October 2021 Grocery Challenge

joedenise

Forgot about Tesco's dark cherries - I buy those regularly as they are DH's favourite!  Rather than mixed berries I buy the Breakfast Topper from Tesco which contains small pieces of strawberry, mango, pineapple and peach.  These are lovely as a porridge topping, in overnight oats and also just defrosted to eat with some yoghurt.

Really don't like any of the mixed berries - I've tried them from most of the SMs and they are all very heavy on the red and black currants which like @MandM90 says tend to be bitter.

Suffolk_lass

I don't mind the frozen mixed berries such as Morries Wonky (£2.75 /kilo) and if there are too many red and black currants I add a tiny bit of honey. We also freeze our own raspberries (gooseberries, blackcurrants, plums and apples) and I make jumbleberry jam (Jingleberry at Christmas) to use this when I need some freezer space - a tea spoonful of hm jam mixed with frozen berries is sublime on natural (Greek Style) yogurt.

Or cordial - my blackcurrant cordial is a low-boil low sugar jelly mix and is fantastic stirred through plain yogurt (and best of all, it does not explode over my shirt when I take the top off, like ready made blackcurrant yogurt!)

JingsMyBucket

Spends to declare. Oddly enough, OH kicked off the shopping yesterday instead of me. He spent £2.00 yesterday on toothpaste and 2 packets of ginger nuts. He then unbeknownst to me bought a kilo of wild boar and some streaky bacon for £32.85 from a wild meat company. That’ll arrive on Wednesday. He bought the boar because he wants to make me his signature wild boar stew from his pre-vegetarian days. I * told * y’all he’s gone back to eating meat heavily. 🤷‍♀️  What slightly bugged me is that the shipping was £7.95 of that total. If I’d known he was going to buy that stuff I would’ve added on more goods like boar sausage, etc to make it worth the shipping cost. Oh well. It’ll taste delicious nonetheless. 

We got a £20 veg box on the 28 of September so we’re pretty stocked up on veg with lots of potatoes and carrots to use up. Rough cooking plan for the week:

— boar stew (we’ll need to buy an orange for this). We have half a bottle of dodgy red wine in the fridge and will glug a bunch of it in there. 

— cheesy cauliflower and potato soup. We’re having a couple cousins over for dinner on Thursday and are serving this. That’ll use up the cauli and lots of potatoes. I might get some hors d’œuvres from M & S to accompany. 

— apple crumble for the cousins dinner dessert. We got cooking apples in the veg box and need to use them up. We also have oats for the crumble topping but need brown sugar. I’ll buy either cream or ice cream depending on what they fancy. 

— lamb neck stew using the pieces in the freezer. This will use up the rest of the dodgy red wine. I need celery to make stock with a giant lamb bone beforehand though. 

— couscous veg salad

Spent so far: £34.85; £35.15/£70 remaining for the week. 

Just to keep notes, next week we’ll buy: yoghurt, strawberries, an orange, celery, (ice) cream, brown sugar, and some appetizers. That should be fine within £35!

PipneyJane

PipneyJane said:

Thanks for the new thread, @elsiepac.  Please put me down for 

£140

For October.   That’s for two adults for all groceries, not just food.  It excludes meat bought at the Butcher’s Shop - separate budget - but if we do go there, I’ll mention it.  Our month runs from 1st October to 31st.

Apologies in advance but our October budget may change because we will have money left over from September.  I don’t know how much yet.  (We’re away this week on holiday, and there’s £70-ish left in the GC purse.)

- Pip

Well, I’ve finally tallied up September and we have £20.80 left in the GC purse to roll forward to October.  Therefore, @elsiepac.            

Please change my October budget to £160.80.  Thank you.

We did manage a trip to the Butcher’s last weekend.  £57.58 spent on a large roasting chicken, 8 chicken thighs, 4 lamb shanks and a partially boned shoulder of lamb.  Our butcher doesn’t give itemised bills but the large chicken was about £9 and the lamb shoulder, £20.  (We have plenty of minced beef and some stewing steak in the freezer, so didn’t buy those.).

The roasting chicken stretched to 3 meals.  I shoved it into the slow cooker, the moment we got it home, so that we could have “self-carving chicken” when we got back from the football that evening.  (2 portions, served with roast potatoes and roast sweet potatoes, pre-prepped.). On the Monday, I made Chicken Risotto (4 portions) and then, on Thursday, I made a chicken pasta dish (6 portions).

- Pip


ETA:  interesting to hear about how people use/abuse their MrT’s credit card.  I use mine for virtually all day-to-day spending in order to amass points, but stick to cash for the butcher and the Grocery Challenge. (Pre-pandemic, most of my points came from petrol purchases at MrT’s petrol stations.  You get 1 point per £1.)  My big budgeting “secret” is to pay it off immediately, each time I make a purchase.  That way, I don’t run a balance and I don’t spend more than I have.

PipneyJane

@JingsMyBucket - I feel your pain.  My husband could eat for England.  I know that whatever I cook, the odds are he’ll go back for seconds.  Most of the meals I cook serve at least 4 portions.  Since I plate up all our meals - and we take leftovers to work for lunch - I have two tactics:

1. Give him extra filler.  (Rice, bulgar wheat, potatoes, veg, whatever.)  He normally gets twice what I get of those.
2. Dish up our lunch boxes at the same time as plating up our meals.  If I don’t, he’ll eat an entire third portion as seconds, so there won’t be enough for two lunches for work.  If there is anything left and there isn’t enough to make another lunchbox, I’ll add it to his plate or let him have it as seconds.

Really, it’s all down to portion control.  Compared to many of our friends, we didn’t put on masses of weight during Lockdown.  (We also went for a post-work walk every night, which probably helped.)

HTH,

Pip

ETA:  I also utilise tactic 2 when I bake or there wouldn’t be enough cake left for lunchboxes.  This is particularly true when I make flapjack.  (We’ve got 10 of the small 2x3x1 inch Lock-n-Lock style boxes.)

JingsMyBucket

@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. 

jozbo

I struggle too with leftovers being eaten and do the same with additional cheap carbs , and portioning off the leftovers first. 

Spend on A$da online to declare, £39.17 on bits I couldn’t get at l1dl, and a big stock up of their excellent gluten free range. Used a few quid from a gift card. We invested in a massive chest freezer for the garage last year so will be freezing a lot of the GF bread.
ive also spent nearly the same amount on frozen high quality meat for Christmas dinner and other festive meals. Have family over and wanted to get good gammon to make ham, large organic chicken, etc. Those will also be going into the freezer.

Herbyme

This is my first month Back on the GC and I’m remembering things…
DH buys random things and doesn’t tell me what or how much. He puts things on the ‘wrong’ cards. Our groceries bank account doesn’t tell you what’s pending, only that some money is pending. DH eats two portions and doesn’t accept that other portions are destined for other uses/meals…
and we’re away this week so I’ve bought some food for the adult DS,s and some food for us (Mr S delivery) which will add up to more than usual. 

And yes I too think weekly targets will give me more focus too, rather than spending 90% of the budget in the first two weeks and finding I haven’t actually bought nearly everything I need after all 🙄
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?

EriSteadyGo

Spent £51.71 this week so slightly over my budget of £50 for two adults. I don’t include pet food in my budget because we budget for it separately. 

Spent £23.44 on an A1di click and collect order (again, not including the £4.99 pick up fee because I take that out of my spending money as it’s my time it saves - well worth it in my opinion and it’s helped me to avoid the impulse buys of the middle aisle). This covered fruit and veg for the week, milk, big tub of peanut butter and multipack bags of crisps for snacks. 

Popped into my independent Post Office, spent £4.18 on curry powder and a big jar of pickled gherkins. 

Fishmonger £5.85 for two salmon fillets. 

Butcher total of £18.24 for a box of eggs, pack of 17 slices of unsmoked back bacon (reduced from £4.99 to £3.99 - about 24p a slice), half a kilo of chicken hearts (about £2.25) and a piece of topside beef that I’ve stashed in the freezer for a roast in a couple of weeks (just over £9). Some of this stuff is for this week, some is stashed in the chest freezer. Our meal plan for the week is thus:

Saturday: Goat curry with rice.

Sunday: roast stuffed breast of lamb, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot. 

Monday: Salmon, chips and veg

Tuesday: shepherds pie with green beans (made with leftover stuffed breast of lamb - there will be enough of it leftover for two shepherds pies so I will freeze half the leftover meat for another week).

Wednesday: chicken legs with veg. (Our butcher has a deal of £7.99 for 15 chicken legs - I bought 30 about 4 months ago for £15.98 and froze them in pairs).

Thursday: venison and bacon stew with mushrooms and homemade dumplings (got a piece of venison for 99p a couple of weeks back, it’s not huge but with some bacon bits as well, it will make a beautiful stew). 

We are so lucky to have such an awesome butcher close by. 

jozbo

Carolinerunner I have a veg and fruit box delivery, I do feel it is a bit of an indulgence and may cancel in the next month or two. Mainly because over winter we tend to get mainly swede etc as they try and focus on U.K. veg , which is great of course but can be dull . The quality is great and I really enjoy the variety (don’t get this at L1dl) but will cut it out if I feel we need to financially. At present it’s about 1/4 of our monthly food bill.