June 2022 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Soontobeoap said:

Well today has been a very special day. It is my birthday. I have reached 66.i am finally a pensioner and we have more money coming in.I got taken out to lunch too. 

I started this challenge in January, hoping that we would not have to dip into the last of our savings! It has been a very long haul for the last 6 years as many of you will know but we have achieved our goal. (even if I haven't always stuck to budget!) Thanks for all of your help.

Next goal is to save for renovation of living room which is the last room to accomplish in our lovely downsize by the sea. It has been nearly a 9 year project but all the more exciting for the wait.

Anyway a couple more spends today in food warehouse. £5.0o on southern fried chicken drumsticks and £3.50on teabags (240for the price of 160) so that's £7.65 with the Tuesday 10%discount for OAP's

Happy belated birthday, @Soontobeoap.  Hope you had a lovely day.

In Grocery Challenge news, my plan for the Carrot & Cashew Nut Roast got binned on Monday night, along with several of the carrots. (Well, composted.) There just wasn't enough carrot flesh, once I'd removed the decomposing ones.  Instead, I added the last of the carrots to Monday's mung bean curry and defrosted (yet another) "butter chicken roast" that we'd got on YS for £1.80 at MrT's.  (Full price, those things cost over £5.  I have no idea why anyone would pay that for one.  They just aren't worth it.)  I roasted the chicken last night, together with the last of the potatoes.  Dinner tonight is now going to be a pie made with leftover roast chicken, a chunk of roast gammon and some frozen veg, covered with ready-rolled puff pastry.

I also had to bin two of the three onions we had in stock, so we are now totally out of fresh veg.  Fortunately, I have a couple of tubs of pre-cooked onion/mushroom mix in the freezer.

- Pip

MissRikkiC

We’re heading into town today so I’ll pick up the items we could do with. 

Bread, water (coffee machine to prevent as much limescale build up), crackers and Father’s Day gifts. We will also be around the whole foods place in the market so will get some butter beans since they’re now 60p a can in MrTs. Eeek. I’m sure they used to feature in the 3 for £1 offer they did! 

We also loaded up on dairy free milk yesterday for my LO. I did some research into child nutrition (not my bag… I only understand adult nutrition!) and seems that because she can tolerate soya (often with lactose issues the same goes for soya), we can be giving her that instead of the oat milk. It’s got higher levels of fat and protein and the MNS brand also has a few added extras such as iodine. At £1 per litre, im happier with this than £1.90 for the oat milk we were giving her although if she didn’t manage with it then we’d need to pay out for that instead. Still more than milk, however, once I’m through the next 3 weeks, I’ll probably drop my morning coffee to espresso instead so won’t need as much milk then anyway!

Desperadoo

Week1 of the month done and £87 spent so put £28 into savings. Although have £460 for month I am doing it weekly 

of the £87 again to much of it eating out £42.50 !!!  Totally shocked at that (again as thought we were being sensible ) as this was only out of the grocerie account as were also a few extras .

NO JUDGEMENT PLEASE 

McDonalds £13.38
McDonalds £4.47
Chip Shop £12.65
Cafe £12.00
Dinner out saturday  £28 ( not from budget as extra money hubby had and paid
Chinese yesteday £8 ( not from budget as had some change in my purse )

So the reality is £78.50 eating out for 2 in a week !!!!!!  Has to stop

So this week my challange is to NOT have any carry outs or eat out !!!   Its rediculous and i am printing this off and sticking it to the fridge as a reminder when I look in there and think " nothing to make " as in reality there is to just make it and not take the easy option.  Will do my weight loss a favour as well 

Soontobeoap

@desperadoo, you can do it. Recognising where you overspend is one of the hardest bits.
I also like your idea of putting money saved from budget into savings. Perhaps if I adopted that mindset, I would not go over budget every month! 
Have spent £2.90 today on apple juice and mushrooms. 

sprozza

A couple of small spends this week so far. 75p on some sanitary items as was caught out whilst at work so had to pop to Sains, then we went to Mr T to get a couple of birthday cards whilst there got some yellow sticker items, fruit loaf for 29p so picked up 2 and a wholemeal loaf for 25p. We also needed some milk. Total spend so far £200.62/£400.

 

DawnW

Weekly shop today, and I spent £41.80. I also bought tomato fertiliser, some hay fever meds and some contributions for the local food bank, but these items come from other budgets. So £114.24 / £230 spent so far. I managed to get quite a good £1.50 veg box, but was frustrated to see when I got it outside that it contained two packs of tomatoes and a cucumber that I had already bought   Not sure how to get round that.... Still, I sliced up one pack of tomatoes - organic ones with only 4 largish tomatoes in the pack (goodness knows what that would have cost) and put them on top of the lasagne that I made tonight. It is a big one, so there will be plenty for tomorrow as well. There were also lots of other things such as clementines, an orange, a couple of lemons, pears, peaches, onions, a few potatoes, peppers, an aubergine etc, so well worth the £1.50.

PearlRose

"Family of 3: The average weekly food bill for a family of 3 (two adults and one younger child) is around £119—£78 spent on the weekly food shop and £41 spent on food out."

Thank you so much for sharing the statistics. I have been very frustrated at not being able to keep our grocery bill within £350 (that's about £80 a week, and we are a family of 3).

Hope it's not too late to join in the June grocery challenge. Our grocery bill for the past five months is about £400 a month, including food, cleaning products, toiletries, toilet rolls etc. So for June, I will challenge myself a little bit by aiming at £370. So far, I had one trip to Lidl for £13.05 (after a £20 voucher). Recently defrosted the chest freezer and hope to finish what we've already got before doing a weekly shopping.

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Evening GC'rs!

Fantastic news - LG ate the same tea as us tonight!  And it was Hungarian casserole, that they've not eaten before😊It did take them a while, but ate it they did! I hoped they might, as the actual stew itself is quite sweet.  I don't mean sugary sweet, but the red peppers (I didn't have green to put in), and paprika, along with the celery and carrot that I put in my version (had a couple of carrots that were going to mush, so managed to save about 3/4 of each by using them in the dish), gives a slightly sweet tone.  And butter beans - I mean what's offensive about a butter bean?

I cooked this stew in the PC.  I timed how long it took to get to pressure - 6.5 minutes with today's weather (quite fair at the time), and I cooked the stew for 5 minutes with natural depressure.  

Yoghurt and choice of fruit from the fruit bowl for dessert.



Frugal Hedonist - I haven't noticed any food prices coming down.  All I've noticed is rising prices, or shrinkflation (particularly prevalent in frozen veg bags - same price for smaller packs), or products disappearing (totally) off the shelves.  But falling prices?  Nah.

Greying X

ragz_2

I bought two TGTG bays yesterday, from a small co-0p I go near on my way home from work, as I was doing a late shift. £6.58.
Both had a tub of mini flapjacks, a bag of sliced white rolls and a pack of leeks. So 2 each of those, plus a pack of 5% mince, a pack of 2 salmon fillets, a pack of 8 sausages and a pack of melon chunks. Not too bad but not entirely sure it was worth it.

Used the sausages with dinner tonight - jacket potatoes and used up some of the YS stuff I'd bought on Monday (coleslaw, hummus, sandwich filler), plus beans, cheese and my leftover dinner from last night (curry) that I didn't fancy after work as I was back late and have a sore throat.

Not sure what to do with 2 salmon fillets (froze them) as there are 5 of us, though we may have some frozen ones already. I don't really like it, but will eat it and DD definitely won't but everyone else will. Maybe risotto? Pasta bake? 

goldfinches

Happy Birthday @DizzyMissIzzy

Thanks to @Greying_Pilgrim for the DIY dal mix recipe which I made yesterday evening using the garam masala version and was delicious and very filling, that's definitely made it into my successful recipes folder and will be repeated.

Another NSD here for me and I'm beginning to be able to see the bottom of the veg chiller in my fridge and some space in the freezer, hooray for using up what you have eh!