October 2021 Grocery Challenge

jozbo

If you’re using things like strawberries, blueberries or raspberries I find frozen really good and much cheaper. It’s no bother to put some aside to defrost or a quick blast in the microwave (add water to avoid lightning!!) 

Blackcats

First spend today - £43 at As*a but this includes the premium, gourmet, high end, luxury cat food demanded by my 2 former rescue cats.  The humans got milk, fresh fruit and veg, chocolate, bread, mozzarella for home made pizza.  Hoping that using store cupboard and freezer supplies will get us through to next week.  Luckily I've got wine in stock that should last until the end of month if only drinking on Friday and Saturday.  

£43/£320. Remaining £277

leftatthetrafficlights

jozbo said:

If you’re using things like strawberries, blueberries or raspberries I find frozen really good and much cheaper. It’s no bother to put some aside to defrost or a quick blast in the microwave (add water to avoid lightning!!) 

Thanks @jozbo - I am just using them for smoothies and have a high powered blender so should be able to chuck them in frozen 😉 I'll definitely give it a go! 😊

joedenise

I'm another who uses quite a lot of frozen fruit @leftatthetrafficlights.  I make overnight oats and frozen fruit is much better than fresh for that.

leftatthetrafficlights

Thanks @joedenise! I'll report back on whether it works for me 😉

diminua

Could I join please?

For 200 a calendar month.

That’s just for me but will include anything bought as part of a grocery shop, like toiletries, and also takeaway coffees or sandwiches (hoping not to fall back into those bad habits now I’m back in the office one day a week) and drinks out. I’m isolating right now (until tomorrow midnight) so have started the month spending £48.88 today on a Sainsberry delivery which included a bottle of wine, a double pack of coffee and a tub of margarine you could sink a ship with, but also practical things like fish and eggs and milk.

Purple_kitten

Can you put me down for £250, thats for 2 of us, and animal bits and bobs. it might include some festive bits. There hasn't been any shopping just yet. It was useful to do last months spend to see exactly what we were spending, it seemed to be a lot on stock.

becky170

Can I be put down for £500 for this calendar month. This is for 2 adults and 2 young kids. Usually spend more than this so will be a challenge. Aim is to update you all weekly to keep on track. I do online shopping which helps me not buy too many impulse buys. I'm going to dig out my cheap eats cook book to help with my meal planning for next week. Today on the menu we have meatloaf Will also look at the recipes on the front page for inspiration! Thanks

MandM90

Another vote for frozen fruit! My favourite are dark cherries from Tesco. We make a smoothie with frozen cherries, bananas, pure cocoa powder, plant milk and some flax seeds. Super healthy and the nearest you'll get to a black forest gateau we also microwave a bowl if we are all having porridge as a topping.

I've found the mixed cheap berries vary a lot between supermarkets though, some are very heavy on redcurrants which can be a bit bitter for our uses (though lovely in a crumble).

JingsMyBucket

Good morning all and welcome to the new folks! Thank you again to @elsiepac for running this thread every month and the super helpful regulars who keep it going as well. 

This month I think I’m going to try something new as I’m sick and tired of blowing the budget each month. I think switching to a weekly tally may help keep me focused because that’s how my brain works. Monthly seems like it’s too loose in terms of boundaries and weekly may help give me guardrails. 

I’m going to aim for £70/week, where in 4.5 week October that’ll come to £315 for 2 adults. It feels ridiculous to spend more than that. Eventually I’d like to get it down to £250 but I’d like to step down each month. 

Alright, time to confess our bad habits. We tend to buy a lot of convenience food because we’re bored or can’t be bothered. That may be due to us not having a handle on our kitchen organization yet after moving. Also, I love trying new foods so I’m always buying something new like a new cheese or meat to try. But it’s mostly convenience food. 

Mr. Jings used to be solidly vegetarian but now he’s an omnivore with penchant for rifling through packets of ham. 🙄 Those are getting pretty expensive and thinking of shifting to buying and cooking a ham every couple of weeks because it’ll be cheaper.  Also let’s say I cook 5 chicken thighs. That used to last me 4 meals/servings. Sigh. Not so with Mr. Jings eating now. So now I’m going through more meat on a regular basis. 

We go through a lot of yoghurt as well but I won’t begrudge OH that. He does tend to be an easy eater though and will just default to yoghurt instead of making a proper meal. I also tend to mainline strawberries and those can get pricy but it’s better than me eating sugary cakes so I won’t give them up. 

Anyway, there a few strategies we can employ along with the weekly budget. We’ve started buying a £20 veg box from a local provider and gives lots of good produce. That’ll be every 10 days with top ups in between. We also need to do a freezer and pantry audit, likely this weekend. There’s so much there that I think we’ll be fine with minimal shopping the next couple weeks. That said, I have a few spends to declare in a separate post because this post is way too long already!