybe it was a mistake to try for £100 per person p.c.m. in a 5-week month, when half the time there's 6 of us anyway, and sometimes 8?! Lesson learned... I'm probably looking at seeing how much I overspend by.

pamsdish

Sallyp2 said:

BTW anyone watch Martin Lewis extreme savers last night? Loved the grocery challenge, the lady couldn’t buy anything until she had used up her fridge freezer and stores. Perhaps I will take inspiration from this 😏

I am in and aiming for end of the month, once fresh veg is gone will use the frozen stuff that never seems to get used, I tend to think of it as fall back stock.

GSDMum

Pleased I made it to Friday without venturing to a shop. We did run out of fresh milk though with about 200mls having to be thrown away due to it curdling in a coffee, funnily it didn't smell 'off' though. I've got a backup of cartons containing UHT milk for such times, keeping me from running to the shops and temptation. 

Today's market day! £26.30 was spent on fruit and veg; £4.40 of that was on a kilo of cherries - couldn't resist! It's a real treat, and no doubt we'll be munching away on them while watching the telly tonight, another treat was English strawberries, the 1st of the season, they were just over £1 a punnet!  Three pounds of new Jersey potatoes made today's trip a bit expensive.... but it'll be all worth it! 

In Aldo a further £15.20 was spent on dairy; milk, cheese, butter, and eggs. Was pleasantly surprised to see their filtered milk was only £1.15 for 2 litres, some 50p cheaper than other supermarket brands. I normally buy 2 x 2 litres of 'normal' fresh milk, and 2 litre of filtered, using the filtered last. 

I've no plans to visit a shop till 26th May, some 12 days away, despite me forgetting to pickup some onions. I've got one onion left, and that will just have to stretch 

We're off cruising on Monday and so I'll not be worrying about shops. Nothing glamorous.... just us taking our narrowboat on a trip to Rugby  Boat's now fully provisioned! 

PipneyJane

GSDMum said:

We off cruising on Monday and so I'll not be worrying about shops. Nothing glamorous.... just us taking our narrowboat on a trip to Rugby  Boat's now fully provisioned! 

I love cruising canals on a narrow boat.  Do tell us more, @GSDMum!  Have a lovely time.

It’s been one of those days where I’ve ended up feeling quite out of sorts.  No idea why.  At least I don’t have to work out what to have for dinner tonight.  DH stopped at L!dl on his way home from dropping his car off to be serviced this morning.  £9.15 spent, including £6.98 on two packets of YS marinated steak.  One is now in the freezer; the other will be dinner, served with some roasted sweet potatoes and some steamed broccoli.

The above brings our total spend for May to £83.95/£142.00, leaving £58.05 for the remainder of the month.

Food-wise for the weekend, my big plan is to defrost and hack-up quarter the chicken we bought in the C0-0p the other week.  It’ll then become part of a tray bake on Sunday.  Tomorrow, we’ve got tickets to attend the FA Cup Final in the late afternoon, so lunch will have to be something relatively substantial, while dinner will be takeaway pizza ordered/collected on the way home.  For lunch, I was thinking of just having our usual work-day lunchboxes of defrosted leftovers but DH - aka “He Of The Hollow Legs” - is bound to declare that he’s hungry again within a couple of hours.  We can’t take food into Wembley, although I’ll try to smuggle in a ziplock bag of dried pineapple.  (Food never used to be a problem but they were much more strict last time I was there, in 2019.)

- Pip

Tightpants24

£83 for tomorrow's click and collect    But I didn't do any midweek top up so that's something.  Still on budget so far at £217 / £380   

becky170

My first grocery challenge isn't off to the greatest of starts. I've so far managed to spend £373.90 of our £500 budget. I had an shopping delivery last night so food wise we're ok for another week but I've probably got another two weekly shops to get. We've got stuff in the freezer which needs using up so I think it's time to start raiding the freezer and store cupboards 

pamsdish

Had to go Aldi for hot dog sausages to secrete the dogs medication in, ended up topping up on fresh veg eggs and butter, £13.47, which includes the hot dogs as I don`t mind them either.

ancientmum

Happy Saturday everyone looks like a wet weekend ahead here, I hope you all have sunshine in your hearts.
Anyway, I treated myself to some honey coated cashews from Grope Tree, not cheap but a lovely snack that will last a few weeks.  So with that and some YS salad and bread along with the usual milk and fruit the total spend was £21.52. 
I'm going to try for a Lidi F&V Box next week  will let you know how I get on.

Money_Choices

Hi
I’ve spent £42.35, divided between local shop £8.00 and A$da £34.35. This makes my total £92.04/£100. This spending was done on 13 and 14 May. I am so close to going over my budget. Have meal planned for next week.

Money Choices

Sallyp2

Money_Choices said:

Hi
I’ve spent £42.35, divided between local shop £8.00 and A$da £34.35. This makes my total £92.04/£100. This spending was done on 13 and 14 May. I am so close to going over my budget. Have meal planned for next week.

Money Choices

It is getting increasingly hard to stick to food budgets. I feel some supermarkets have had a price hike. JS feels more expensive all of a sudden. Think it might be worth splitting shopping list according to who is the cheapest. Isn’t there a website that you can check SM item prices on?