March 2022 Grocery Challenge

Blackcats

Greying Pilgrim is back 🥳.  Your diaries always inspired me.  I can't believe Baby Greying is now Little Greying and is at school.

first spend of the month at Lidlees.  Doubled up on some items - 1 for now and 1 for stocks.  Extra cooking oil, flour, spaghetti and loo rolls ... sounds like familiar panic buying but if there's a loo roll shortage I promise it's not all my fault.

meal plan ....
fish (from freezer): roast veggies
black bean chilli and egg fried rice (using a pouch of microwave rice I found at the back of the cupboard)
spicy bean chilli with potato wedges (using potatoes from olio)
Mushroom omelette 
prawn and spinach and chilli linguine (freezer inventory identified a surprising number of bags of prawns 🤷‍♀️)
 weekend tbc but will NOT include a takeaway - Brownie's honour 😇

Current spend £25.34 - balance £294.66

goldfinches

First spend of the month today for the Baking Budget as Too Good To Go in my local area has suddenly added a lot of new shops and today I spotted that the local branch of Montezuma's was offering a bag for £6.69. The blurb says that some things may be past their best before date and that its likely to be seasonal stock to the value of £20. I decided to take the plunge and hope that I get some chocolate suitable for vegans that I can use for baking so I'll let you know what I get after I've collected it at lunchtime tomorrow.
I haven't spent anything from my main budget yet as today has been about making use-it-up soup in my slow cooker and making a stir fried cabbage dish for which I had all the necessary ingredients already.

shabbychic12

Still hanging in here February passed in a blur of spend, spend, spend but March needs to be paired back. £350 for me please.

wannalot

Hi all, I did my first spend of the month last night, using a discount code for a fairly posh online butcher. I spend a fairly horrifying £85.73, on 18 x 440g mince, 18 pork chops, 4 Aberdeen Angus burgers and 4 portions of fillet tails.

The cost was scary, but I worked out that the mince itself would cost me £72 as part of my usual Tesco shop, so I have made a good saving overall. It does make me think though: it’s a shame that such savings are only available if you are able to pay such a lot upfront.

Anyway, this lot will keep me going for a few months, I think, so I have decided to deduct the cost from my budgets from the next 3 months, so the hit to this month’s budget was £28.58. 

At the weekend, I decided to delay the shop I had planned for Monday morning to tomorrow, in the hope that I would be forced to use up all the odds and ends in the fridge/storecupboard for a few days. It worked well, and has made me think that I really don’t need to have the fridge so stuffed when it’s just feeding me.

i must say, the price of my shop at Tesco looks fairly horrifying. I honestly didn’t think I was buying a lot, but everything seems so much more expensive at the moment. I’m currently going through my online shopping basket looking for things I could do without…

K9sandFelines

Thanks for the thread @elsiepac

Please keep my total at £225, thank you.

I was under by £45 for February. However, with the impending price increases, I will keep it at this as it will cover any bulk buys also. Theoretically though, I am going to aim to try and be between £180-200 each month.

Good luck everybody. 

Greying_Pilgrim

Blackcats said:

Greying Pilgrim is back 🥳.  Your diaries always inspired me.  I can't believe Baby Greying is now Little Greying and is at school.

Blackcats - bless you, that is such a kind comment.  But if you can't believe BG is now LG...........  🤣The 'lost' nature of time during the last couple of years hasn't helped with the fact that that I have to get my head around the fact I am now the mother of a school age child........😬🤣

It's wonderful to be back amongst like-minded folk though (can't have the sort of conversations we have on here with anyone in RL).

I shall be aiming for a NSD today.  And I'm going to set up my meal plan, but we won't be having kitchari today, as I forgot to soak my moong dhal overnight 🙄........doh!

Greying X

Greying_Pilgrim

Meal plan until Sunday 6th March;

W - Buddha Bowl
Th - Lentil bolognese, pasta and green beans
F - Mugg, mixed veg curry & rice
Sa - Black olive/mushroom pizza and HM wedges
Su - Veggie sausages, yorkies, mash, mixed veg & gravy

Today's buddha bowl will feature rice, lentil dhal, beetroot/apple salad and an omlette - plus anything else that stands still long enough to be incorporated 😁 The beetroot salad is based on the 'Happy Pear' recipe, but I don't currently have any seeds to toast, so it won't be exactly as the boys wrote it.  I can't find a link to the actual salad recipe, but if you need any plant-based recipe inspiration, then head over to their website.  

I have managed to find the recipe that I always use for Mugg (moong bean curry), and if you click Friday's 'Mugg' it'll take you to the recipe, just in case anyone is interested [Edit: - scroll down the interview, the Mugg recipe is first on the list after it].  I remembered that it was originally an 'Eat Hackney' recipe, and in trying to search out a link, I came across a new (to me) website for 'Made in Hackney'.  There are some seriously interesting recipes listed on their website - I can see that I'm going to get mucho inspiration hanging out on their wonderful site 👏

Greying X

patentgirl

Reporting my spend so far my month due to when DH gets paid runs from 15 Feb to 14 Mar so well in middle of my food budget going well ok even with all increases notice even in Aldis everything seems to be on the up. Spent £123.17 out of £300 budget with 10 NSDs so far so hopefully will be under again.

Suffolk_lass

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Blackcats said:

Greying Pilgrim is back 🥳.  Your diaries always inspired me.  I can't believe Baby Greying is now Little Greying and is at school.

Blackcats - bless you, that is such a kind comment.  But if you can't believe BG is now LG...........  🤣The 'lost' nature of time during the last couple of years hasn't helped with the fact that that I have to get my head around the fact I am now the mother of a school age child........😬🤣

It's wonderful to be back amongst like-minded folk though (can't have the sort of conversations we have on here with anyone in RL).

I shall be aiming for a NSD today.  And I'm going to set up my meal plan, but we won't be having kitchari today, as I forgot to soak my moong dhal overnight 🙄........doh!

Greying X

I was just going to say that. You are a legend you know...

That is so true! I have told a couple of people about the TGTG app recently and they mostly just look at me with a degree of pity, rather than any envy for the haul of lovely veg and fruit I got. I'm hoping it is good tonight too as I have reserved another one from Morries. I am cooking for the Village Lunch this week so I have a little list for that (which will be reimbursed) and I have too many potatoes so hoping to use them for the lunch, reducing our stocks a bit so that DH and I can reduce our carbs to those from fruit and green (orange, red and yellow) veg throughout Lent (well in truth, a bit longer to reset with the low blood sugar/fast 800/paleo thingy and lose some of the lockdown blubber). I hate scales

pamsdish

First spends £8.52.