April 2022 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Good morning All

I have two shops to declare from yesterday.  We went to visit my MIL yesterday, so did a small shop for her in L!dl.  (Separate budget.)  While I was there, I got the two things that hadn’t made it onto the shopping list for Friday’s shop:  a mixed pack of 15 free range eggs and a packet of “breakfast muffins”. £2.42 spent. I was shocked to discover that the eggs have gone up by 20p in the last month!

On the way home, we popped into MrT’s to buy some custard to have with the plum-and-apple crumble I made with the fruit from last weekend’s L!dl veg box.  Checked out the Condemned Counter and stocked up, scoring a YS Meal-for-2 £1.88, YS tray of meatballs £1.05, YS Buttered Chicken Breast Joints 2x£1.31, YS pork sausages 69p. With the custard (£2) and two 200g packets of desiccated coconut (60p each), that shop came to £9.44.

Most things have been shoe-horned into the freezer*.  The meal box turned was dinner last night.  The Toad-in-the-Hole got postponed again, but we will have it tonight.  While that’s baking, I’ll fry up the meat balls, make a tomato sauce and they’ll be Monday night’s dinner.

We’ve had a couple of £2 coins in change, together with multiple coppers and 5p coins, so £4.68 added to the coin jars this morning.  There’s £7.40 left for the rest of the month.

We’ve spent £134.70/£142.10

- Pip



* While doing this, I FINALLY worked out why the damn thing frosts up all the time. I had never notice that every time the fridge door closes, the freezer door bounces open.  It’s only taken 4 years.

MissRikkiC

@Soontobeoap how kind of you to support so heavily. I’m always warmed by these type of gestures as we have such a small family network and only 1 or 2 people we can call up on in hours of need. 

Hopefully you can maybe have just a few hours to get organised again like usual to manage better for the next few days 🥰

MissRikkiC

Well after having fewer visits this month from friends, we had our good friends over last night for dinner and hub did pizza burgers. Brioche rolls were already in to have anyway, mince in the freezer and some salami and mortadella ham from olio this week meant that everything was from home. Friends picked up mozerella for breadcruming and it was a really lovely evening and dinner. 

Friday hub picked up some snacks for before dinner and spent £5 odd but there was yoghurt and milk in that too. 

Today I’ve asked him to grab some bread flour whilst he’s out but otherwise that is it for the month. There isn’t quite as much left as I had initially thought there would be, but once he is home, I think I’ll be declaring the month finished as we get paid again tomorrow. 

I guess about £11 left over which overall I’m happy with. 

Thanks to everyone for posting!  

Naturelover22

Soontobeoap said:

just worked it out. When their stays are planned , I arrange activity’s to do in the house whilst I am occupied with preparing meals and tidying. I also usually have quick easy meals made up in the freezer without allergens too. I never realised how organised I was until this week!
with DD in bed for 2 days we are exhausted and we are not sure when they are going home!! We are off to London to babysit Granddaughters on Tuesday. 🤷🏼‍♀️ . 

No meal plan for this week as we will be away.

Sorry your recent weeks have not been going well, I hope daughter starts to feel better soon.
Its good that you have seen the benefits of the preparations you do as it sounds like they are good for everyone!
Hope next weeks babysitting is more manageable.

OrkneyStar

We are pretty much on budget where we should be for the month, but I have decided to no longer update my totals on here, as it is actually making me more anxious. I will report in at the end of our month (13/4) to say how we got on, and share anything that might be useful. Good luck for the rest of the month all. 

goldfinches

@OrkneyStar - hope you feel better soon.
@PipneyJane - how irksome of your freezer door but clever you for spotting the problem.

I have an awful lot of scrappy spends to list as I've been dodging from shop to shop in an effort to beat supply chain shortages and price increases so here's the list.
£9.39 at M*rks, £12.65 at Sains mostly on loo rolls which seem to have shot up markedly, £4.29 at Robert Dias for more mousetraps, (evidently good weather encourages them to go exploring, eek), £5.90 at M*rks, £0.45 at Sains and £1.77 at the Indian supermarket which makes my new total £76.26/£120 and my average daily spend £3.17. 
The baking budget spent £5.98 on 2kg of peanut butter which was on special offer at the Indian supermarket, £3.49 at Robert Dias on a syringe to inject cakes with and £1.00 at Sains on baking powder which makes my new total £23.07/£20. I do feel a bit guilty for this overspend but the peanut butter was a bargain and both jars have a use by date of 11/2023 and I have been coveting a cake syringe for ages now and this one has a metal syringe so will last years I hope.
The birthday fund spent £10 on an array of ingredients including chocolate, cream, mini eggs, eggs and jam which makes its new total £67/£150 and I have one more cake to make so there should be plenty left over to go into the bulk fund against price rises later in the year.

Smoosh

We bought more dog food which takes us over even our new budget at £238.02/£230.

I'm not too annoyed as we're still working out how much the new little one is going to cost and the price will decrease as she gets older. Plus we did end up buying extra cat litter as he had a few days of dodgy tummy!

New month starts tomorrow for us and we'll be doing a shop, see everyone over in May! 

MissRikkiC

Came in during April with £12.11 to spare which has been squirrelled away into the new baby savings pot along with a few other drabs here and there from various other pots. 

£287.89 seems a lot to have spent on food items when other people’s budgets are much lower but right now it works, doesn’t make us feel totally like we are short on funds and are eating food we enjoy so I’ll stick with it. See you in May!

dustydigger

Looking forward to trying some grocery savings in May.

Prepared my Asd@ delivery list,it came to £74,so I ruthlessly cut it down to under £64!

SausageDogSandwich

Have spent a further £40.64 between ald! And !id! Since I lasted posted making my total £164.49/£217 ..after revising my budget it should of been /£150 not /£217. Can probably get away with no more spending until Friday but won’t declare until then in case I find myself in a shop   

Going to have to cut back a bit next month as my budget is the same as this month, but spent 4 nights away with food already paid for this month, however there won’t be a half term in next months budget for me so that may help a little. Ah well! 

Tonight we had “pizza party” for tea, which is just pizza, nuggets and onion rings with veg sticks laid out to choose your own which the youngest loves. Stretched it to make lunches for school tomorrow. 

Tomorrow will be pasta, which I have started soaking for a few hours before cooking so only takes a few minutes once boiling to cook, with frozen veg.
wednesday- Hm bean stew with garlic bread
thursday- jacket potato, cheese, tuna, spaghetti loops and veg sticks.