February 2022 Grocery Challenge

MissRikkiC

JingsMyBucket said:

And we're off with the first spend of the month. £20 just sent to our veg and fruit box folks and they'll deliver it tomorrow morning. It's such a good value and usually lasts us about 10 days or so. I'm also finalizing a bulk meat order from a local farm for lots of lamb, sausages, bacon, etc. That will likely be about £75 out of the £100 bulk fund this month but I'll wait to see the invoice when they send it later today. I still want to stock up on some Italian items in Edinburgh later this month. I may reserve some weekly funds and move it over to bulk at some point. 

This afternoon I'm going to Boots to collect some prescriptions and will stop at H & B for some sunflower seeds, then M & S or Iceland for some basics like cheese, cream cheese, oatcakes, sausages, yoghurt, and fruit. Question about Iceland, do any of you like their sausages? I'm looking for some high meat content ones vs. Richmond, etc. Any opinions? 


WEEK 1 Spend: £20 / £70.00 with £50.00 remaining
BULK Spend: ≈ £75 / £100 with £25.00 remaining

@JingsMyBucket would you mind sharing a picture of your veg box as once we’re all set up I’d like to go back to having one for the same price. It’s from somewhere within the county but organic so curious as to how yours may compare that’s all

NoraNoir

Hi all,
  joining you for the first time. Things are tight, having gone in to a part time job following 2 years of illness on UC & PIP. I’m actually likely to be worse off! So, time to batten down the hatches. 

  I’m aiming to stick to £25 per week, (nearly) all in. I share some of the ‘siege mentality’ I’ve seen talked about on here 😅 I’ve got cupboards full of noodles, pasta, beans, lentils, soap, tofu, tea bags, laundry stuff etc. It’s getting a bit embarrassing now so need to start working my way through it before it all goes out of date. I enjoy cooking, when I have the energy, so I’ve been batch cooking & filling up my shoe box of a freezer. I’m vegan, don’t drink or smoke, however I do need to kick an expensive nicotine gum habit which I am accounting for separately. Also have a hol lined up next month, it’ll be on the cheap but anything left over my weekly budget will go towards that, and then to gather money to get off the unstable treadmill of renting. Hoping that and keeping track of gum expenditure that will give me motivation to cut down spending and stop the chewing!
  So far this week - £11.04/£25. I can’t tell you what on exactly as my banking app (and memory) seems to be failing tonight.
Going for a brew with holiday friends and a meal out courtesy of my cousin on Friday, got a coop coupon to use for some frozen veg that should tide me over til the half price veg box arrives next week, and I won a fiver on the lottery (not a usual purchase, sent to hol saving account) so hoping I’ll have a bit left over 🤞  
  Thanks all for a lovely forum here btw - and to all that share. I’m relieved to read I’m not the only one who buys/lives/budgets this way! 🤗

  

zafiro1984

Please can you put me down for £200 this month.

I've already spent 25.27 plus 85.29 at an online butcher so I'll  have to be careful and frugal this month. Fortunately, my freezers are ok so it may be just fresh fruit, veg and dairy I'll need.
I'll just keep busy with other things to keep my mind off food.

boxofpaws

1st Feb
Cat food £35.95
Household £4.99
Groceries £15.40

2nd Feb
Food 74.86
H/hold £1.75

3rd Feb
Alcohol for home stock up £84

Total £216.95 of £400 spent

Gulp

JingsMyBucket

A lot of deliveries coming and going this morning here at the Jings house. Our compost, topsoil, and bark for the garden arrived this morning, along with the veg/fruit box, and the Tesco order I finally succumbed to last night. Regarding Tesco, by the time I added up what we wanted to get, it would've tipped us over the £40 minimum anyway so I decided to just order and do in person top ups for the rest of the month. Looking through the freezer yesterday afternoon, I realized that we actually didn't have any frozen veg left and barely any meat. That cost us £66.09 for milk, cheddar, a raft of yoghurt, plain Philadelphia (£1), frozen vegetables, butter, ham, 3 ham houghs for souping and general snacking, hummus & antipasti, cereal, tahini, cavolo nero, red bell peppers, bananas, strawberries, oat cakes, eggs, sunflower seeds, and 2 boxes of oat bars. 

Looking at the amount we spent, I kept thinking back on other posters' budgets and how much lower they spend. Besides a few "treat" things like getting the 2 for £4 antipasti, a lot of what we bought were just basics or even Aldi price matched on the Tesco site. Yes, we go through a metric f*** tonne of yoghurt, but still. The frozen peas were 66p, heck the hummus was only 69p because that was price matched as well. The tahini cost £2.80 but that will last us about 4 - 6 months. Tesco even left off a few items like sausages, parsley, frozen mushrooms and a Philadelphia (on sale for £1!) that were out of stock just before they delivered to us so our bill was originally supposed to be about £74. A lot of what we bought was on sale or price matched. 

Sorry, I'm rambling a bit but I'm just thinking more about ways to trim down. We don't buy biscuits, ice cream, bread, drinks really, or any of the other items people tend to cut from their budgets because we watch our carbs and sugar for health reasons. Pasta is generally a treat and bread is maybe once every 4 - 6 weeks. We don't even buy wine anymore. Mr. Jings will buy a good quality bottle of scotch and that'll last for a few months. Regarding leveling down, I will be heading back to Aldi though to get more chicken thighs and drumsticks for the freezer. The thighs I bought last week have worked out very well and are tasty, while being less expensive than Tesco.

Sigh. Since I overspent this week, I'll be taking the excess from next week's budget which restarts on Tuesday. The only thing we have left to get during this week is just some ice cream. We're going to the cousins' house for Sunday dinner/postponed Christmas dinner and we're taking dessert. Instead of buying a cake or pie, I'm going to use the frozen blueberries and short crust in the freezer to make a blueberry galette. Vanilla ice cream will top it off. 

WEEK 1 Spend: £86.09 / £70.00
BULK Spend: ≈ £75 / £100 with £25.00 remaining


@MissRikkiC yes of course, to listing the £20 veg/fruit box contents. Here you go. This time around we got a lot more fruit than veg but I'm totally fine with that. 

Persimmon

Blood oranges 

Tangerines 

Bananas

Pears

Melon 

Lychees

Brown and red onions

Garlic 

Red finger chilies

Leeks 

Broccoli 

Potatoes

Souping carrots

Cabbage

Romanesco (fractal broccoli!) 



Last time we bought a box on 21/1/2022, here's what we got: 

Spinach

Cucumber

Leek

Broccoli 

Gem lettuce

Cauliflower 

Cherry tomatoes on the vine

Carrots

Butternut squash 

Red and brown onions

Garlic

Scallions

Red finger chilies

Potatoes 

Strawberries 

Apples

Kiwi

Blood oranges

Pears

Tangerines 

Of that, we still have the butternut squash, broccoli, gem lettuce, a few tomatoes, a pear, a few apples, and half a cucumber left. The lettuce and broccoli still look as good as new more than 10 days later. BTW, we're in SW Scotland and close to Cumbria, so are straddling two good areas for food. Hope that's helpful for you!

peony40

Afternoon all,

First spend of this month was £6.20 on a few food items, my main week’s shop will arrive tomorrow.

QueenJess

Lots of spending already this month.  In theory just need milk, veg/fruit, baby food and bread (plus a toilet roll/kitchen roll/tissue subscription) for the rest of the month, but it's going to be so tight.  Not sure if I'll make it!  Did use vouchers to get free treats from M&S today.

Spends so far:

• Bulk purchasing £108.85
• Bulk buying branded £77.84
• Baby food/supplies £25.37
• Milk £10.95
  

Total spend £277.01 / £400

Why is the formatting of each post so weird on here?  What you put in the preview is nothing like the final and it seems to think you want lots of white space.  So annoying!  I'm sure it didn't used to be like this.

elsiepac

Budgets updated to here

£185 for me till 25th Feb

I went absolutely mad and did the hugest shop in Mr T on Saturday after I'd been paid.  I stocked up on a lot of stuff and a lot of things that are for the whole month.  I spent £134.26 which is terrifying! Definitely a lot of unnecessary things in there as well as the useful stuff though, but hey, it's done.

I also spent £10.91 in Lidl on essentially treat items.  This was taking advantage of their veganuary items still available.  My plan in theory is to not really buy any more treats in the next 3 weeks.  We'll see how that goes.

My freezer is jam packed full and my fridge is looking healthy.  I have a couple of bags of dried chickpeas but as I can't get them locally I am keeping them for when money is super tight or I want to not spend money on tinned.  I have various tinned beans, plenty of rice and pasta, and various other grains/cous cous.  

The freezer has frozen veg (I've been trialling which veg I'm happy with frozen and which I prefer fresh - it's a mixed bag) including broccoli, spinach, mixed peppers, mushrooms (trial), sweetcorn, petit pois, soy beans, garlic, ginger, chilli, mixed med veg.  Only missing cauliflower really.
Also took advantage of veganuary offers on fake meat things, so I have a few southern style "chicken" burgers/strips, and some dippers.  Also a pack each of plain "chicken" and "beef".  I have a loaf of YS wholemeal bread.  I have some ice creams from Lidl too as well as a couple of pots of mushy peas, and some blueberries.  It's chocka in there!!

Although we are nearing the end of the week I have a decent amount of fresh veg left too and some will probably tip over into next week.  I also have lots of smoked tofu which is my favourite - took advantage of it being on offer - I plan to freeze a few when the freezer has a gap.  I have a couple of yoghurts and a couple of chocolate mousses.  And 3 packs of vegan pastrami with long dates.  This is delicious as a pizza topping.

Also completely frivolously bought a couple of "Potts" sauces - I've seen these for so so long and always wanted to try but really I didn't need them and they were very expensive.  They are the ones in cans in the mexican section.  One is enchilada sauce and the other is I think a taco sauce? something like that.  Also got a couple of sachets of seasoning mixes.

Anyway, I have tons in so the fact I only have £39.83 left is not so bad but still a little scary!! 

joedenise

@elsiepac I have to say that cauliflower is probably the one veg I really don't like frozen but always keep a bag in the freezer for when we fancy it and don't have fresh!  Cabbage is another I prefer fresh.

Another spend of £20.25 leaving me with £214.02 for rest of the month.  Happy with that, particularly as it's a short month.  Also spent another £25 at the butchers from the Bulk Fund so not much left it that now.  However some of the veg in the grocery shop will be used with the meat to make stews and curries which will be portioned up for the freezer.  Think there should be about 10 portions going into the freezer if not a few more.

Also bought a good sized piece of haddock with DH will be smoking.  This hopefully will be enough for a few kedgerees which we'll have for lunch or breakfasts.

elsiepac

joedenise said:

@elsiepac I have to say that cauliflower is probably the one veg I really don't like frozen but always keep a bag in the freezer for when we fancy it and don't have fresh!  Cabbage is another I prefer fresh.

I like fresh cabbage too... but cauliflower works well for roasting from the freezer, otherwise I do prefer fresh.  I'm trying to find ways to utilise the freezer stuff a bit more as some of it is extremely good value - the cauliflower being one of them