July 2022 Grocery Challenge

mumtoomany

Another £1.50 for milk. Half a bottle of milk thrown away! New fridge ordered, being delivered on Saturday. This will be the fourth fridge in the kitchen since we moved here. We've been here less than nine years! The new one, hopefully,will last look longer, I've ordered a Meile. Add that to the costs of moving DD3 to Yorkshire two weeks ago, five hour journey, full tank of diesel for us and paid for half tank of petrol for DD. Belts are going to be tightened again!! Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xx

pamsdish

Elisheba said:

pamsdish said:

£8.26 in A1D1 restocking salads, shop was phenomenally busy, picked up some y.s raspberries, got cream and coconut milk, I want to experiment making magnum type cream ice lollies with crushed raspberries in, also a vacuum pack of beetroot, making beetroot jelly, have s.f jelly crystals, and it sounds like a nice addition.

Oooh, do you have a recipe for the fake Magnums? Sounds amazing. 

• 5g Xylitol in the nutribullet, pulsed to a powder. 35g unsweetened cocoa powder added along with 1/4tsp fine pink Himalayan salt, 1/4tsp xanthan gum, 2tsp vanilla extract, 200g of full fat coconut milk and 2tbsp dark rum. Blend til smooth.
• In a bowl whisk 250g double cream to soft peaks. Add the chocolate mixture and mix til no white streaks appear.
• Pour into lolly moulds and freeze before decorating...I don`t add the sweetener or the rum, decorating is dipping in melted chocolate and nuts if required.

Finstickle

A bit late posting - but Monday's Lidl shop was only £68.44!!! and I've not had to go back for anything!!!

There were a couple of off-list items including 4 x Soreen loaves for 40p (2 went in the freezer) and they had run out of the cheap chocolate so spent a bit more on that - DH is very partial and eats a lot of chocolate.

Really pleased with that shop and we are away at the in-laws this weekend (Fri night - Sun night) so again won't need anything until at least Monday.

Current total is £263/£465

CynicalPinnacle

Some spends to report: £6.25 at the local bakery and £6.50 at Mr Sparks.

£229.88 / £550, £320.12 remaining

Being accountable here is really helping bring down both our spending and wasting of food, I haven't thrown out any dry end bits of bread at all this month, and we're having a lot more home cooked food.

The 5yo isn't really on board though, trying to expand their food tastes beyond pizza, pasta, cheese, sausages and burgers is a bit of a struggle at the moment. I added the last of the parmesan to the polenta yesterday and it was spat straight out. My attempts to use cheese as a gateway drug to other foodstuffs are clearly failing. Baked sweet potatoes has been a hit, as long as they are smothered in cheese, and a bit of salad on the side has been accepted.

If anyone's got any ideas for picky eaters, I'm all ears! I'm not noting down the food waste from the 5 yo's rejected food, it would bring me down too much, but that's where most of our food waste comes from at the moment.

joedenise

I know it's boring that they'll only eat certain things but perhaps you could give them a spoonful of something different along with their pizza, sausages or whatever - just for them to try.  Hopefully some different things might become acceptable!

Greying_Pilgrim

Good Morning GC'rs!

Spends to report.  And the depressing news that 4 pints of whole milk in MrL is now £1.45......🙁 Up 10p from last week 🙁Needless to say, our local MrL hadn't altered the SEL - the price hike came to light at the till when the computer got my bill to more than I had, adding up as I went round 🙁 Didn't bother with a £1.50 box today - there were a couple, but honestly, it wouldn't have cost much more to buy the contents of either box, and I wasn't overly fussed about the contents enough to buy 🙁

In total today's food shop came in at £24.65, across MrL and MrS.  So my total is now at £105.60, purely on food, but I'm going to add £20 to that total, as over the week, I have been visiting other places, and have picked up some new kitchenalia and whilst not strictly food, I don't really have any other means to fund those purchases, so as I bought a couple of bits of food too - I did a trawl of places like FF, Iceyland, BeeandM etc etc - I shall lump it all together and call it £20 (it's actually a bit under, but I lose shrapnel hither and yon to school, donations etc, so £20 it is).

I have been blessed in getting some items from the food waste diversion scheme.  It all helps, and I don't mind the 'what to make for tea' element that it brings to meal planning - especially if stuff has to be used up quickly.

Today's luck was finding 20p in a car park.  

£125.60/200

Greying X

Bluegreen143

@CynicalPinnacle we’ve struggled for years with our kids’ being a bit picky (they aren’t the total worst in fairness to them but were actually getting harder to feed over time).

A few months ago we put our food down. I’d always read not to bribe with dessert or be firm as you don’t want to teach them to have a sweet tooth or make dinner negative. But honestly that’s what we’ve now been doing and it’s working so well. We often give the veg first and they have to eat a (small) portion before we will serve dinner, there’s a bit of grumbling but they do it.

They used to refuse chicken on the bone and were starting to reject breast too in most meals but now love chicken again and will eat drumsticks so we can have roast dinner or BBQ chicken again. 

They are getting better with cooked veg (already liked raw crunchy veg) and will eat peas and broccoli. 

DS hasn’t eaten yoghurt in any form for four years and is now eating it. Just kids’ sweetened yoghurts (I used to give them Greek yoghurt) but it’s a start and he’s happy with cheap Lidl ones. As he doesn’t drink milk it all helps with calcium. 

We do offer either fruit or sweets or dessert now after most meals but they don’t get it unless they’ve made a very good stab at the protein and veg. Less fussed about carbs as not the healthy bit. DS has never liked potatoes, even as a baby, but I ask him to have one bite and then he can have a sliced of buttered bread instead to help fill him up. 

Dunno if any of that helps but since channeling my own mum and being much firmer it really has helped and the initial upset only lasted a few meals, now they just get it’s the way it is.

I haven’t really pushed it with different meats yet, but they will eat different flavours like mild curries more readily now.

DS will eat anything in a wrap I’ve discovered so burritos, fajitas etc but also if I want to make a new curry or similar I serve it with pittas or wraps so he will eat it 🤣 doesn’t work with DD as she eats the filling and wrap separately 😆

My kids are 6 and 3 so similar ages with yours.

ancientmum

Good afternon 
I've been out of the loop for a few weeks , been away on holiday which was fab but I'm finding it difficult to get back to real life and have just caught up with the thread.  I won't join the challenge officially this month but I'm keeping an eye on spends and will update my  signature later.  
Re- stocking basics has come with a few suprises:  the Aldi seeded loaf that I normally buy is now 99p, the similar one in Sains is 79p, but was sold out when I got round to shopping.
I managed to get a couple of  YS meat pies for about a quarter of the normal price - our local Sains doesn't usually do big reductions so may be due to the weather. They can stay in the freezer until needed.  
The alliotment is supplying beans, courgettes and potatoes  and I can't wait for the tomatoes to ripen, they taste do much better home grown.

mumtoomany

Dentist this am. Loose crown, luckily as we are so poor, I don't pay. £23 spent at the green grocers, 4 big bags of chocolate biscuits, bag of sweets for OH, 38 apples, 2 bags of grapes, 25kg new potatoes, dozen big red peppers, 25 vine tomatoes, 24 nectarines, and a big box of mushrooms. Also bought the other shopping we needed from M&S, I had £20 worth of vouchers so only spent £1.70 of real money. Hopefully won't need much else this month. Total, for the year, to date now stands at £1467.30/£2640. Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xx

thriftwizard

Just added £55.71 to my total for this week's shopping from the butchers, bakers and supermarket; I need to keep it low (£40-£45) at the market tomorrow (fish, fresh fruit & veg) because there are two more weekends to go this month. But it's a quiet week; DS3's away upcountry all week & DD1 & partner are away for the weekend, so I can get away with some easy-on-the-pocket stuff like baked HG potatoes tonight with stir-fried allotment veg & LO chilli from the freezer, HM pizza topped with whatever's lurking in the fridge, omelette from home-produced eggs, etc. Also mostly minimal cooking!