October 2021 Grocery Challenge

weenancyinAmerica

Do the poor in England have greater access to cell phones than here in America? I still don't understand why you would need a phone with an app to get free food. I don't understand why stores are doing everything with the phone here in America either. It seems like you have to be rich to shop at some stores now. Without an app, you can't even do the "free pickup service" at some stores. I can't afford a cell phone and I feel very left out now.

nannygladys

No money spent and my new week starts Wednesday, so still on track. Signature still correct. Tomorrow I am looking after dgs so I can't see me spending tomorrow but you never know. Not sure what my meal plan will be, but tomorrow is sorted. I tend to only plan a couple meals as I have no spare freezer space at the moment, so if I make a casserole I will eat it until it's finished. Tomorrow I will be having sandwiches for lunch and hm soup for tea as that's already made. 
Nannyg

Smoosh

Weekly shop done. £23.26 in aldi on peanut butter, lemon curd, Quorn nuggets, one pot ready meal, pasta sauce, bubble bath, apple juice, 8 pints of milk, 2 litres fizzy drink, custard, toothpaste, food bags, spaghetti, tortilla wraps, cotton pads, corn on the cob, 3 bananas, pastrami, cooked chicken, raspberries and 4 croissants.

Popped in coop for coconut milk as they were out in aldi and spent £2.38 on the coconut milk and 2 YS sandwiches.

Meal plan for the week as follows:
1. Peanut butter curry with leftover Quorn roast, carrots, broccoli, pepper and onion served with rice. 
2. Veggie pizza (YS) with added pancetta for OH.
3. Quorn cottage pie. 
4. Spaghetti with veggie sausages. 
5. Halloumi fries (YS), corn on the cob, Quorn chicken nuggets for me, buffalo chicken (YS) for OH.
6. At my parents for dinner. 
7. Carvery with my parents. 

Breakfasts will be raisin brioche, chocolate waffles, porridge or croissants.

OH will have the ready meal or chicken or pastrami wraps for lunch. I'll have vegan sausage rolls (YS), houmous sandwiches or vegetable rice.

Snacks are fruit, crisps or biscuits. 

£125.56/£200.

We are all stocked up for pet food with 2 more weekly shops to do, so looking on track at the moment. 

JingsMyBucket

Evening all. After a couple of NSDs I went out to several shops today. 

£15.32 at our local halal shop stocking up on couscous, basmati rice, ramen, and various spices (whole cloves, ground cloves, cinnamon, marjoram and turmeric). Oh and a head of garlic. I want to try his garlic to see if I should switch to his supply. He already has great lamb and next time I'll likely buy some chicken leg quarters from him. I was also looking for brown sugar there but he said he was out. 

Next was a stop at Iceland to get a few items. £4.00 spent on streaky bacon, flour, and Demerara sugar. I keep mistaking Demerara for brown sugar. I'll have to buy brown at Tesco later this week. It's for the apple crumble I'm making on Thursday. 

Lastly, I stopped at M & S for strawberries, apples, greek yoghurt and milk. I picked up some 45p YS cheese sauce and a 36p YS bread loaf. £7.61 spent. I also meant to get double cream and ice cream but decided to wait until later in the week or even just buy it at Tesco. 

Total Today: £26.93


Spent so far: £61.78; £8.22/£70 remaining for the week. 

Doing this weekly total is really making me think about what I supposedly really need at any given point in time. After the first two stops I calculated what I had left and was shocked to see only roughly £16.00 so made myself be extra careful in M & S and not pick up YS items for the heck of it or out of boredom. I also talked myself out of buying both cream and ice cream for our guests to have on the apple crumble on Thursday. There's really no need to get both so it'll just be vanilla ice cream later this week.

With only £8.22 left to spend until Thursday night, I'll keep my hands in my pockets and just take them out for a leek, ice cream, and celery at Tesco on Wednesday. Thursday morning I'll call in a veg box order to be delivered on Friday morning and will pay them when it arrives at the door so that will go into next week's budget. Lamb neck stew was made yesterday and we polished off the leftovers this afternoon for lunch. The couscous salad is ready to go and I also pulled out a whole chicken from the freezer to cook Wednesday night and to free up space for the ice cream. I'm so glad to be using up resources instead of overbuying right now.  

Doom_and_Gloom

carolinerunner said:

btw I notice quite a few people buy veg boxes, I can see the benefits but I’ve always assumed they’re expensive, but maybe they’re not?

A&C, not a veg box but odds and ends I knew we would need; total £19.35

Red onions - 3/ 500g
Spinach - 1 bag/ 300g
Salad mix - 1 bag/ 100g
Carrots - 15/ 1kg
Red grapes - 1 punnet/ 400g
Chestnut mushrooms - 1 punnet/ 200g
White onions - 14/ 1kg
Plum tomatoes - 6/500g


This is a medium fruit and vegetable box from Oddbox £15.99 plus strawberries (£2.79) and blueberries (£2.79) as add ons for a total of £21.57


Parsnips - 6/ 940g
Potatoes - 3/ 1,250g
Broccoli - 1 head/ 612g
Peppers - 3/ 300g
Courgettes - 2/ 468g
Beef tomatoes - 2/ 438g
Rocket - 156g
Fennel - 516g
Apples - 6/ 656g
Clementines - 5/ 842g
Pineapple - 1,110g
Pomegranate - 2/ 368g
Blueberries - 1 punnet/ 256g
Strawberries - 1 punnet/ 426g

Either way I think it is good value.

A&C has very good organic produce which tastes better (did the taste test with carrots for example in the past with OH and he hands down preferred the ones from A&C!). 

The O~box really has quality produce. I usually shop at Mr S myself (supermarket wise) and it usually prices similar including delivery and the quality is more often better meaning the produce lasts longer. That means less waste and more cost effective. Although not organic (think sometimes some items may be but usually not) the produce spends less time just hanging around so tastes better and is a big reason why it lasts longer than supermarket produce.
Also this company saves food that would have been wasted. 
So my medium fruit and vegetable box by their calculations 
1. Saved 448 litres of water from being wasted - what the average person drinks in 7 months. *
2. Prevented 8kg of CO2e from waste - enough to power the average home for 17 hours. *
Not to mention the produce is eaten!
Food waste is an important issue. For more information look up #WipeOutWasteland (no I don't work for them I am just passionate about this issue) 


We haven't done the challenge for a while. My disability has been really bad and this site wasn't exactly a priority to me during that time (not helped by the format the site took after the change, nope I'm still not used to it and don't like it. I'm not suprised some of the older posters gave up and said goodbye as I'm only 32 and am still struggling with it!) .
Hopefully I'll be fine to do this the whole month. 
Sorry for the long post before my challenge start. 


Thank you for those that do this thread challenge. You are amazing. 
Can you put us up for £240 for October please. 
This is for 2 adults (omni husband and vegan me) for all food, drink, toiletries and cleaning items (sans alcohol and special occasion foods) as well as a chinchilla items (food, hay, treats, sand etc) . 

A&C delivery (bought other items such as 'who gives a cr@' toilet roll, eggs for OH etc) , O~box delivery and a small Mr S shop came to a total of £63.43.

£63.43/£240
£176.57 left. 

*edit - just realised the information on the box I got is for a large vegetable box and not a medium fruit and vegetable box, hand to head moment.
On their website it says medium fruit and veg - rescue 8 varieties of vegetables and 4 types of fruit surplus from being wasted, and save 6kg of CO2e and 1,328 litres of water.

MandM90

@weenancyinAmerica - phones and their plans are significantly cheaper here. They will still be out of reach for some, of course, but basic smart phones aren’t too bad and you can get a call/text/data plan for as little as £8/month once you have the phone. Some people buy their phones secondhand. Ours were ~£160 each for all bells and whistles we need (RealMe 6) then we pay about £10/month which is ample data. If it only lasts 2 years my phone will have cost me £16 a month and could meet all my internet needs if I didn’t work from home. Obviously my privilege allowed me to buy the phone upfront but I don’t think the ones where you pay off the phone as you go are outrageously marked up either.

Well done everyone! I don’t want to wish my life away but I’m looking forward to 4 week (shopping wise, anyway) November!!

Herbyme

@Doom_and_Gloom ty for the info about veg boxes. I can see the many benefits! What is O box?

JingsMyBucket

@carolinerunner that's an Oddbox https://www.oddbox.co.uk. I don't think they deliver to Scotland though. I've tried several different post codes before and they all come up nada. 

enkeltliv

weenancyinAmerica said:

Do the poor in England have greater access to cell phones than here in America? I still don't understand why you would need a phone with an app to get free food. I don't understand why stores are doing everything with the phone here in America either. It seems like you have to be rich to shop at some stores now. Without an app, you can't even do the "free pickup service" at some stores. I can't afford a cell phone and I feel very left out now.

I pay £7.50 a month for my mobile phone. Within that is some free data, free calls and free text messasges. I didn't have to pay for the handset either. It isn't fancy, just a basic Motorola phone but it's a smartphone all the same. It's with a supermarket chain - Tesco. How does that compare to America @weenancyinAmerica

I'm Interested in the O-box info too.

We have torrential rain so I won't be out shopping for groceries today. I need bread so I will be making a bread mix offering.

*zippy*

I did my first proper shop of the challenge and spent £67, more than I would have liked, but I had gone through all the food cupboards so there were things I bought as I found things out of date or running low. Will try and have a cheap week now

Total spend so far £81/250