March 2022 Grocery Challenge

Blackcats

Love the meal plans and recipe links.
my meal plan for the week is 
Monday - veggie madras using up carrots, parsnips, potatoes and carrots from today's lunch - will serve with wraps from olio 
Tuesday - sweet chilli salmon (found lurking in the freezer) with cous cous which will include peas, corn and some spring onions from olio
wed - chipotle steak salad (trying to have a low carb meal and OH will like this)
thurs - tomato and feta pasta (I did some sorting out of my pile of recipes cut out of magazines and newspapers and found this - it looks simple and tasty
fri - Cajun chicken (chicken from freezer) and sweet potato mash 
sat- friends are visiting so meal plan tbc but will come from entertainment budget.  Pudding will be bread and butter pudding using olio bread and a jar of mincemeat bought for 19p after Christmas.

Suffolk_lass

Wraithlady said:

zafiro1984 said:

Yesterday, I bought a whole fallow venison carcass, from the local game farm. I did the same last year, lovely lean meat, everything from fillet to mince, liver and kidneys as well. This year it works out at £5.38 per kg affordable at that price.

Up here in the wilds of Manchester, I can't find anywhere that will sell me a full deer carcass - I can butcher it myself, it's not that difficult.

 All I can find is expensive 'meat boxes' which really don't seem to be much value for money - also I don't get a choice in how I want my meat prepped, chops are not much use to me.

maybe explore if there is someone who culls nuisance deer that have escaped - we have a few estates near here and have previously had a problem with them wandering around. You have Tatton Park to the SW and The North Peak District to the East - I am sure there will be people. Maybe check with a NT Property who they use

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning

Use of oven for our 'roast' last night went well.  Veggie sausages, roast tatties/parsnips, yorkies, crumble and baked potatoes (for tonight's tea), were all accommodated and the oven was on for 45 minutes in total.  I used 3 of the 'greeny/yellow' apples from the MrL box for the crumble and the lone peach.  I was pleased with being able to use the peach, as it was small, but de-stoned relatively easily, and although it isn't peach season, cooked it added a nicely floral/fruity note to the crumble, which possibly wouldn't have been apparent if eaten 'raw'. Mash, carrots, savoy cabbage and gravy were all prepped on the stove top/in the microwave.

 Menu plan for the coming week (recipe links in bold):

M - Baked tattie, cheese & beans
T - Snert (veggie version of Dutch pea soup, made with tinned mushy/marrowfat peas)
W - Puy lentil stew with winter vegetable mash (not too sure if I will do the mash, might do rice/bulghar)
Th - Omlette, mash & beans
F - LMc Quarter pounder veggie burger baps & chips
Sa - Pasta bake and mixed veg
Su - Deconstructed Cabbage Rolls (I tend to make this more like a buddha bowl than 'casserole')

That's the plan anyhoo........ I am a bit bad for taking 'inspiration' from recipes rather than following them to the letter in terms of ingredients and presentation.  But it works for me.  Still on course to need nothing (except perhaps milk), until next shopping day.

Lovely to see other people's menus/plans and hear about your shopping tactics.

Greying X

DawnW

Greying_Pilgrim said:

That's the plan anyhoo........ I am a bit bad for taking 'inspiration' from recipes rather than following them to the letter in terms of ingredients and presentation.  But it works for me. 

I do this as well. I thought everyone did

Greying_Pilgrim

DawnW said

I do this as well. I thought everyone did

Aw love, I suppose I just wanted to add that I tend to go with what I have available, or improvise or whatever.  Sometimes if I post a picture of 'us tea', it looks nowt like the glossy picture in the recipe I used!  Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes no........ 😂  Because of the wonderful boardguides and all the hardwork put in voluntarily, a thread I did back in 2014, using recipes from Leanne Brown's free, downloadable cookbooks is still on the Grocery Challenge resource list.  Luckily I made deconstructed cabbage rolls in that experimental month, and took a pic which illustrates the 'freestyling' nature of my meal prep, if compared to the picture in the link in my meal plan post 🤣 PICTURE HERE  And I was wittering on about fuel efficiency in meal prep in 2014! 😬

Greying X

Suffolk_lass

Greying_Pilgrim said:

DawnW said

I do this as well. I thought everyone did

Aw love, I suppose I just wanted to add that I tend to go with what I have available, or improvise or whatever.  Sometimes if I post a picture of 'us tea', it looks nowt like the glossy picture in the recipe I used!  Sometimes this is intentional, sometimes no........ 😂  Because of the wonderful boardguides and all the hardwork put in voluntarily, a thread I did back in 2014, using recipes from Leanne Brown's free, downloadable cookbooks is still on the Grocery Challenge resource list.  Luckily I made deconstructed cabbage rolls in that experimental month, and took a pic which illustrates the 'freestyling' nature of my meal prep, if compared to the picture in the link in my meal plan post 🤣 PICTURE HERE  And I was wittering on about fuel efficiency in meal prep in 2014! 😬

Greying X

@DawnW not everyone. There are all levels of experience and confidence on these boards. It's always got new people coming in so worth saying what you do if it's helpful to others with less experience 

atrixa

I'm also someone who plays around with recipes a lot. Definitely takes a bit of experience to know what works though. There's quite a lot of naff recipes out there and it takes some practise to learn what will and won't work.

Grocery total for the month so far £82.75/£123. It's hard to tell how I'm doing with this when I front-load the spend at the beginning of the month with a big shop. Current grumble is about the lack of loose potatoes in Mr M. I only wanted 125g for my Black Bean Stew and I've ended up with a massive pack of wonky ones, so it'll be potato as a side instead of rice for quite a while. Houmous seems to have gone up in price quite a bit since I last bought it. £1.25 for a single tub. I've tried making my own before but I've never cracked the right balance of ingredients.

Wraithlady

atrixa said:

Houmous seems to have gone up in price quite a bit since I last bought it. £1.25 for a single tub. I've tried making my own before but I've never cracked the right balance of ingredients.

I found adding plain yoghurt to home-made houmous works rather well (instead of tahini, which I never have in) - might work for you?

Doom_and_Gloom

£40.14 spent today with an A&C delivery. 

£67.20/£170.50.
£103.30 left. 

pelirocco

Suffolk_lass said:

Wraithlady said:

zafiro1984 said:

Yesterday, I bought a whole fallow venison carcass, from the local game farm. I did the same last year, lovely lean meat, everything from fillet to mince, liver and kidneys as well. This year it works out at £5.38 per kg affordable at that price.

Up here in the wilds of Manchester, I can't find anywhere that will sell me a full deer carcass - I can butcher it myself, it's not that difficult.

 All I can find is expensive 'meat boxes' which really don't seem to be much value for money - also I don't get a choice in how I want my meat prepped, chops are not much use to me.

maybe explore if there is someone who culls nuisance deer that have escaped - we have a few estates near here and have previously had a problem with them wandering around. You have Tatton Park to the SW and The North Peak District to the East - I am sure there will be people. Maybe check with a NT Property who they use

Escaped ?
You do know deer live outside of commercial deer parks ,deer are a native animal