May 2022 Grocery Challenge

MissRikkiC

Evening all. 

With a potential temporary lactose intolerant LO, we have purchased some dairy free (growing child friendly) alternatives to milk and yogurt and needless to say they’re expensive! 

However I also bagged 2 cartons of another DF alternative milk on olio so that should help the budget a little. I had no idea that after a viral infection, children can develop short term intolerances! Learning all the time I guess.

With a fortnight to go, we haven’t much left in the pot. £30 ish actually?! What on earth happened, I’m not too sure. The only saving grace is that I have already paid for our fruit and veg box for next week (to be collected Thursday) and have been topping up the freezer with YS meat and ready meals for baby’s imminent arrival! 

Today I picked up a p1zza express lasagna and 2 chicken kormas for £5. 

Meal plan for this week: 

Tonight- Mushroom stroganoff with rice 
Tuesday- Lasagna and wedges 
Wednesday- Sweet chilli chicken stir fry with noodles
Thursday- Red Thai curry with rice 
Friday - Homemade pizzas 

Not sure on the weekend plans but there is a half pork joint in the freezer, as well as pittas which will work Saturday and I might do some kind of hotpot/potato topped meal or pie Sunday to feel like a roast dinner. 

K9sandFelines

goldfinches said:

K9sandFelines said:

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Well, good intentions and all that.  DH was taking LG to the library to return some books and asked if I needed anything......  So a £2 coin was issued and instructions issued to purchase a pat of butter NOT branded; unsalted for preference, but either salted/unsalted would suffice.  Last time I bought butter, it was about £1.48, which i thought was dear then.......  I did set an upper limit to not pay above, and it seems that I must have price approximations ingrained in my dna, as I was spot on with my £1.75 upper limit, as that is what a pat of MrL's own brand u/s butter now costs.......  it will add to the asparagus dish, but.....................Even DH was surprised, as he was very good during the first lockdown and did most of the shopping, and recalled that on the few occasions he'd been asked to get it, the butter had been under £1 to buy.

Greying X

I remember years ago when I used to eat 'real' butter an dlong before going vegan, that the Tesco value one was £0.85p. I am going back about fifteen years though. Inflation is crazy.
Have you tried making it?
I make my own vegan butter if I ever run out and its not on offer ( as i buy Naturli and its super close to tasting like the real thing, as opposed to cheap marg). I used to make it pre-vegan days when I could get reduced cream. 

Any chance of a recipe for this please? It goes in and out of stock locally so unpredictably that it would be immensely helpful to be able to make my own version.

I spent £5.27 at M*rks on f/f greek style yoghurt, bread, a cauliflower, red cabbage, onions and new potatoes and then £9.90 at Mr T's on 3x frozen fruit and 2x plums which makes my new total £45.19/£124 and my average daily spend £6.45 which is horrifying. I shall just have to work with what I've got from now until at least the middle of the month, off to work out a meal plan, night all, goldfinches.

Is it the dairy butter or vegan one you're after? 

goldfinches

K9sandFelines said:

goldfinches said:

K9sandFelines said:

Greying_Pilgrim said:

Well, good intentions and all that.  DH was taking LG to the library to return some books and asked if I needed anything......  So a £2 coin was issued and instructions issued to purchase a pat of butter NOT branded; unsalted for preference, but either salted/unsalted would suffice.  Last time I bought butter, it was about £1.48, which i thought was dear then.......  I did set an upper limit to not pay above, and it seems that I must have price approximations ingrained in my dna, as I was spot on with my £1.75 upper limit, as that is what a pat of MrL's own brand u/s butter now costs.......  it will add to the asparagus dish, but.....................Even DH was surprised, as he was very good during the first lockdown and did most of the shopping, and recalled that on the few occasions he'd been asked to get it, the butter had been under £1 to buy.

Greying X

I remember years ago when I used to eat 'real' butter an dlong before going vegan, that the Tesco value one was £0.85p. I am going back about fifteen years though. Inflation is crazy.
Have you tried making it?
I make my own vegan butter if I ever run out and its not on offer ( as i buy Naturli and its super close to tasting like the real thing, as opposed to cheap marg). I used to make it pre-vegan days when I could get reduced cream. 

Any chance of a recipe for this please? It goes in and out of stock locally so unpredictably that it would be immensely helpful to be able to make my own version.

I spent £5.27 at M*rks on f/f greek style yoghurt, bread, a cauliflower, red cabbage, onions and new potatoes and then £9.90 at Mr T's on 3x frozen fruit and 2x plums which makes my new total £45.19/£124 and my average daily spend £6.45 which is horrifying. I shall just have to work with what I've got from now until at least the middle of the month, off to work out a meal plan, night all, goldfinches.

Is it the dairy butter or vegan one you're after? 

The vegan one please, thankyou very much.

atrixa

Spent £10.49 in Mr M this morning on what I'd consider to be basics. You don't get much for a tenner anymore, do you? Total is now £127.08/£140. I'm going to have to change my approach next month, but not sure what to. Maybe doing a big shop at the beginning of the month isn't that great an idea.

Ginmonster

I had a shopping delivery today as my first spend of the month and it came in at £86.03 (I've taken off the £2 that I've requested a refund for as my raspberries were squished). The fridge is full and I shouldn't need anything else for at least a week. Rough meal plan for the next couple of days is 

Tues : leftover veg & bean chilli & wraps

Wed: veg (broccoli, pumpkin, green beans, spinach) & smoked tofu Thai curry & rice

Thu : aubergine tortellini with aubergine & courgette in lemon oil

Fri : Egg fried rice with the rest of the smoked tofu, kale, green beans, peppers and five spice seasoning.
Sat : sausages & hm potato, sweet potato and parsnip "chips" (i.e. chip shaped but tossed in a little oil and done in the oven rather than deep-fried. I've never deep-fried anything, I think the chip-pan fire adverts from my youth traumatised me for life!)
Sun : smokey spiced tomato risotto with feta

So £86.03/£200 so far.

JingsMyBucket

Morning folks. Just one spend to declare from yesterday. OH picked up two jars of peanut butter at M & S for £3.70. 

£85.47 spent so far. £164.53 / £250.00 remaining.

Yesterday I sampled the YS peaches I bought this weekend. They were unfortunately pure mush. Instead of composting them I sliced them up and boiled them into a compote with half a tsp of brown sugar, vanilla, lemon juice, salt and about a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. They are very delish and I was just eating them straight from the pot at several points yesterday. There's enough left to spoon over Greek yoghurt or mascarpone we have left in the fridge. 

EssexHebridean

I've totalled up the grocery spend for last month this morning to transfer off the card - just under £150 spent, so I'm happy with that. No farmers market visit last month, but there were general challenges around having to sort out shopping while we had Covid to be confronted.

This weekend's veg box is skipped as the value didn't look good this time round -I have changed the scheduling so we should get one the following weekend - that will get us back onto the more "interesting" week in the rotation, with luck. 

Not planning on anything to be spent from this month's budget until the weekend - it might be Friday, or it may end up being Saturday morning. I'm leaning towards Friday though as I can shop on my own then - oddly this always seems to work out cheaper than having MrEH along! 

Having thought through the fridge contents, I know there are a number of parsnips in there to be used, so I might make soup at the weekend - that would do Saturday lunch as well as several portions for the freezer, but I'll need to get another butternut squash I think to go into it as well. I've got the remainder of a tub of greek yogurt to be used - it's already a week over its date but still tasting fine. Did I read somewhere that yogurt can be successfully frozen? If so then I might separate out 250g of it to use the next time I make garlic flatbreads - I'll just need to get it out of the freezer ahead of time, then. I have a mixed salad accompaniment to a jacket potato later in the week in the meal plan to use up random salady-type items before they go bendy/squishy, and Friday's tea will be burgers and wedges I think. I've also gained the remains of a roast chicken from my Mum which I'll need to strip the carcass of this evening. That'll give us a risotto for tomorrow, possible enough for lunchtime rolls one day, and a portion of meat for the freezer for a meal next week, too. 

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Afternoon Grocery Challengers!

Skipping in with expenditure to declare........  Went over to the next town for a hair-cut (price has gone up by a third, so now getting marginal whether it's worth the trip 🙁) which  gave me access to a different (good) MrL, her0n foods and an abundance of chazzers 😊

I got the most wonderful box for £1.50 in MrL.  I could have bought pretty much any of the boxes there today, they all had worthwhile offerings.  But I plumped for a box with;  a grapefruit (random - but will use), 4 bell peppers (2 x yell, 1 orng and 1 red), 120g Asparagus (yes, I did weigh it, but about 1/2 a bunch), about 200g of green beans, 6 avocados, a punnet of cherry vine tomatoes, a punnet of blueberries, a punnet of 3 large mushrooms and about 600g of carrots. I am sooooooo going to use every scrap of the contents of that box!  

I spent a further £2.28 in MrL - including some w/meal rolls YS'd - we will use them before the end of the month, with the remaining burgers if for nothing else, so they went in the freezer.  I spent some money in Her0n too, £5.79 - but it was on pasta (casarecce), squash, oven chips and some jarred mint sauce.  I will count it at the mo, but the pasta definitely will be put in the store cupboard, and we won't drink all of the squash.  

So a toe-curling total of £9.56 spent, but I felt as thought I got VFM today.  Not something I get to say too often at the mo!

Greying X
  

SausageDogSandwich

Good Afternoon, a spend of £2.74 happened on saturday. Today is (hopefully) going to be the third NSD in row. Hoping to get another one in tomorrow and then will be having a t3sc0 delivery Thursday night. I’ve always found them to be more expensive than ald1, but for the items I wanted this week t3sc0 has worked out cheaper.
 I’ve downloaded a cashback app and used a few of the offers to try it out, just in case I don’t get the money back. But if it does work this is another way I’ll be able to save a few £s or get a few treats for the kids for free. 

 I’m also going to collect some bread and bananas via olio later, there’s never really anything near me and I don’t drive, but by luck there was a few things half a mile from nursery to collect today and I will be going to nursery at the right time to collect. I’ve requested a bunch of flowers from the same lady to give my daughter when she comes out of nursery. She loves to buy/receive a bunch but haven’t had the funds to do so recently so I’m sure she will be very happy 😊 

mumtoomany

A few spends over the weekend. Totalling £22.48. Milk, sugar and tinned beans in farmfoods, three tins for £1, cannellini and borlotti. Baked beans are four for £1. Gravy granules and dried peas in Tesco. Reduced sausage, crisps, bread flour and chocolate in Lidl. All of these were paid for using a free MasterCard from changing internet supplier. I'm going to declare them as if I'd paid real money. If i use vouchers from the credit card or Clubcard points I don't declare it, because I've amassed them spending on food. So new total is £933.60/£2640. Seems such a lot of money when you total it up for the year. Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx