February 2022 Grocery Challenge

pamsdish

Foray to L1D1 as near by, £7.83 on y.s chicken 3 days meals possibly 4, 2 blocks of their nice extra mature cheese, and 2 lime and elderflower water for a tester, moved 200 yds into B&m, picked up an himalayan salt grinder, £1.99, started my reserve yesterday, looking for some wool as D.D. has asked me to make a rainbow scarf, apparently about £15 on etsy, probably cost me more than that in wool purchase, but no primary colours available, so another trip possibly tomorrow.

PipneyJane

Good morning All

I have a couple of small spends to declare: £3.38 spent in L!dl on Monday night by DH and £2.01 spent yesterday in the C00p.  DH treated himself to a tub of luxury vanilla custard and a slab of almond filled milk chocolate, while buying much needed carrots.  Yesterday’s spend was YS skimmed milk (35p), YS Hot Cross Buns (80p), YS spring onions 36p and a couple of Reeses Nutrageous.  With offers and discount coupons, we only paid £2.01.

The above brings our spend so far in February to £5.39/158.50 leaving £153.11 for the rest of the month.  We will be heading to L!dl this morning, to stock up on fresh veg and, hopefully, buy some YS meat for the freezer.  

@JingsMyBucket. Hope the garden is coming along nicely.  I hear your frustration about budgets but I’m not certain that I can give you any clarity.  If it’s any help, I can tell you how we do things:

• Toiletries:  With few exceptions, all our toiletries are own brand: shampoo, conditioner, body lotion, DH’s body wash, hand soap.  (My L’occitane body wash comes from my personal budget, as do my cosmetics.)  All the liquids are in re-used soap dispensers.  (3 squirts for shampoo to wash my long hair; 4 squirts of hair conditioner.)
• Cleaning products:  These are either bought on our once-a-year trip to WingYip or irregularly when there is a really good offer.  I don’t use many, mainly just use micro fibre cloths and water.  If I need it, my surface spray is Eucalyptus solution which I bring back as a concentrate from Oz.  (Works wonders on smeared car windows as well as a surface disinfectant, floor cleaner, and degreaser.)  There’s an ancient bottle of ammonia under the sink - only used in desperation to clean the stove - and I have a steamer that I bought in L!dl a few years ago, which I use occasionally.  
• Laundry:  we use non-bio washing powder.  Currently Persil, bought on offer.  My washing powder measure is the scoop from a tub of Vanish.  One full scoop per large load. If anything needs soaking, I’ll add a scoop of (usually own-brand) oxy-bleach to the soaking water.  No softener.
• Meals:  I don’t routinely do “meat-and-two-veg”.  That’s primarily my mother’s fault, her veg was always cold and soggy, so I prefer one-pot meals plus rice/bulgar wheat/pasta.  I cook a lot of curries and pasta dishes, making the sauce from scratch and adding a whole raft of veggies. If I do a roast, I’ll roast all the veg along side the joint (potatoes, garlic, onions, sweet potato, pumpkin/butternut squash).
• Portion control:  My husband will eat enough for two if I let him.  Pretty much every dinner recipe I cook is for four portions - or more - so when I dish up dinner, I also dish up our lunch boxes for the next day.  Extra lunchboxes go in the freezer for those days when there aren’t leftovers.
• Coffee.  While I will happily buy and drink Douwe Egberts instant coffee when there is an offer - I use their jars to store spices - most of the time, we drink L!dl’s Bellarom Gold freeze dried instant.  It’s not as strong as I’d like, but it “does”.  (On the coffee scale of 1-5, if DE is a 3, Bellarom is a 2.5.). At the weekend, I’ll break out the filter-coffee-machine and use L!dl’s French (a 4 on the scale) or Italian (5) roasted ground coffee.  
• Other drinks.  We mainly drink diluted squash by the pint.  MrT now sells squash in the 4x concentrated litre bottles for £1.75, which pleases me because it cuts down storage space and plastic.  Some of the flavours are so strong that one tablespoon per pint is enough.  (Wine, spirits and beer come out of a separate budget.  Most of our wine was bought in France at 3 Euros a bottle.)
• Meat. I’ve mentioned before that we have a separate meat budget, £40/month for stocking up at the butcher’s.   I used to keep Kosher and, even after I stopped, we would still shop at the Kosher butcher’s until he retired and shut up shop.  They weren’t local, so we got into the habit of stocking up the freezer every 3-4 months. (Admittedly, I did have a meat set, a milk set and a my-great-grandmother-would-turn-in-her-grave set for when a bacon butty was in order.). 
• Pulses.  I have quite a stockpile of dried pulses.  With the exception of lentils, I’ll always soak and cook a triple quantity, use whatever is required for my planned meal and freeze the other two portions.
• Leftovers.  If they don’t make it into lunchboxes, leftovers will be used in the next meal.  For example, this week we cooked a chicken in the slow cooker on Monday.  On Tuesday, we had chicken risotto, while on Wednesday we had chicken fajitas.  The remaining chicken meat was stripped off the carcass and is now in the freezer, for a meal when we aren’t bored with chicken. The bones are also in the freezer, for when I make stock.

Hope the above helps.

- Pip



ETA:  While most of the items we buy are own-brand or the cheapest in the shop, there are some things that I won’t compromise on: toilet paper has to be recycled paper (Sainsbugs is cheapest £3 for 9 rolls); free-range eggs (Lidl £1.79 for 15); avoiding palm oil whenever possible, so my peanut butter is always made with 100% peanuts (L!dl is cheapest); etc.  All the cheapest stock cubes now contain palm oil, so I’m searching for cheap brand that doesn’t.

leftatthetrafficlights

MissRikkiC said:

@elsiepac how do you get on with freezing the tofu? I’ve just picked up a XL block of TofO0 this evening as I’m slowly moving away from meat and whilst it probably won’t make it to its date of the 28th feb, I imagine once it’s open it won’t last that long at all! 

@MissRikkiC - I always freeze tofu - it actually helps to firm it up imo and the tofoo brand is the best I have ever used as far as firmness is concerned- I use silken tofu/cauldron tofu only as an emergency these days (it's still good for scramble 😉) but for frying/baking the tofoo stuff beats everything else hands down!  😊 you can freeze it as it is or in marinade - either way the result is lovely! 

ancientmum

My total spend for this week is £23,86, spread over Sains, Aldi and the market.  There has been very little on Olio here since Christmas, but I was browsing the local fb community group and found a community fridge a bus ride from me that is open to everyone.   It says it is there to stop food waste so may visit next week.  The pictures they have posted on fb show well stocked shelves and fridges.

PipneyJane

Afternoon All 

Just settling down to watch the Calcutta Cup match and while I’m waiting for it to start, I thought I’d post about my L!dl shop this morning.  £38.81 spent, which included a YS gammon for £3.49,  2 YS pizzas  at £2.44 each, YS salmon fish cakes 80p, YS English muffins for 30p.  Got to the tills and, wonder upon wonder, they had some £1.50 veg boxes. I picked one that contained about 4kg of onions, 1kg of mushrooms, a handful of baby carrots, 4 oranges and a tomato.  (It was chockablock full.)  I left DH in the queue and put the back onions we had in the trolley.

The gammon and the fish cakes are now in the freezer.  The plan was to have the pizza for dinner, a roast tomorrow and Toad-in-the-hole on Monday, BUT my lovely neighbour has just given us a casserole dish of stew and another of cooked rice, so I’ve done a hasty re-arrangement and we’ll have her dishes tonight, the roast tomorrow and the pizza on Monday.  I’ll grill the sausages today to cook them off - they were YS bargains that I froze and defrosted overnight in the fridge - and we’ll have the Toad on Tuesday.   (It’s very kind of her.  There’s only two of them and she likes to cook.)

Today’s spend brings our total to £44.20/£158.50, leaving £114.30 for the rest of February.

- Pip

DawnW

I had a free delivery plus money off offer from an online butcher I have used in the past, so did a £40 order, which will last way beyond this month. So, I have now spent £51.19, and have £148.81 left to spend.

elsiepac

MissRikkiC said:

@elsiepac how do you get on with freezing the tofu? I’ve just picked up a XL block of TofO0 this evening as I’m slowly moving away from meat and whilst it probably won’t make it to its date of the 28th feb, I imagine once it’s open it won’t last that long at all! 

I tried it as an experiment and it works very well.  I also only use T0f00 brand - it's worth the money to me as it's miles above other brands.

I've only tried freezing by chucking literally the whole box in the freezer! So it freezes all the liquid around it too.  I've let it defrost both naturally and by microwaving it, and both work well.  The texture does change but not in a bad way!

elsiepac

Started the day with £39.83 left and I didn't go shopping since last Saturday's big shop and then my Lid1 shop on Wednesday.  As predicted I had quite a few fresh things still left so I tried to keep this week's shop as minimal as possible.  As I said before, I've already got enough tofu for the month and today I bought the rest of my "milk" for the month - I use Alpr0 almond barista in my coffee; if I have that I never feel like I'm missing out so it's one of my non compromising things!  Like my pricey coffee actually lol..but I buy that in bulk on subscribe & save each month.

So today I spent £10.80 on my almond barista milk - that's 6 litres (it's long life) at £1.80 a carton and is about 2 cartons a week.  I can relax a bit knowing I've bought it and I had that set aside within my remaining money.

I also spent £6.51 on actual groceries to top up what I have in for the week.  I'm very pleased with that:
Cauli 79p
Broccoli 49p
Carrots 40p
Tomatoes 75p
Large Garlic 60p
2 chestnut mushrooms 59p each so £1.18 total (clubcard offer usually £1 each)
Romaine £1
Mr T own vegan herby sausages £1.15
YS Finest seed & grain bread 90p was £1.20
YS 2 6 packs wholemeal rolls 30p each so 60p was 98p (49p each)
YS 3 packs malted grain & rye folded flatbreads 35p each so £1.05, was £3 (£1 each)
Mr T own dark chocolate digestives 60p

Total £9.51
used £3 clubcard voucher hence £6.51 + the £10.80 for almond milk for the next 3 weeks.

I think I chose well, and I have plenty of beans and pulses and grains and a few fake meats in, as well as peppers, aubergines, courgettes, bit of broccoli, a leek, 2 carrots, few mushrooms, 1 little gem, red and white onions, new potatoes, sweet potatoes and maris pipers left from last week as well as veg in the freezer if needed.

I already have a loaf of bread frozen so I'll keep my YS one out for eating certainly for the beginning of the week and see how it is going.  Rolls and flatbreads things will be frozen.

£22.52 remaining in the budget.  I did want vegan butter and cheese but couldn't justify it so I'll see where I am next week.  Going to try very hard not to shop again till next week...then it should be £10 each week for the last 2 weeks which is basically for fresh veg.

Suffolk_lass

elsiepac said:

Started the day with £39.83 left and I didn't go shopping since last Saturday's big shop and then my Lid1 shop on Wednesday.  As predicted I had quite a few fresh things still left so I tried to keep this week's shop as minimal as possible.  As I said before, I've already got enough tofu for the month and today I bought the rest of my "milk" for the month - I use Alpr0 almond barista in my coffee; if I have that I never feel like I'm missing out so it's one of my non compromising things!  Like my pricey coffee actually lol..but I buy that in bulk on subscribe & save each month.

So today I spent £10.80 on my almond barista milk - that's 6 litres (it's long life) at £1.80 a carton and is about 2 cartons a week.  I can relax a bit knowing I've bought it and I had that set aside within my remaining money.

I also spent £6.51 on actual groceries to top up what I have in for the week.  I'm very pleased with that:
Cauli 79p
Broccoli 49p
Carrots 40p
Tomatoes 75p
Large Garlic 60p
2 chestnut mushrooms 59p each so £1.18 total (clubcard offer usually £1 each)
Romaine £1
Mr T own vegan herby sausages £1.15
YS Finest seed & grain bread 90p was £1.20
YS 2 6 packs wholemeal rolls 30p each so 60p was 98p (49p each)
YS 3 packs malted grain & rye folded flatbreads 35p each so £1.05, was £3 (£1 each)
Mr T own dark chocolate digestives 60p

Total £9.51
used £3 clubcard voucher hence £6.51 + the £10.80 for almond milk for the next 3 weeks.

I think I chose well, and I have plenty of beans and pulses and grains and a few fake meats in, as well as peppers, aubergines, courgettes, bit of broccoli, a leek, 2 carrots, few mushrooms, 1 little gem, red and white onions, new potatoes, sweet potatoes and maris pipers left from last week as well as veg in the freezer if needed.

I already have a loaf of bread frozen so I'll keep my YS one out for eating certainly for the beginning of the week and see how it is going.  Rolls and flatbreads things will be frozen.

£22.52 remaining in the budget.  I did want vegan butter and cheese but couldn't justify it so I'll see where I am next week.  Going to try very hard not to shop again till next week...then it should be £10 each week for the last 2 weeks which is basically for fresh veg.

That sounds like quite a lot of food. Very interested in your meal plan if you are happy to share it @elsiepac

Its_time

Spend for me today at Tesco home delivery.  

£124.36/£300

I have loads of chips, mash, veg, mince, chicken, sausages, beans, soups, tins etc. I have been a bit backward with this but will now sit down and meal plan (I know).
I now have £175.64 for the rest of the month which is 22 days and about £8 a day.
I am planning on doing Tesco for the month rather than popping to the shops I think it might work out cheaper overall!