January 2022 Grocery Challenge

candylucy

Resisted the very strong urge to get a Chinese tonight. We’re going out for a long walk and pub lunch tomorrow with friends who we’ve not seen for a while so saved the money we would have spent on a takeaway and made a fakeaway at home instead. Did salt and pepper chips, Chinese chicken curry and  Kung pao chicken 😋

dollypeeps

Spent just over £70 yesterday at Lidl,Aldi and tesco
spent £112 ish last week so grocery budget looking good 
really enjoying this thread it’s really making me watch my spending 

Saver.The.Taste

Another spend today, first proper shop of the year spent £6.46 and this should do me, along with what I have in stores, until Thursday and even then it should only be a loaf of bread! 

Total so far £16.04

PipneyJane

Good morning All and welcome to the Newcomers

I’m miles behind (10 pages so 100 posts) but hope to catch up soon.  First week of the month at work was, as usual, madness due to month end.  I have three spends to declare:

• £19.01 spent on by DH on Thursday in MrT’s.  He went in for the large Yeo Valley Yoghurts which they’d Clubcard-price discounted to £1 and one of their Indian Takeaway meal boxes (£7.50) since I was still working at 7pm and in no state to cook dinner.  He came back with those and YS two boned chicken roasts £1.25 each (supposedly each is 4 portions), YS duck liver pate 13p, and a YS microwave Chinese meal-for-1 for 88p (his lunch on Friday).
• £17.48 in L!dl yesterday.  Went in to take advantage of their weekend discounts on muesli and nuts, as well as to stock up on some regular items, came out with a YS “extra large” chicken for £2.93.  (Looks like the regular sized chicken that my butcher sells.) It’ll go into the slow cooker today for dinner tonight.
• £6.52 at MrT’s on things I couldn’t buy in L!dl: bulgar wheat 3x£1.15, mustard powder, etc.

The L!dl shop was in a new store that has opened up next to our regular MrT’s, not the one we normally walk to. It was heaving, while MrT’s was relatively quiet.  Used to be a Toys-R-Us.  The sign outside also proclaims that there’s a branch of Home Bargains on the site, but I have no idea where since the front of the building is all L!dl and there is no obvious entrance.

Does anyone have any meal ideas to share about using up leftover gammon?  Many thanks.  I roasted my first ever gammon joint for dinner on Tuesday.  If I can’t come up with something today, I will have to shoehorn it into our (already over-full) freezer.  Yesterday, I made the Cheese & Ham Quinoa Bites from Eat-Well-For-Less for breakfast, utilising the gammon, Emmenthal slices leftover from from December plus some ancient quinoa that has been lurking in the pantry for about a decade.  Tastes lovely but an absolute disaster to turn out from the muffin tray. Despite greasing the cups, every single one stuck fast.  Today, I’m going to crumble up the remains, pour over some more eggs and bake it like a frittata.  (Note to self:  next time, use liners!)

The above brings my January spend to £43.01/£141, leaving £97.99 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

PipneyJane

joedenise said:

@Its_time - That was why I started the bulk fund as I always buy my tomatoes a dozen at a time, same with baked beans but I like the Sainsbury's reduced salt and sugar ones and don't go there very often.  I never pay more than £1 per 100ml of toothpaste so when I see it at that price or less I'll pick up half dozen tubes.

That’s why we have a Bulk Fund, too, @Its_time.  We started by setting aside £20 a month.  It went into a different cookie-jar in the kitchen, so it was available if we found a bargain, but not in the Grocery purse.  When we do find, say, tinned chopped tomatoes at 25p a can, I’ll buy the entire shrink-wrapped packet of 24 cans (£6) and then reimburse the Grocery purse when I get home.

Once it mounted up a bit, we moved it to a separate savings account, which is a bit of a faff to get reimbursed from, but better on the budget quarantining front. (Harder to raid.)

As well as bulk buying tinned tomatoes, I buy the 10kg sacks of basmati rice and the 10kg sacks of chapatti flour.  (I only have one type of flour in stock, add baking powder if a recipe calls for self-raising, and make my own bread.). The Bulk Fund paid for the big moisture and air-tight, Lock-n-Lock boxes in which both of those are stored.  Once or twice a year, we’ll venture to Wing-Yip, the Chinese supermarket/cash-n-carry and stock up on spices, dried pulses, etc, all paid for from the Bulk Fund.

HTH

- Pip

boxofpaws

Leftover gammon - my favourite way to use up is lentil and ham soup, or pea and ham soup 

CRANKY40

I make pasta bake with chopped up gammon, mushrooms, onions and whatever is wilting in the fridge with added pasta sauce. 

I've just made spicy butternut squash soup with the butternut squash that has been lurking in the fridge and giving me the evil eye since christmas. I have healthy lunches for next week and I can stop feeling like a lazy moo every time I open the fridge to get something else out. 

I have also (drum roll please) meal planned for next week using mostly what is in the fridge and freezer. It took me quite a while and about three goes to get it right as in don't give the HT chips for dinner on days when he eats at college because he usually has chips. He wouldn't mind but I do like to try and provide some variety. I need to shop for pizza for him, his partner and my looked after person, some fresh fruit and veg, ham, cheese and some tonic for my gin (the tonic is not negotiable, lol ). 

Today's lunch will be soup and dinner will be a roast using up some christmas leftovers. 

mumtoomany

More milk! Total now £10.72/£2640. Mumtoomany.

leftatthetrafficlights

£20.84 spent today - current total £85.44/ £300

elbree

So after my 'big' shop and two little shops (annoyingly, one for stamps which I KNOW I have somewhere but could not find) I've spent

96.27/150

🤔  Not looking brilliant but have meal planned for the month and have most of what I need in fridge/freezer. Also have all washing/cleaning items so should only need fresh milk/veg from now until end of month. 🤞
Also spent £27.58 of my £50 toiletries/medicine budget