May 2022 Grocery Challenge

Smoosh

I have a lot of spends to update on. 

Last week's shop came to £27.01 and I also spent £8.89 in the local shop on a few bits.

Then 5kg dog food and a few treats was £28.19.

Yesterday we did this week's food shop. £6.94 in the first shop then £22.13 in the next shop.

Meal plan:
1. Pizza
2. Kebab style wraps - mine with halloumi, OH's with chicken (YS from the freezer). With chips if wanted
3. Jacket potatoes. Mine with spaghetti and cheese, OH's with beans and cheese
4. Teriyaki noodles with Quorn steak strips
5. Quorn nuggets for me, YS sausages for OH with mash and spaghetti/beans
6. Pasta with butter and hard cheese, with garlic bread
7. Quorn chicken burger for me, beef burger for OH in YS buns with sweet potato fries

£186.77/£230.

We're supposed to still have one more food shop to do and I haven't bought cat food yet this month. Will have to see how it goes! 

atrixa

My total is now £151.59/£140

This is after a very small shop in A!di and a bigger one in Mr S. I've noticed that the price of the higher-ticket items seems relatively stable, but the stuff that normally costs less than about £2 has shot up. 

I'll be making pasta bake tomorrow and tonight's tea will be pasta and Bolognese sauce from the freezer. I'm going to turn into a tin of tomatoes at this rate 

otb666

545/600 7 days left The delivered shop had Iceland 10 Tempura King Prawns 130g

SORRY, OUT OF STOCK, Only one item which was better than previous weeks

MissRikkiC

I’m enjoying the discussion on the fruit and veg. We have a local supplier (actually a couple) that aren’t organic and I haven’t been overly impressed with the quality of the food, or often the variation either. They were approx £15 for an absolute huge amount but consisted largely of Sunday roast type veg instead of things such as peppers, mushrooms, salad etc. 

I recently found an organic supplier and whilst I have to collect it (annoyingly) the produce is considerably better quality. They also contain more items that I’d deem are in season and exciting such as Rainbow chard and beetroot. They’re more expensive than the £15 box but currently feel I’m getting good value for the items in there. That said, I may need to include the difference in my budget for a fortnightly box if I wish to continue. 

bupster

Just checking in to say I'm at £112.31 out of £150 - to be honest, I've been so crap, this is lower than I thought it would be! I really don't need much but I will have to go buy eggs, and will eventually run out of milk and bread, so I can't see this staying under budget. Thanks everyone for being so honest about your own budget - I feel much better and less !!!!!!!

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning Lovely GC'rs

A 40p expenditure to own up to.  I nipped to MrA to last night whilst LG went to their club, and whilst there wasn't much in the YS'd (chilled) section, I did get 6 avocados and 2 little gem lettuce for 40p, as everything that was left was only 10p a pack.  We like avocados (well, me & DH), so they will get eaten anyway, but the lettuce is idea for our buddha bowl tea tonight.  I cooked a 1kg brick pack of black eyed peas in the PC on Monday, and portioned them up into curry/stew/salad portions.  I shall be using a portion to make Senegalese Black-Eye bean salad which will be the basis for the buddha bowl.  (Actually, if anyone is interested in making 'salads' that have little to do with a leaf of wilted flat-leaf lettuce and a slice of rock hard tomato, you may want to take a look at the salads section of the website this recipe is on.  There's some interesting stuff.)  

I had a wander around the MrA store and noted that prices either seemed to be going up - tinned tommies are now 30p and 3kg bag of pasta £3.60 (was £3.30).....  or there was no stock of stuff 🙁

Have a great day all.

Greying X

JingsMyBucket

Just a quick update. Our Tesco order turned out to be less due to the frozen chicken pieces and the plant-based Philadelphia being out of stock. Phooey! I was really looking forward to trying the new vegan Philadelphia. I'll try seeing if it's in the actual store later this weekend. 

So our new totals are £140.79 spent so far. £109.21 / £250.00 remaining.

We can stretch out our veg stocks for another couple days. I'll order the veg and fruit box for Friday morning instead of tomorrow. Even still, I'm a bit wary to fill up the fridge again. I quite like seeing it a bit empty, or at least half full anyway. It also just needs a good old fashioned clean. 

I'll be walking to the high street today to run an errand and while there will drop into M & S for some ginger and cilantro for the curries later this week. I'll see if there are any YS deals to be had and may stop at the Iceland for some inexpensive meats as well. 

Have a good day all!

JingsMyBucket

@pamsdish Welcome to the forum, Ebony! We're a friendly bunch here.

JingsMyBucket

Wraithlady said:

JingsMyBucket said:

Naturelover22 said:

Will be making up breakfast and lunch for next 2 days at work tonight. Friends are visiting next weekend and I think I'll bake something, needs to be lactose free so will do some research and trial baking this weekend.

@na@Naturelover22 try a cake using almond flour. Usually olive oil cakes are good for this and you can add various fruits to them as well.  

Jings, that's gluten allergy not lactose - for some reason, it's always assumed that if you have one, you will have the other (no idea why).

I assume your friends have been, Naturelover, but I find substituting own-brand 'baking' margarine  is fine - basically, make sure there are no milk-derived ingredients in it, and use your normal (milk-free) recipe. Stork in tubs has whey /milk ingredients, whereas the stuff in foil doesn't.

(Go figure)

@Wraithlady I had actually meant what I said. A lot of almond flour cakes especially from the Mediterranean and the Middle East don't have milk in them at all. I was directly addressing the lactose free request of @Naturelover22. 

Greying_Pilgrim

Forgot to add on my earlier post that we had a buddha bowl on Monday (Omlette from the last of the eggs was the protein), and i utilised most of the bag of radish (from Thursday's MrL box), in a new-to-me salad.  I was so impressed that something with such "relatively" simple ingredients (which are storecupboard for me, but I realise not for all), could taste so good.  I will post a link to the recipe, but can you be aware that for some reason the website is posting images BIG - if you can get past them to the recipe, it's ok, but I don't know why the imaging is out of whack.  Also, I did salt some red onion first and had that in the salad too, and I used dried oregano, not fresh, as i have that in store.  I like caraway seeds, so have them in store, as I use them alot of times with cabbage, beetroot or brussels sprout dishes.  I got my jar from MrS for approx £1 I think - lasts a good while.  

Radish Salad recipe

It's a keeper of a recipe for me - as whilst I don't routinely buy radish, if I get them reduced price (there was actually a bag for 10p in MrA last night - but i resisted....), I want to do interesting things with them to ensure we eat them up.  I have discovered (much to my amazement) that radish are purportedly a good source of vit c.........

Greying X