October 2021 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

JingsMyBucket said:

@PipneyJane you’re totally right regarding packing away “leftovers” before plating up the meal and giving him extra fillers. Weirdly enough, I always think I’m roasting enough vegetables but we end up eating all of them in one go. I should start doubling up on the vegetable roasting and cooking because it’ll be healthier for us anyway. Regarding portions, we both work from home but it will still be good practice to portion out lunch servings in containers that are easy to grab during the day. Thanks for those nudges, Pip. 

My pleasure.  We've both worked from home since March 2020.  I decided then that I'd just carry on as "normal" and continue to dish up our lunchboxes, zapping them in the microwave at lunchtime.  That way, if one of us does have to visit the office, we're not put out.

I have two shops to declare.  We went toMrT's last night and found that they had a couple of offers on Basmati rice - 10kg for either £12 or £12.50, depending on the brand.  We will need rice shortly, so bought a sack together with a couple of YS items (lemons, a Bol lunch).  £14.62 spent.  Normally, the rice would be bought from the Bulk Fund but, since we had cash leftover from last month, the GC will pay from it.

Today, we did our usual shop in L!dl:  £24.02 spent on onions, carrots, potatoes, cream cheese,  pitta bread, pickled anchovies, butter, maple syrup, a YS gammon joint for £3.49, and 2 sour dough pizzas that we'll have on Thursday. (Thursday will be a horrible day for me, workwise.)   

The above brings our total spend for October to £38.64/£160.80, leaving £122.16 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

Smoosh

£40.25 spent on the month's supply of cat food and litter.

Brings us to £99.92/£200.

Weekly food shop tomorrow. 

Mrs_Cheshire

Hi all, could you put me down for my usual £350 please @elsiepac. 

That's to feed 2 adults and 3 children (12,10 & 6) all meals, drinks, household and toiletries (the children have lunch at school) for the calendar month.  I'm hoping to keep it closer to £250 as it was just over £300 in September but I had to almost completely refill the freezer. 
The meal plan is done based on the freezer contents, so will mostly be fruit, veg, dairy, bread etc needed this month. 
Spends so far include £3.99 on delivery saver and £42.55 on a MR T delivery. 
Community grocery collection tomorrow £7 - hoping for some fruit in there as it's mostly been veg the last few weeks. 

mumof3.12kindebt

Please could I join you. 

I am to spend £80 per week In October that's for 3 kids a cat puppy and 2 adults 

😀

Finstickle

A couple of spends to report here.

£83.90 at Lidl on Friday - usual weekly shop, nothing unusual affecting the price, however they had a problem with their server and neither of my active coupons would work, which included my £10 for spending £200 in the month.  
A very quick and helpful phonecall to customer services and my voucher was extended for another 2 weeks and an additional £1 on my account for the other voucher that didn't work.
No problems, really helpful customer services, definitely worth the 10 minutes on the phone

Popped to Tesco yesterday to get my mum some bits as she was coming back from holiday - £7.90 on bits for her and an additional £13.65 for us - £8 on turkey bacon & £4 on nice ice creams  :-)

Current total £183.95/£480
My mum's bits took me £5.45 over my £100pw target, however I still have my £11 voucher so should recover that

elsiepac

Hey guys!  Welcome to all the new joiners! 

Budgets updated to here

MissRikkiC

joedenise said:

First spend of October for a Magic Bag from Morries for £3.09, so a nice low start.  £246.91 left.

Hi Joedenise - are these available to all rather than just for purchasing for the food banks then?

joedenise

MissRikkiC said:

joedenise said:

First spend of October for a Magic Bag from Morries for £3.09, so a nice low start.  £246.91 left.

Hi Joedenise - are these available to all rather than just for purchasing for the food banks then?

Nothing to do with the food bank bags.  These are available via the Too Good To Go app.  You need to download the app and then you have to check each day - usually 15 minutes after that day's bags have been collected.  For example my local Morrisons are collect from 4-6pm and the new bags go on at 6.15pm.  If there are any available to need to Reserve it to collect the next day and then pay for it by card.  You then receive an email with a reference number to show at the Customer Services desk.

Hope I've explained that OK.

MissRikkiC

Weve spent a total of £134/250 however that included bulk buy toilet roll and washing powder, plus a few bits

Asa was the bulk items - around £35
Total of approx £13 at M0rrisons which was mostly yellow sticker meat - Turkey steaks, meatballs, about 8 packets of various  'good' sandwich meat pus a load of sausages and indian snacks for the freezer
Tecso £38 which was lot of what we couldnt get at Lidlll plus beer however looking now seems a lot!
£48 Lidlllll - normal weekly stuff 

We used Olio a little over the weekend but didnt get tat much

I have a meal plan for this week:

Brinjal Bjaji Rice and indian snacks
Chicken mushroom pie - left over chicken, homemade pastry 
Turkey Meatballs with Spaghetti
Sausage pasta bake or sausage and bean stew
Pesto and Mushroom Chicken/Turkey bake with Sweet potatoes

We are in Liverpool for the day saturday for our anniversary so that will be a dinner out but probably need to plan sunday too!

enkeltliv

Please can I join and be put down for £360 for the month? Thanks.

This doesn't include my husband's lunches but as I get better at this I am hoping he will be able to take meals from home that are within budget.

I have a vegetable soup thickened with pearl barley and red lentils with home made bread buns for our meal this evening. My husband will take left overs for tomorrow's work meal and my teenagers will use the buns for sandwiches.