March 2022 Grocery Challenge

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning!

Well, I'm hoping for another NSD with regards to food today.  DH did "invest" in some bananas yesterday 🤣  but at 62p - they ended up being cheaper than doughnuts anyway, and considerably cheaper than a cafe visit - greasyspoon or coffee chain 👍Carrot cake was tucked into on return home, and declared 👍.  (small) win for budget conciousness 😊

Quorn filet and 'all' the veg today 😊My menu plan for next week looks like this;

M - Nigella's mung bean recipe, brown rice and flatbreads (using the recipe link provided by goldfinches 👍)
T - Curried butternut, red lentil and apple soup (using apples from the MrL box and the bargain b'nut from MrT)
W - Halloumi buddha bowl (I'll be using some left over mugg and making beetroot & apple salad)
Th - Beachhouse kitchen black eye bean & pumpkin curry with rice
F - Veggie sausage hot dogs with chips
Sa - Black olive pizza and 'pudding' (dessert tbd)
Su - Jack Monroe's peach & chickpea curry, lentil dhal and rice

I tend to use supermarket own brand tinned peaches for Jack's curry, so eg 'smartprice', 'value', 'savers'  etc.  They usually come in syrup, rather than juice, so I always choose to drain and rinse my peaches.  This is personal preference, as I don't have a particularly sweet tooth.  For me, the fruity 'pop' of the peaches are enough in this recipe.

Now all I gotta do is S.T.I.C.K to this darn plan to try to eke out the remaining £15 of me budget........... Have a good rest of the day - Spring equinox today, isn't it?

Greying X

Freegan12

Morning all,

It is a beautiful morning this morning too. It will be a NSD for me today ..... as I'm not going anywhere near a shop. A change to the meal plan as my husband (works nights) came in with x2 free pizza's and a handful of free breakfast pastries. Not super healthy but a nice free treat. So free pastries for me and the boys for breakfast with a nice pot of coffee and dinner with be free pizza with an added side salad and smart price garlic bread on the side.

Pizza would have been £10.20 for the two 
Pastries would have come too probably more than £15 
So a nice little free haul :-) and what a yummy treat.

Lunch will be a defrosted freezer soup (gammon leek and lentil) as I need to make more space in there.

Today I must trim my parsley .... its growing wildly .... Any tips for what to do with a small excess glut of flat leaved parsley?

Also planting my tomatoes today , a touch early for most, I know , but I have a very sunny south facing garden, so can get a head start I think :-) 

The rest of my day will be spent playing with my youngest and doing a bit of genealogy :-D

Have a lovely day
x

Suffolk_lass

Ooh yes @Greying_Pilgrim - Happy Spring Equinox!

@Freegan12 I believe the 40 boxes of Felix are £13 in Morries (close, but no cigar!). There are a few people on mid-month to mid-month. Not sure if @elsiepac puts the new one up that early so you might need to post next month's in this month's for a while IYSWIM - welcome anyway.

My cost savings are from growing soft fruit and freezing it, I also grow lots of veg, not always cheaper but better for flavour and when picked, prepped and frozen it gives me lots of choice out of season with no food miles and means I am not tempted in the stores. Bread is cheaper for me, but I bulk buy a sack of flour and make it with a sourdough starter. Pastry is cheaper to make (and very versatile). I also buy frozen spinach - brilliant stuff, that I came to late! Mine in the garden just grows too quickly and always goes to seed before I get my money's worth.

We cross-posted - I chop and sprinkle flat-leaved parsley on any soup and have a zip-lock bag in the freezer that I chop and add any surplus to, ready to make lettuce and parsley soup

joedenise

@Suffolk_lass - lettuce and parsley soup - that's a new one to me.  Will add that to my list to try when I get lettuce that needs using up and don't want to make my usual braised lettuce, spring onion & peas side dish!

Freegan12

@Suffolk_lass I did just that , I added lots to my soup pot just a moment ago :-) tastes lovely. I would love to grow my own fruit. I literally have a jam packed postage stamp garden though. I do have a plum tree in the corner (4yrs old) but it never gives me more that once plum. It suffers from leaf curl :-( and I don't know how to help it. The bluetits love it though.

I aim to grow Cucumbers, Toms, Cherry Toms, Lambs Lettuce, Rocket, Little Gems, Spring onions, Cayenne and Bell Peppers, Leeks and Beets. Just in a couple of small beds and pots to help supplement at least our salads through summer. I have a very old grapevine (9yrs maybe) that I planted as a twig brought back by my father in law from spain, it grows well along our East facing fence, lots of grapes, but they can be quite tart .... so far only good for making american style grape jelly.

All my herbs are grown indoors in a south facing window.

I have a fair sized patch at the end of the garden that nothing seems to like as its really shaded. Any of you have any good ideas for edibles that can survive mainly shade ( shed shades it so it is almost a north facing garden patch) even the grass struggles.

I use puff pastry to make pies ... I spend £1 a ready roll pack and use two each time. I will weigh up making my own and see if I have the skill lol.

I love sourdough and just bought some with the shopping yesterday (its my indulgence) ... I would love to give making it a go :-D

x

joedenise

I wouldn't bother making your own puff pastry - even chefs use ready made as it's such a faff!  Much better just to make shortcrust which is much easier.  Or perhaps make shortcrust for the bottom crust and use ready rolled puff for the top, that would save some money too.

My DH occasionally makes sourdough.  He keeps the starter in the fridge until he's ready to make it, seems to last really well!

mumtoomany

Hi @Freegan12, how about raspberries for your shady spot. May not produce quite as much as in the sun, but should be ok. If you find they are producing new plants in a year or two that you don't have room for, try planting them on waste ground. My sister did this and effectively increased her raspberry growing space for free. Do you have a front garden? Try strawberries in it. HTH, mumtoomany.xx

Ginmonster

Happy Sunday everyone! The sun is shining and I'm full of roast dinner and planning the week ahead's meals. They will be heavy on pies for me and OH as I had forgotten I'd ordered 6 wonderful pies from a local maker who has been so busy with catering for parties he's only been able to offer his normal pie baking one weekend in the last few months so I booked an order in a couple of weeks ago and promptly forgot I'd need to make space in the freezer if we weren't going to be eating pies 3 times this week! Oh well, they are delicious and we've got plenty of veg to go with them!

 I paid £20 on delivery for the pies today so that brings my total to £120.21/£200

Aside from pies there will be at least one bubble & squeak type meal with leftover veg from today's lunch and I've also got some leftover veg chilli from last night's tea. I'll make some more soup for lunches with a big old celeriac that's been lurking at the bottom of the fridge for what seems like months!

Greying_Pilgrim

Well, I'm just nicking in to report that I have achieved week 2 of (completely) following my menu plan.  I know watching the pennies focuses the mind, but I've also enjoyed making a couple of new dishes, or thinking about how best to use what I've managed to get hold of.

This evening's menu was 'enhanced' because I thought about how best I might use the cauliflower that was in the MrL box. It wasn't a huge head, and I'd had to strip most of the outer leaves off, as they had, unfortunately started to wilt, yellow and generally go a bit whiffy........  I decided, that as I was going to have the oven on for the quorn filets, I would make some cauliflower cheese.  Something, would you believe, that I have never tried to make before 😲 It turned out OK.  There was just enough cauli to make a small dish, and although the sauce thinned on baking, it did make a better "gravy" than I'd actually anticipated, and so complemented the mash, spring cabbage and sweetcorn.   LG was not happy and refused (initially) to eat the cauliflower that was covered in 'melty cheeeeeeeese'.  In the end, they ate most of their tea, but I don't think they are at all sold on cauliflower cheese.  Even though they like cheese, and they will eat cauliflower 🙄 No point in ever bothering with macaroni cheese - despite their love of cheese and pasta, as we'll doubtless have the same fandango 🙁I also roasted a couple of parsnips that had been in the previous MrL box, for DH and I.  Lovely.

I have already put my moong beans on to soak for tomorrow night's tea.  So thank you Grocery Challenge for making me focus, concentrate and plan.  Appreciated 😊👍

Greying X

goldfinches

I had to do a top-up shop for 4x milk, yoghurt, 4x lemons and frozen green beans at M*rks which cost me £6.15 and makes my new monthly total £61.20/£124 and my average daily spend £3.06. 

I was rather astonished when scuttling out of M*rks at 3 minutes to 5pm to see lots of people sauntering into the shop in a very relaxed manner, really odd. I hope none of them were unpleasant to the staff when they were told the shop was closing immediately.