December 2021 Grocery Challenge

Its_time

Hey! Any chance I can join in?  I think this thread will help me keep on track.  Thank you for running it.

Budget of £253.05 for December

Thank you

pamsdish

£21.80 In A1d1

Herbyme

Its_time said:

Hey! Any chance I can join in?  I think this thread will help me keep on track.  Thank you for running it.

Budget of £253.05 for December

Thank you

Welcome @Its_time, it definitely helps me keep on track, you’re in the right place 🙂

Suffolk_lass

dragoneye454 said:

Please can you put me down for £80 for December?

Its my first month on here but the freezers are crammed and we have gousto credit for the rest of this month so that is a massive help.

First shop 3rd December was £16.58
This included peanut butter, yogurt, squash, ketchup, veggie sausages, potatoes, onions, crisps, mushrooms and bread.

£16.58/£80

@dragoneye454 you are very welcome - there are also a group of us who reverse meal plan on another thread, if you want to record how you are using up your stash - lots of good tips and friendly knowledgeable people on both threads

ancientmum

Good to see you back elsiepac.
   Please put me down for £70 again this month.  It could go either way as I have plenty of stores and won't be catering Christmas  but there is always the unexpected.  I'm going to do some Christmas baking to contribute to the family table  and have offered to buy some meat but that can come out of the Christmas fund.

PipneyJane

Welcome @dragoneye454 and @Its_time.  There's lots of useful posts at the start of this thread which you might find helpful/inspiring, as well as lots of yummy recipes.

I have two shops to declare from today. Went to the cashpoint at our local Sainsbugs to take out this month's GC money and popped in to buy a head of broccoli.  Bought the largest I could find, spending 66p.  They're the only place I know that sell broccoli that isn't wrapped in plastic, something I only discovered last month.  (Even if cling film were readily recycled - which it isn't - I'd rather not buy veg that was sweating in plastic.)

Then I headed to L!dl, in order to use up the £2-off voucher we earned in November.  £19.39 spent.  Bought two "family packs" of red peppers, a large box of mushrooms, two YS packets of pre-prepared mussels in white wine sauce, a YS joint of beef, 3 chorizo sausages, a kilo of sweet potatoes, 4 tins of baked beans,15 free-range eggs, 3 packets of muffins and a box of 12 minced pies.   Not a big or well- balanced shop, but we still have a lot of veg left from our last shop in November, where we doubled up on stuff in order get over the £100 threshold for the £2-off voucher.

The above spend brings our total for December to £20.09/£160.90 leaving £140.85 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

PurpleJay

Hello, could you put me down for £450 this month please? I have already spent £140.55 comprising a Tesco shop, an Oddbox and this weeks Milk & More. The Tesco shop included extra biscuits and hot chocolate bombs (for xmas eve) and shopping this month will inevitably  include a few nice bits and some fake alcohol drinks which will increase my usual spend. 

Hoping that when January hits I will be ready to start a new annual and monthly budget starting with a more frugal month while we eat up any xmas leftovers and some food from our ‘brexit cupboard’ which needs a bit of an overhaul to see what is going out of date soon etc.

Its_time

A spend in Lidl of

£12.84/253.05

Butter, dishwasher tablets, food bags, toilet rolls and some sneaky chocolate.

Suffolk_lass

I'm building an online order in Morries for this week which will be my stores shop, so I can be flexible with when and where I get the veggies and other fresh stuff like bakery and dairy items, for the month.

The biggest outlay is going to be the planned turkey I have ordered from the butcher. I am expecting the overall bill to exceed £100 when I go on 23rd for my timed collection (at 06.00, what was I thinking!?**). I will be collecting other stuff, not just turkey, with a good deli counter I get the cheeses, olives, pate, ham and all the accompaniments like streaky bacon, chipolatas and sausage meat there too. I am hosting 6 on Christmas Day if all remains the same (and if not, we will deliver to them as they live less than 20 miles away!).

Only milk and eggs so far this month (last month's eggs £19.80 and milk is £6.65 so far)

Herbyme

We are going away for a few days leaving DS2 in charge 😳
If I leave him food to cook ….. he won’t. 

So I’ll leave him a RM pizza or two, and point out what’s in the freezer. I can do no more. 

So this will be a cheap week for the groceries budget which is lucky as I somehow managed to spend £101 in Morries last Monday which was partly meals for this last week and partly as it were taking a big breath in after holding my (grocery shopping) breath for several days at the end of November. iyswim

Ive just made a batch of granola and worked out it’s the same price as fancy shop bought ie about 70p/100g. £7 a batch, gulp. But detailed research finds that costs of maple syrup, pecans and pumpkin seeds vary quite a lot by supermarket and Morries (where I buy the things I can’t get at AIdi) isn’t cheapest for any of them. So I’ll stock up maple syrup from Tesco and shelled pistachios from A$da when I’m passing. That reduces it to 56p/100g. Phew, glad I got to the bottom of that, I’ve been wondering about it every time I make some. It is much nicer than shop bought obviously! And gets eaten much faster!