March 2022 Grocery Challenge

esjw

Have spent slightly more than intended this week but DH needed petrol so I popped into C@stco at the same time - got a few bits and stocked up on toilet rolls 40 for £11.49. They had H£inz tomato soup for 24 for £10.39 so 43p a tin, lowest I've found it for a while so got a case.

£151.79/£425.00 with £273.21 remaining

The menu planning was interesting, on some days there were 4/5 different meals due to timings, food allergies and preferences but the main meals were:

     Spanish Chicken & Rice

     Lamb Chops, Mash & Broccoli

     Crispy Duck Pancakes and then Pancakes (the children definitely had more sweet than savoury pancakes)

     Fish Pie

     BBQ coated Pork Belly, Rice & Peas

     Cheese Fondue

This week I'm planning:

     Freezer Pot Luck (starting to work through those random bags & tubs that have lost their labels)    

     Sausage & Veg Pasta Bake

     Chicken Curry & Rice

     Leftovers from Sat/Sun/Mon

     Veg Omelette    

     Freezer Pot Luck

     Fish Stew

     Take-away (Birthday treat - probably Chinese)

     Something with eggs

Need2bthrifty

Goldfinches, I also noticed empty shelves in both @sda and $ainsbugs this past week, unusually they were restocking shelves during mid-morning so whether it was a staffing issue or a supply/distribution issue I'm not sure.

Total spend of £13.10 this week, that was £4.33 on assorted fruit & veg, £6.77 on chicken thighs, milk, stock cubes and snacks, also spent £2.00 on daffodils just to remind myself that meteorological spring has arrived even though the temp is still so low. 

Plan for this week

Sat - Vegetarian moussaka

Sun - Chicken with peperoni sauce

Mon - Greek-style roast fish recipe | BBC Good Food

Tues - Spag Bol

Wed - Spiced halloumi with roasted vegetables

Thurs - Turkey kofta kebabs

Fri - Poached salmon, new pots & green beans

Running total £45.90/80.00, I have two weeks to go till payday so will try and rack up some NSD's

mumtoomany

Hi all, I can't post a meal plan as most days tea isn't christened till mid morning. Instead I'll post what we had.
1st Pancakes
2nd chicken burgers, mash, broccoli, (home grown) and carrots
3rd Quiche, jackets, salad, (with hg lettuce), coleslaw, (home made)
4th Spagetti bolognese, home made garlic bread
5th Either fish fingers or fish, whichever i find first in the freezer, chips, beans, tinned tomatoes, savoury rice.
6th Roast chicken(yellow label), asparagus,(hg), cauli(hg), roast potatoes, parsnips and shallots roasted, (both from the aldi super six christmas eve)
Will put more when i know them, hugs to all, mumtoomany.xx

Soontobeoap

Love hearing how everyone else stretches their money. 

I Have finally rediscovered the joy of pastry making. shortcrust anyway. Unbelievably this alone saves me about £3.00 a month! Thanks for listening. I can’t find anyone else who would get excited about my savings. 

Thanks again for letting me join. It’s month 3 for me and I am getting more and more into it!

PipneyJane

@Greying_Pilgrim all your talk about mung bean curry has triggered a craving of my own, so I’m making my version for lunch.  My recipe uses plain yoghurt in the sauce.  Before I started cooking, i carefully examined the unopened tub of plain yoghurt that has been lurking in the fridge and had the BB date of 7th November 2021!  It tasted more sour than normal but it was not growing anything so I deemed it “good to cook”.

As usual, I tripled up the quantity of mung beans and now have two tubs for the freezer.  I do this with most whole dried pulses.  It saves fuel and time later on.  Didn’t soak the mung beans; just poured over boiling water, bought it back to the boil and cooked for 35 minutes.

Talking about L!dl veg boxes, I’m still using up the onions we got in the one we bought last month.  We won’t need to buy any for a couple more weeks.  

We also won’t need to buy any milk or fresh fruit this week.  DH went to the office on Wednesday and was ordered to take home a bag full of mixed fruit plus two litres of milk.  They just haven’t had the numbers in the office to use it all up.  (They get a weekly fruit delivery.)

I have three small spends to declare:  £2.36 in L!dl on Tuesday (on mushrooms and peppers); £10.60 in MrT’s on Wednesday (2 meal deals plus extras for dinner on Thursday); then DH popped to the C0-0p yesterday to pick up something for dessert - sticky toffee pudding £4.20 - and a head of broccoli.  £4.65 spent there.  (We had a friend to stay for the night.  I did a roast but didn’t have time to do a pudding.)

GC spend so far £17.61/£160.66 with £143.05 left for the rest of the month.

Meal planning-wise, I’m hopeless at planning meals more than a couple of days ahead at a time.  That’s partially because I only do one big shop a month, with a weekly or fortnightly top-up for fresh veg, milk and (maybe) yoghurts.  I tend to look in the fridge and see what needs using up, then consider what it would go with from the freezer.  My plans for the next few days are:

Today:  lunch Mung Bean Curry with bulgar wheat.  Dinner Bread & Cheese Pudding with added tuna and sweet corn.
Sunday:  wraps for lunch, using YS sliced meat that’s currently in the freezer.  Dinner:  Cuban Black Bean Stew cooked in the slow cooker. I’ve just put the beans on to soak and  it’ll use up the remains of last month’s cooking bacon.  
Monday:  leftovers for lunch.  Dinner, I’ll probably do something with the pork leftover from last night’s dinner.  I’m thinking about a variation on the “Pork And Beans” recipe from How to Feed Your Family on £4 a Day, by Bernadine Lawrence.

Shopping plan-wise, MrT’s are trying to lure us back with a Spend-£60-Get-£9-Off voucher.  It specifically excludes alcohol, gift vouchers and spends in their phone store. Even if we stocked up on 10kg basmati rice and 10kg chapatti flour - which we don’t need right now - I’m really not certain how we’d reach the threshold.  (I have vivid memories of two years ago, when they had a similar offer and I had to send DH to get two packets of toilet paper, in order to hit the limit.)

- Pip

Greying_Pilgrim

PipneyJane - so glad to be of inspiration (sure I wasn't really....).  I usually cook pulses in bulk too in the PC, but haven't room to store them in the freezer at the mo.  So soaked mine overnight to lessen the actual cooking time needed.  

What a coincidence you mentioning 'Feed your family for £4', I was nattering about Bernadine Lawrence's book to a chum this week - she was telling me that Lorna Cooper (who's written a budgetting cookbook and has a website too) was interviewed on R4's Food Programme this week.  And Bernadine's book sprung to mind.  

Egg sangers snaffled for lunch - with some of the Lidl box lettuce used for the 'grown ups'.  Only had to compost 2 leaves off the lettuce, and the rest is now in the fridge, ready to eat.

I get so much out of being able to discuss 'home economics' with like-minded folk too, Soontobeoap.

Greying X

Ginmonster

I decided to leaf through some of my many, many cookbooks this morning and actually use some of the recipes. I found 2 that looked nice in The Happy Pear cookbook, a green bean curry and a potato and bean curry and I have most of the ingredients already. I was going to walk into town and buy just the bits I needed for making them tomorrow but OH persuaded me to do a Morrie's order to be delivered this afternoon and the dislike of busy supermarkets won out! I had to make it up to £40 for free delivery but I've only ordered things I will either need by the end of the week anyway, such as fruit and salad veg, or staples I get through loads of such as bread flour. I feel lazy though!

£41.48 spent takes me to £57.21/£200 so still doing fine given that I shouldn't need anything else for at least a week. 

I'm planning the curries for lunch tomorrow (and Jack Monroe's Peach and chickpea curry as that's the only curry I can guarantee my son will eat and although he will try the new ones he usually dislikes anything new) with rice and if I'm feeling super-keen hm chappatis. There will be tons of leftovers so that'll feed is all again at least once. I've got smoked tofu, veg and noodle stir fry and lentil shepherd's pencilled in for other main meals but I've not decided which days yet. I'm not good at planning too many days in advance.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend. X X 

Wicked_Lady

I can only plan ahead for about 3 days so currently:

Sunday: slow cooker pork steaks with leek, onion, soy sauce served with cauliflower and tenderstem broccoli

Monday: chilli and jacket potatoes

Tuesday: chicken thighs baked with peppers and something else.........

Ginmonster

Having unpacked the shopping I've noticed the red peppers were battered and had squishy bits so they're refunding me £1.20. 

Revised spends £56.01/£200

wannalot

I had no spends on Saturday, but on Friday I went to Tesco & M&S, to see if there were any bargains. Usually, Tesco has some decent YS bargains, but it was really disappointing this time. There was quite a lot of stuff discounted, but the discounts were not very deep. M&S was a lot better though. 

In the end, I got decent YS deals on a huge tray of chicken thighs, duck fillets, bacon, sausages, leeks, haddock and mushrooms. 

I also bought a few things in the hope that I would then avoid going to the shops at all next week. I’ve now got enough milk to do me for at least 2 weeks, for example.

In total, I spent £38.87, which means I have only £30 left for the month. That seems a bit scary, but in fact I should only really need to buy salad, veg, eggsand maybe some yogurt for the rest of the month. My freezer is totally full, and I have plenty of drinks, tea, cheese, etc.

in terms of meals, I made a big chicken curry last night. I added mushrooms and used a little less chicken than in the recipe, but it was a mistake, I think. It tastes delicious with cauliflower rice (which I made for the first time today) but it’s not very filling. I’ll have this again for dinner on Sunday night. Monday lunch will be duck breast salad, dinner will be chilli bake with sour cream. Tuesday lunch: sausages and omelette; dinner: mackerel salad, Wednesday lunch: curry; dinner: chilli bake.