March 2022 Grocery Challenge

QueenJess

Greying_Pilgrim said:

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.

You could keep the syrup and use it to make any plain cake or muffin a peach drizzle one.

diminua

Not counting the St Patrick's Day and Easter bits I've now spent £155.88. I've also cancelled the veg box on Friday as I've still got quite a lot left (especially onions, apples and parsnips). 

_Moving_On_Up_

Had a couple of trips to Lidl since my last update. The first was over the weekend, spent £7.47 on a couple of blocks of unsalted butter, 2 bags of coffee they had on offer and some chocolate. Another top up of £22.28 today which should see us through to the back end of the week hopefully. None of their fruit and veg boxes were there this morning which was a bit disappointing but hey ho.

I did at least manage to get a large pizza, pack of bagels, some potatoes and some buns from my olio collection as my 10%. Had virtually no requesters this weekend for some reason so ended up having a mix of pastries left as well as some chicken wraps, noodles and some salad bits which I'll try to put to use. Also had a portion of 10 bits of chicken left from my KFC collection, half we ate and the other half has gone in the freezer for lunches sometimes.

Every weekend I bake a sweet treat for us, this weekend it was biscoff brownies. I used to get cake takeaway(!) Which would cost us around £15, so although homemade is more expensive than shop bought I enjoy baking and it's far cheaper than what I used to do!

Total spends now £278/£460 so doing well!

atrixa

£5.10 spent in Morrisons today:

Non Dairy Milk £1
Tonic Water £0.60
Chickpeas £0.55
Dessert Sauce £1.35
Sweet Potatoes £1.22
YS Doughnuts £0.07 (would have been rude not to at that price)
YS Bread £0.31

Brings the monthly total to £122.96/£123.

I shouldn't need anything else until I get paid, so I'm tentatively going to say that I've won my challenge and come 4p under budget!

Greying_Pilgrim

Just popping in to say a big "Thanks" to goldfinches for originally posting the link for Nigella's soft spiced mung bean recipe. 

I made it for tea tonight, and it was a keeper of a recipe for me anyway (I modified it slightly), but is definitely a keeper now as LG s.c.o.o.p.e.d. it up and ate every last scrap 😊  In hindsight, I wish I had gone with what I had wanted to do originally, and presented the dhal with just flatbreads, but I wanted it to look a bit more conventional on LG's plate, so added plain boiled rice.  But the flatbreads were devoured too, so we could have just had dhal and flatbreads. I didn't follow Nigella's recipe to the letter - I used minced garlic and ginger, used hawaij spice , lemon juice and garam masala to finish.  I omitted the chilli.  Because I used the pressure cooker, it only took about 10 mins in total to cook (beans soaked overnight), and was really easy to prepare. I made the flatbreads just before we ate, so I actually forgot all about the accompanying yoghurt, but as we had tinned mandarins and yoghurt for pudding, we didn't miss it.  But I would certainly consider the minted/coriander yoghurt, if yoghurt wasn't being offered for pud.

I also used the very last of the shredded spring greens from the MrL box.  That bag has now provided 'accompanying' veg for us all (LG portion very small), for 3 meals.  I wouldn't buy it normally (would buy the unshredded version), but have been able to make good use of it because it came in the box.

Greying X

MissRikkiC

Just less than £14 spent today at MrMs on mostly things we needed, milk, bananas, food bags, bin bags, bread, eggs and cheese. Other items less than ‘needed’ mushrooms, broccoli and Heinz tomato soup as a lunch treat. Absolutely outraged at myself as I took in a bag for life, laid it in the base of the basket, got to the tills and paid for a plastic bag which I unloaded everything into, including the bag for life before realising. 60p was an expensive mistake to make! I wouldn’t usually mind as they would make bin bags but I’d just bought some of those! Ugh 😑 

goldfinches

Just popping my head round the door to claim a NSD and say thanks to @Greying_Pilgrim for the link to the spice mix. I kept forgetting to take a photo of my Nigella's mung beans but did remember today so here's how mine turned out. I did them in the slow cooker which was really easy and they were nicely done in the times given in the method.



They're very filling so I've divided mine into six portions.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning Grocery Challenge chums,

Good and bad news to report.

The good news is that I am a complete dunce and miscalculated my total budget (£100), less what I had spent.  I thought I had £15 and some pence left, when in fact, I had £25 and some pence left (YAY!).  The £20 still left in my grocery purse should have given it away, but....... duh 🙁

And the bad news........  well, I had the opportunity to visit another nearby town today, and I always nip into their Her0n f00ds when I'm there....... I found sugar for 65p, which was on my list, but then some other bargains fell into my basket, which whilst they were good value, weren't on the list....... 🙁 So I spent £4.54, and my remaining budget, for 9 days is £20.74.....

I got:  3 x casarecce pasta for £1, 1 x golden sweet peppers (jarred) for 39p, 1 x a kilo of sugar for 65p and 2 x white fish 'nuggets' (on special at £1.25 a bag) £2.50.

The peppers are very short-dated (hence price), but a) I'll use them and b) the jar may well be useful for future spices storage.  The pasta is dated until May - and we all know it'll last beyond that.  The fish is a good price, another 'well-known brand' was priced at over £3, for what appeared to be a similar product (think chicken nuggets, but with fish), although I concede the bag may have been larger.

Anyway, now that I've got my maths "right", i'm not in quite as much of a squeeze as I thought I was going to have to report, but it does also show the perils of going shopping for 'just a bag of sugar', especially when I could have waited until Thursday! 🙁

Greying X

nannygladys

Greying -  I use Jack's books quite a lot especially the one with that curry that I've done many times. I sometimes read them and think the recipes won't work but they all seem to!! The other book I use a lot especially in summer is Jamie Oliver's  ministry of food which a good starter cook book, I think, but has some recipes in it.

goldfinches

I ventured to the shops to buy a small list of baking items and some frozen fruit which expanded when I spotted several things with bargain or clubcard prices so I'm hanging my head in shame and reminding myself that the only way to keep my money in my bank account is to stay out of the shops.
I spent £8.00 at Mr T's on frozen fruit, milk powder for stores, 2 x limes and 6x braeburn apples and then £10.95 at Sains on queen olives, fried onions, ghee and yeast flakes which makes my new monthly total £80.15/£124 and my average daily spend £3.64. 
The baking budget spent £3.50 at Mr T's on gluten free oats and crunchy peanut butter and £2.00 at Sains on naturli vegan butter which makes the baking spend this month £13.78/£25.