April 2022 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

Only 12 pages behind!  I will try to catch up eventually.  Hope I haven’t missed anything momentous in your lives.  Mine has been dominated by Year End at work, which has left me totally knackered.  Did get some good news: a small (3%) pay rise, that almost cancelled out the effect of the National Insurance increase.  (Thank you ListenToTaxman.com for your take-home pay calculator.)

Anyway, back on topic.  I have two spends to declare from Saturday:   £23.17 in L!dl; and £1.88 in MrT’s, on a YS Indian Meal For Two (that’s about 1/4 the normal price).  Looking at the L!dl receipt, at least half of it is for YS pizzas, YS quiche and YS pies - things for when I don’t have the stamina/brain power/time to cook.  (I did multiple 12 hour days last week.). There was also £4.05 spent on dark chocolate, so that I can make my usual Easter treat this weekend of Coconut Rough.

The above brings our April spend to £25.05/£142.10, leaving £117.05 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

Naturelover22

Smoosh said:

Snacks: many YS bakery items! And strawberries ☺️

Hello,
What is YS please?

Cheery_Daff

Naturelover22 said:

Smoosh said:

Snacks: many YS bakery items! And strawberries ☺️

Hello,
What is YS please?

Yellow stickered - ie reduced

Cheery_Daff

More spends to report here, although not actually cash, but rather Mr M vouchers we regularly get for taking part in some research. I'm not sure whether to include these as part of the grocery budget or not - we do buy groceries with them... but I was trying to cut down the actual cash portion. Anyway, I'm recording them separately in my signature for now while I decide. In my head originally, the £150 I'd declared was for cash only. 

Anyway, we spent £23.01 of vouchers (which included £3 on beer, which I'm tracking separately out of interest, but including in the overall budget). We also bought 

4 pints milk
reduced veggie sausages
2 tins mushroom soup 
bag of dried pinto beans
bag of dried split peas
bag of dried soup mix (beans, pearl barley etc, not powder)
bag of sprouts
carrots
savoy cabbage
4 bags of decaf coffee
mushrooms
wonky grapes  

Doesn't really feel like £23.01 worth (although on inspection of the very badly-printed receipt I see that £9.16 was on the coffee stock up so maybe it's not that bad!)

Took cous cous to work today, and had pasta bake from the freezer for my tea. I've fried up some halloumi to add to the rest of the cous cous for tomorrow, and I'll have another freezer meal for tea. Very much enjoying not having to think about cooking when I get in from work - I only work 4 days a week so it should be fairly easy to organise enough freezer meals to keep me going... 

Total spends so far: £10.29 cash + £23.01 vouchers = £33.30

diminua

We're on day 5 and I've already spent £57.44. That includes drinks out on Friday and pie and chips (all food and drink spends come from my grocery budget unless they're gifts or a special occasion, partly to discourage me from bought lunches and lattes at work.) I'm out again tomorrow too, LFT permitting. 
On the plus side I did buy a couple of things on my store cupboard list (tinned tuna and hazelnuts) and have lots of veg from the veg box, and milk and bread and eggs, so I should be able to stay out of the shops for a bit. 

ragz_2

K9sandFelines said:

ragz_2 said:

Afternoon all. 
Yesterday spent £21.01 at MrT. £18 on Easter eggs (which I may take out of another budget if I can decide which one), cat treats (70p) and 4 big YeoValley whole milk cartons which were YS at 77p each. Froze 2, 1 in the fridge.

I had planned to do an online shop this weekend with MrA as I got the FSM vouchers and they work online there. But DH had to take DS1 to one of the towns so I tagged along and we did the food shopping in MrT and Aldo (made the 30 mile round trip feel more useful!). Discovered brown rice is 46p/kg more expensive in MrT than Aldo (after I bought a 2kg bag in MrT) so I really need to keep a price book as clearly my brain can't be trusted.
£14.57 in MrT (2 loaves of GF bread for DH plus tins that I couldn't trust to be in stock in Aldo but actually were). 
£60.11 in Aldo. 

£105.68/450.

The trolley app let's you know where is cheapest for certain items, if you need it on the spot. 

Thanks, I will give it a go. I assumed it was only for branded items and only the big, non budget supermarkets.

Done my MrA order. Took me 4 days as I kept getting pi**ed off with it, almost everything I searched for was either out of stock (celeriac, own brand mayo) or didn't exist at all (no oyster sauce, no mung beans for example). Managed to find enough things to order to use up the FSM vouchers. Spent £9.62 yesterday in Aldo on veg and a few other bits as I was passing and hadn't got enough at the weekend. 

So I'm now £179.50/£450 already, but have meat for a few weeks and most store cupboard stuff. Sorted freezers out and everything is in the chest freezer so the tall one can go which will save £6 a month electricity (chest freezer is better for us as we're prone to power cuts and it stays frozen for days if you don't open it).

I bought a 2nd hand instant pot, using nectar points on ebay so that's excitement and entertainment for my week off this week and will be meal planning around that. We're hoping DH will be working again soon and so anything that makes cooking faster/easier will help in the future. 

MissRikkiC

Good evening everyone. Well having moved around and back to peoples accounts; all of the food related spends we are at £164/300 remaining. 

That will change tomorrow as I’ve ordered fruit and veg from a local company along with a few extras in a bid to stay out of the shops. There is 8 pints of milk in the freezer and I bought extra yogurt whilst it was on offer in MrM the other day so other than cheese (which I’m reluctant to buy from the local veg company at the same price for 250g as I spend at liddl for 400g) we have everything we will need. The veg box will also last well into next week (with ease!) as their last one of half the size took us over 10 days to finish so looking forward to meal planning with that  

@Greying_Pilgrim I made the mung bean and black bean dhal you posted recently at the weekend (without the PC) and really enjoyed it so thank you! 

Greying_Pilgrim

MissRikkiC said:

@Greying_Pilgrim I made the mung bean and black bean dhal you posted recently at the weekend (without the PC) and really enjoyed it so thank you! 

👍- fantastic 😊I like that recipe too.

Will need to snag a NSD today, and then just get the 'staples' in my shop tomorrow.  Although I am aware that we are too reliant on the store cupboard, and that this will need restocking at some point.  Even if we get through this ultra-tight budgetary month, I've got to try to determine a plan for going forward that enables food shopping along with all the other bills that have to be met (like everyone else).  It did strike me yesterday that i never have 'treats' on my list anymore.  Whilst healthwise it is no hardship to exclude treats, it makes me muse on quality of life as we bobble through. 

Greying X

MissRikkiC

Do you think it’s worth considering what you deem as a treat @Greying_Pilgrim? I’m not saying that your current idea is incorrect however I am guilty of taking certain things which are treats for granted, but it’s very much because of how and why I deem them treats in the first place. 

For contrast I would say that homemade humous was a treat (not in comparison to anything else like shop bought but just generally) however I would say chocolate wasnt any more. 

I know you’re making your humous without Tahini at the moment, maybe the addition of that and it being more luxury could be a treat?

Suffolk_lass

@goldfinches the other way to cook naan or pita breads is on an oiled flat cast iron skillet and put a wok lid over it. Much cheaper than heating your oven to those sort of temperatures!