May 2022 Grocery Challenge

Vanlady

Good morning GC's,
I am lol at reading your comments, I too would not trust an unsupervised Mr Van to buy a specific item for me either without a  phonecall/videocall to confirm .

1 silly spend of £1.90  ( thereabouts, I've lost receipt) to declare on a large bag of Rajas paprika as I thought I'd almost run out of it and needed it for pulled pork yesterday, but annoyed as I then found a large unopened bag at the back of my cupboard....similar expiry dates....grrrr.  So, a mountain of paprika to try to be used. Good job I love the stuff!

Today    all left overs from yesterday pulled pork sandwiches  ( plus 2 meals worth stashed into the freezer), roast potatoes,  salad and cake

Tuesday   cheese and red onion omlettes with potatoes and salad

Wednesday  fish fingers with potatoes and lots of frozen veg

£56.20/£200

Next shop planned for sometime later this week, but not much on the list so far. 

Greying_Pilgrim

LOL - I am loving that others need confirmatory phone calls, or use pictures via messaging apps to secure these valuable grocery items too 🤣  Naturally, our nearest MrL have looked into that, and have hijacked the procedure by making 99% of the store seemingly phone signal free, with the exception of within one square foot of the store, to the left of the the outer automatic door - IF you stand on tip-toe........ 🤣🤣🤣

Spends of £1.24 in MrT to own up to this morning.  I bought 2 plump, glossy aubergines that were on c/card special at 29p instead of 69p each, and I bought 2 tins of potatoes for the store cupboard, although 1 will replace the tin I intend to use on Thursday in salad. The YS'd veg/fruit section in MrT did have somethings in it, but not anything I was desperate for, and most reductions were merely pennies.  So I walked away. I was happy enough with my aubergine bargain.

Whilst over that way, I had also popped into the RaNg3.  They have a little iceyland in the back of the store, so as I was there I took a glance.  Lawks!  You could have knocked me down with a feather.  Since when did iceyland get so expensive????? I know the section is only small, but it's no wonder there was only me and a shelf-stocker there for the time I was having a browse.   

Greying X

Paspatur

Just out of curiosity I entered the items from my last Icyland order into a basket (10th January 2022)
Old price £41.75 new price £51.55

bargainbetty

@Greying_Pilgrim - I love the spouse-shopping checks too. The ex-MrBB was inept at groceries and cooking, to a point where it genuinely became easier to do it all myself rather than deal with the frustration at the wrongness. 

I managed to get a Morrisons TGTG box on Friday - 2.5kg of spuds, three packs of bell peppers (all given to family, I'm allergic) four bags of oranges, two packs of apples, four punnets of grapes and nine decent six onions! 

Any hints on using oranges that don't involve marmalade or just slicing them up in a bowl?

The urge to buy things I already have 'enough' of just in case the price goes up makes my head spin a bit - I don't need it now, but how much more expensive will it be when I do need it etc... 

EssexHebridean

Afternoon all - I think I'm going to join you if that's OK. My "month" starts on the 10th (as that is when the CC statement switches to the following month) and the way we work is that all grocery spends go on the card, then get transferred from our grocery budget once the card statement comes in. Works well for us to keep everything together. 

Our May budget will be £200 - this is to feed two adults, plus cleaning products as needed and some basic toiletries. 

We vary the routine weekly shopping between Al's and T's, with a bit of added Sainsbugs thrown in on occasion. we also use a local farmers market once a month for meat, and have a veg box - theoretically fortnightly, but in fact sometimes less often as we keep an eye on the contents and skip the ones that look less good value! I don't include eating out costs in our grocery budget either as we deal with those separately. We meal plan and try very hard to operate a zero food waste household too.

My aim is to come in a good chunk under budget - I'm looking to get our grocery spends account to a position where it will pay a decent proportion of our food spending on our planned holiday later in the year - we'll see! 

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening May GC'rs!

Ginmonster, I would just like to say ye'r a marvel!  You very kindly mentioned the Annabel Karmel recipe for chicken curry on the April GC thread as a way of increasing little person's exposure to curry.  It planted the seed of an idea at the time, as I had a pouch of ready-made Korma curry sauce in the cupboard and a bag of Qu0rn filets in the freezer.  I made Qu0rn korma tonight - I will be the first to say that the korma sauce was far more 'orange' than I'd anticipated (😬), but I made up the curry (added red onion, garlic, ginger and peas), some dhal and rice.  I cooked a qu0rn filet for LG so that they were having similar to us, along with rice and dhal.  I knew that they wouldn't eat the peas in the Korma (NOT why I added them 🤣), but dug out a piece of qu0rn covered in the sauce and put it on their plate.  Initially there was mucho 'I don't like it, I don't want it'.  But whilst my back was turned, dishing up curry onto the adult (yes, we've some in our house 🤣) plates, the piece was snaffled and declared delish!  I put another piece, and that was snaffled, and by the time we sat down and actually started us tea, 5 pieces of curried qu0rn had been eaten!  😊  When I asked LG if they would eat the curry if I served it up again, they said they would, although could they have it without peas, please?........ I can do that 😊

So Thank You Ginmonster for making a suggestion that I could adapt, using things that I had; and which was 'new', but has introduced LG to something else that they will eat 😊  

I must admit, I'm still not overly sure about using that brand of korma sauce again (bought in HB), but it was only bought as a 'hedge' against not being able to get to the spice store during lockdown #487 or somesuch.......  



Greying X

Doom_and_Gloom

Bargainbetty - would orange juice work? If you imbibe you could even add alcohol to it... A screwdriver this time of year is nice. 

£35.83 spent today between A&C and Mr S. 

£112.30/£170.50.
£58.20 left. 

Bella_Budget

Weekly shop at lidl and morrisons £75.07
Feel a bit ho-hum about this week as although we're under budget  it all feels a bit samey and boring although that's totally down to us not being more creative. This is my 1st time doing the grocery challenge and I can see us coming in on budget or even under because we had lots in cupboards and freezers. Not sure how it'll go once I do next months challenge as will be starting with less. I think I need to put a bit more time into the menu planning.

Ginmonster

Glad to hear of your success with the korma @Greying_Pilgrim. It's so great when you can expand your meal repertoire a bit because your child deigns to accept something new you've cooked. I'm not sure you'd get that level of satisfaction from winning MasterChef quite frankly.

I've had so much inspiration from hearing about what everyone else is cooking too. This thread is great for sharing ideas and encouragement. 

goldfinches

@bargainbetty - how about Chocolate orange muffins or Orange and poppy seed cake from the recipe list on p1 or Nigella's Orange and Polenta or Almond cake? Syrup sponge pudding?

I needed milk and yoghurt this morning so braved the extortionate prices at my local M*rks food hall and spent £9.50 on 4x milk, 1kg f/f greek style yoghurt, 2 bunches of rhubarb and 2 x y/s asparagus which makes my new total £54.69/£124 and my average daily spend £6.07. The baking fund spent £4/£20, also in M*rks, on 2x vegan hazelnut chocolate which was recommended as being the creamiest 0-milk bar she'd ever found by Annalisa Barbieri so I bought both the flavours they had in stock to use in this week's baking. I'll let you know what my walking group's verdict is when they taste the results.