April 2022 Grocery Challenge

Hettyhound

I haven’t posted for a while but I’m sticking with the £160 budget plus £40 bulk fund which has worked for the last couple of months.  Two weeks of school holidays do nothing to help with my son at home who constantly has his head in the fridge and cupboards.  There are a lot of things I don’t buy anymore and plenty else I hide.  My conversations about food waste and prices go in one ear and out the other; ah well he knows the drill now, when it’s gone.......etc.  So far this month I’ve spent £100 so £60 until payday on the 29th. The bulk fund is pretty empty as I’ve just bought 2kgs of coffee and 24 loo rolls!

otb666

348/600 The cream leek and spuds soup was nice (i have batched up 2 portions in freezer) Also made a smoothie from berry mix I had in freezer.  chicken curry tomorrow, pepper spring cabbage beef stir fry with mooli raddish noodles thursday, fennel carrott chickpea curry saturday. Roast sunday  And repeat next week 

Smoosh

I have 90 comments to catch up on 😱

£4.45 on more dog food.

99p on milk. 

Weekly shop today. First shop we spent £8.87 on 4 litres of fizzy drink, a pasta ready meal (YS - 68p), 2 gu puddings (YS - 76p), 2 pizzas (YS - 80p and 50p), a katsu curry ready meal (YS - 54p), 8 Mr Kipling chocolate cake slices (YS - 51p), a pack of bagels (YS - 28p), a pack of cookies (YS - 10p), 4 cheese topped rolls (YS - 10p), 2 paninis (YS - 10p), 4 croissants (YS - 20p), 4 macaroons (YS - 10p), rice noodles (YS - 10p), beansprouts (YS - 10p), 12 eggs (YS - 33p), leek and potato soup mix (YS - 13p), broccoli and edamame stir fry mix (YS - 30p), 4 mini corn on the cob (YS - 12p) and a pack of mushrooms (YS - 12p).

We paid £5.87 for the YS items - original price was £36.33 🥳

Next shop £16.08 on 6 litres of fizzy drink, hairspray, 6 pints of milk, 1 litre of juice, 1 tin of spaghetti, 1 tin of beans, pasta sauce, sweet and sour sauce, 15 cheese slices, dried pasta and sauce mix, 500g yoghurt, Quorn mince, cashews, 6 bags of crisps, 2 big bags of crisps, 3 bananas and spaghetti. 

Meal plan (starting yesterday):
1. Mash (YS potatoes) with Quorn lattice for me and chicken and chorizo kebabs for OH (YS)
2. Korean beef (using Quorn mince) with beansprouts (YS), stir fry veg (YS) and rice noodles (YS)
3. Burgers (YS beef for OH, Quorn nuggets for me) in YS buns with curly fries and corn on the cob (YS)
4. Sweet and sour vegan prawns (YS) with egg fried rice
5. Quorn spaghetti bolognese 
6. OH is out, I'll likely have something from the freezer 
7. Peanut butter curry with Quorn chicken, broccoli, carrots (YS) and rice

Breakfasts: toast, cereal, porridge, yogurt with bananas, bagels (YS), eggs

Lunches: OH has a selection of YS ready meals (gnocchi, curry, pasta). We also have little flatbreads (YS), potato skins (YS), paninis (YS) and I'll be making leek and potato soup from the YS mix

Snacks: macaroons, cookies, cake slices, crisps, nuts

Feeling good about how much YS we're able to utilise ☺️

£140.53/£200.

It's going to be tight. One more weekly shop and we need cat food. 

goldfinches

I've just spent the last hour or so catching up on all the comments from the last few days which were an awful lot so please forgive me if I've missed any momentous changes or events.

The baking budget spent £7.65 at Mr T's on 4x irish stout, 6x eggs and soft light brown sugar bringing this month's total to £12.60/£20. The birthday fund spent £57/£150 on one of these


which I'm really looking forward to using. It took me ages to decide which one to buy and I've a feeling that I'll be buying the others I like over the next few years which is going to mount up. All that said, my main budget has had a run of NSDs so I'm still at £20.48/£120 which is an average daily spend of £1.70 now so that's all to the good.

Suffolk_lass

@goldfinches I love a good bundt tin! If you have not had one before, make sure you paint absolutely every nook and cranny with oil before filling or you will spend time of your life you will not get back trying to extract your cake remnants (speaking from experience...) - I put homemade stuffing in one of mine at Christmas. Just saying 

Suffolk_lass

Thanks to @zafiro1984 I have just made a store-cupboard dessert for tonight. Not sure what we will have with it but given the sugar it might need to be salad

mumtoomany

More milk to declare. Another £1.79. New total £688.76/£2640. Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xx

elsiepac

Cheery_Daff said:

QUINOA WITH LEEK AND GREEN LENTILS
Quinoa cooked separately (last week) and frozen (will show how below). This week I just fried up leek, onion, garlic, and separately boiled a giant mound of green lentils with a couple of stock cubes, then stirred it all together (saving the lentil water for soup).

TOMATO AND RED LENTIL PASTA BAKE
Cooked the pasta, and in a separate pan boiled a load of red lentils and a box of passatta, again with a couple of stock cubes. Mixed with the pasta, grated a little bit of mature cheddar on top, in the oven til the cheese went crispy.

(You're going to be sorry you asked - I am NOT a fancy cook!) 😂😂

CANELLINI BEAN PASTA BAKE
Fried up onions ,garlic, some other bits of fridge veg (can't remember, this was last weekend), added a tin of canellini beans and mashed them as they cooked, mixed that with cooked pasta, little bit of cheddar, in the oven.

LENTIL AND MUSHROOM GRATIN
I'm sure I saw someone on here mention this - do shout up if it was you! I confess I wasn't sure what a gratin was... 😂😂 so I googled, then largely ignored the recipes 😂😂 In one pan I boiled red lentils, stock cube, passatta, and then added some of the leek/onion/garlic I'd cooked to go with the green lentils above. in another pan I fried a load of mushrooms with garlic and soy sauce. Layer of lentil mix on the bottom of a dish, layer of mushrooms in the middle, layer of lentils on the top, then a thin grating of cheese. It looked nothing like the recipe pictures (unsurprisingly).

I'm not one for following a complicated recipe. I admire people who do! I don't eat meat, and generally meals involve throwing a load of veg and lentils/beans together, usually with something carby but not always, and sometimes grating a bit of cheese, or adding an egg (we have our own chickens so I'm always adding eggs to surprising dishes).

As for freezer storage, I use plastic bags, squash them flat, and layer them. For pretty much everything. fit loads in the freezer, defrost really quickly (running under a hot tap for a while helps) and make me laugh when I use them 😂

I'll add a picture to my next post, don't want to lose this one with all my carefully crafted recipes in! 😂

Thank you so much for these! Lots of ideas here which I'm always grateful for!!
Also thanks for freezer pic - excellent tip there about more efficient storage

elsiepac

Vanlady said:

Afternoon everyone,  

Interesting to see how people store their food.  We tend to store and freeze soups, sauces etc in used yoghurt and butter tubs, anything with a lid I suppose. They do take up more space in the freezer, but once frozen we remove from the contain and transfer to large bags, great for batch cooking, plus we then reuse the bags. The bags that cant be reused anymore are  eventually used in the bin. 

More great storage tips thank you!

Suffolk_lass

elsiepac said:

Vanlady said:

Afternoon everyone,  

Interesting to see how people store their food.  We tend to store and freeze soups, sauces etc in used yoghurt and butter tubs, anything with a lid I suppose. They do take up more space in the freezer, but once frozen we remove from the contain and transfer to large bags, great for batch cooking, plus we then reuse the bags. The bags that cant be reused anymore are  eventually used in the bin. 

More great storage tips thank you!

Some things get frozen in rectangular take-away boxes that neatly stack in that awkward small drawer at the bottom where the motor encroaches - and pressure cooked chick peas are then the same size portion as a tin, just minus the aquafaba that you don't always want to use. Sometimes I line the take away box with a bag and freeze in that to the same shape (that then also stack neatly, minus the box)