August 2021 Grocery Challenge

goldfinches

I bought hodmedod's tinned fava beans, £1.49, and some organic tinned aduki beans, £1.19, from the wholefood co-operative on my way past which brings my total to £16.74/£124 with an average daily spend of £5.58. Apart from that I have managed to avoid the supermarket entirely today which I'm counting as a win.

Mrs_Cheshire

goldfinches said:

Hi all and welcome to all newcomers.

@Mrs_Cheshire - yes I am meal planning to try to eat down the contents of the fridge, freezer and larder but with just me it's rather slow going. I used the thyme in a strawberry, feta and puff pastry tart that I posted a photo of in the "what are you making for dinner" thread if you're interested and plan to use the ginger, limes, mangos and pineapple for a hot sauce recipe and have added the coriander to several pittas with home made hummus.

I've a small success to report in that I nipped into my local M*rks a half an hour before they closed to buy milk and found they'd put out a lot of catering 4pt bottles all reduced so I bought five, the maximum I could carry, and have stashed four in the freezer. I'm hoping that will reduce my excuses for not avoiding temptation. 

I spent £3.29 so my new total is £14.06/£124 with an average daily spend of £7.03.

Love the sound of the tart. Glad you could use all the cheap ingredients. Will have to try coriander with hummus. 

My month starts today - have meal planned our main meals based around our activities this month with a view of using up the contents of the freezer. I'm going to have to make changes going forward as I'll be going back to work soon, hopefully by early Nov, so need to start batch cooking, making slow cooker dump bags etc to make meal times easier. 
Hoping that as the main bit of the meal is already in the house and we have loads of pasta, rice, tins etc our spends should be relatively low this month. 

boultdj

And I'm off with a £33.52 spend at Li&l.

nannygladys

No spends for me today and no cleaning either, I have hurt my back unplugging the tv last night. It still hurts today but I'm taking pain killers and taking it easy so I hope it's OK tomorrow when I have to take dgd to the orthodontist. I will probably need a couple of bits tomorrow, I will have to see.
Nannyg

PipneyJane

And.... We’re off!  £1.25 spent at the local “Discount Shop” on a set of 3 funnels, bought because I noticed that the funnel which I use to refill pump-action bottles was breaking down.  (I use them for hand-soap, shampoo, hair conditioner and dishwashing liquid.). The last one survived at least 10 years of regular use, so hopefully these will too.  There’s at least 2 in the set that I can use for this task.

This brings my total to £1.25/£140, leaving £138.75 for the rest of August.

Happy Sunday everyone!

- Pip


PS:  I thought I had a really good idea about the contents of my store cupboard but, when I was rearranging the over-flow shelves this afternoon, I discovered that I had 2x2kg packages of dried kidney beans, dried chickpeas and split red lentils.   Well, at least I won’t need to buy any for a while.

K9sandFelines

@elsiepac Please put me down for £250 this month and thanks for running the thread. 

goldfinches

@Mrs_Cheshire - I prefer to make hummus with freshly squeezed lemon juice and a preserved lemon rather than oil and find the coriander goes well with those flavours.
@PipneyJane - I can vouch for this delightfully simple and tasty way to use red lentils Red lentil & sweet potato pâté recipe | BBC Good Food

I bought enough yoghurt for 10 breakfasts at M*rks for £3.20 today and also bought a titchy bottle of wine for salad dressings, frozen veggie sausages and an indulgent punnet of cherries which were price matched with Aldi in Sainsby's for £5.64 which brings my new total to £25.58/£124 and my average daily spend to £6.39. 

Suffolk_lass

I haven't spent anything yet this month but we run an annual budget. Our spend total to the end of July is now at 53.7% of the £3000 or £1,611.12, with £415.56 of that on store-cupboard and frozen or toiletries waiting to be deployed.

We have a vegetable plot in the garden and are currently in courgette-a-geddon - a further three trying to be marrows when I went out and picked in the rain last night. They are all being chopped and put in the freezer this morning as they are in bags for a batch of courgette soup that will happen in the autumn to keep costs down when the produce stops. All our onions and potatoes are dug and beans and salads in full flow too so a fair bit of make do and last another day recipes are being deployed. I do need fruit and want (but probably don't need) biscuits, crackers and bread. We usually bake bread but we are a bit too busy this week.

Good luck to all !

LunaCatty

Well this started badly! I completely forgot I'd booked a T*sco slot a few weeks back for today. Only remembered this morning when I saw £49.52 leave our account  I'd just thrown in a "usual" shop to hold the basket/slot (intending to go on nearer the time to add what we needed or cancel the slot) so have ended up with lots of things we already have and more frustratingly lots of things we are swamped with growing wise at the moment. Plus freezer stuff which isn't going to fit into our overfull freezer! It could be worse though, in the past I've been to know to slot book using just bottles of wine to book it fast lol  Going to check if my neighbour can make use of some of it and the rest I will preserve/store and try to rearrange freezer to fit in. I also just logged T*sco to make sure no other slots booked ahead.

We've now had to re-jig our budget for the month to take this into account. Instead of £15p/w (so £75 for the month) we've set it at £150 for the whole month as my husband also realised despite lots of stuff in the store cupboard that we are nearly out of most of our g/f flours so I'm going to need to do a Shipton Mill shop this month too.

Can we be swapped to £150 for the month please? Thanks 

pamsdish

£1.94 on a few veggies in Aldi, will add to signature when I get my third laptop tomorrow, first was a chrome book,didn’t like it, second was a chuwii? Not even powerful enough to transmit to my Bluetooth speaker, so bit the bullet and paid more than I wanted to,