July 2022 Grocery Challenge

Caroby

Second and last main shop of the month done yesterday. Didn't buy anything since first shop apart from a bottle of lemon squash £1.25 from the local co-op.
Started in Lidl, spent £36.91 inc 3 perfect courgettes for 63p (sold loose at 99p per kg), 2.5kg potatoes 99p, 4 lemons 50p, 6 pears 79p. The wholemeal bread we've been buying there for years has gone from 49p to 59p, now up again to 65p.
Aldi next on our way back home, spent £18.65 inc 1.5kg carrots 49p, milled flaxseed 200g £1.29 (great egg replacer and thickener for things like chopped tomatoes, stews etc, lasts ages as three heaped teaspoons in water will replace 2 eggs in cakes, nutloaf, hm burgers), tomato puree 34p. Noticed a few things cheaper in Aldi than Lidl, tom puree 5p less, Fruit & Fibre cereal 10p, pumpkin seeds 10p.
Then to Tesco, spent £33.69 inc almonds 500g £4.00, Alpro 4 x 125g raspberry and cranberry yogs £1.50, 4 nectarine 49p, 5 oranges 60p, 6 Plant Chef herby bangers £1.35, 900ml salted caramel iced dessert £2.50 and 9 things for food bank £2.90.
Total spent this month so far £173.23
Will probably buy some more fresh veg before the end though. Currently got the following fruit and veg: potatoes, carrots, broccoli, cauliflower, sweet peppers, courgettes, celery, cherry tomatoes, beetroot, lemons, oranges, apples, bananas, pears, nectarines, red onions, iceberg lettuce, and in the freezer spinach, green beans, peas, sweetcorn, parsnips and berries.
Tinned: chopped tomatoes, marrowfat peas, kidney beans, chickpeas, mandarin segments, baked beans, pease pudding.
Store cupboard includes nooch (nutritional yeast, yummy umami cheesy taste), walnuts, almonds, pumpkin seeds, apricots, wholemeal pasta, brown basmati rice, herbs, spices.
Less healthy but happy stuff inc 6 pack of crisps, bottle of Hobgoblin beer, biscuits, dark chocolate, iced dessert.
None of it will be wasted, especially the chocolate!

Soontobeoap

@Suffolk_lass I must admit that I did my first shop with Morrisons last week and as I didn’t refuse something at the door ( didn’t notice I didn’t have the right number for price) they were not happy about refunding. In fact, I complained about the abrupt email I received. After some wrangling I did get a £5.00 voucher code.  Most other supermarkets have been more than happy to exercise a bit of trust in their customers.

I have a big Tesco order coming on Monday and am finding it very difficult to make enough room in freezer. Don’t know how family’s manage. I have a tall American freezer but wouldn’t have room for a months frozen food in it. Meal plan not in place this week, just desperately using up bits and bobs. Sweet and sour chicken with rice tonight using up left over sauce and then I will dig through to find something else bulky. Had intended to eat up beef joint for a roast but couldn’t stand that in this heat!

have started picking runner beans from garden and the cherry tomatoes are coming on nicely. Out of all of the carrots I sewed, one has grown! I am about to check if it is too late to sew more.

hope everyone is surviving in this heat.

K9sandFelines

£120 again please @elsiepac, thank you. 

Finally joining July, hi everybody.
My month started two days ago, and so far I have spent just under £20 of £120.

I was over last month, so hoping to be on the nail this month or under. 

London_1

Hi Chums best laid plans etc, M25 was awful and what should have been me getting home around 3.30-4.00 ended up at gone 6,30pm so shopping can wait until tomorrow far too hot and exhausted to be traipsing around the shops.I have brought back some eggs so its definitely an omelette for dinner tonight I luckily had a dented tin of rice I had put in the fridge before I went awat so its nice and cold so some of that will do for pudding. I have a carton of UHT in th fridge so enough milk for cereal in the morning so no spend as yet  

I have the fan on full blast and I'm sitting with my feet up doing absolutely zilch, far too hot to worry about unpacking ,that too can be done tomorrow,4-5 hours on the motorway knocks the stuffing out of you ,even with the air-con on it was warm. But hey ho this is the UKchances are as soon as the children break up it willtip down  so 15 day until the end of the month and £30.00 should be a doddle as I shall be using up more stuff from my indoor stash  

JackieO xx

thriftwizard

£48 added, spent at the market this morning - more than I'd hoped, but not wildly so. It should now be possible to "coast" through this sweltering weekend with just 3 of us at home, without rushing out to buy more stuff! I'm adjusting plans so that there'll be a minimum of cooking going on; roasting the chicken in the slow-cooker overnight, etc.  I baked some salmon dressed in mustard on spinach leaves for supper tonight, and whacked in 3 trays of cherry tomatoes that I was given "for the chickens" at the market; about 2/3rds were still perfectly edible by us, although I wouldn't have wanted to keep them for any length of time. So they were dusted with herbs & spices, sprayed with balsamic vinegar, drizzled with olive oil & roasted alongside the salmon; there's now a huge bowl of tomato sauce cooling on the side in the kitchen, that could be used on pasta, blended down further as a soup (DD1 will not eat cold food, it's an option for her when we're all eating salad) or reduced a bit further as a side dish in its own right. Any not used up will be frozen for future reference after the weekend. There'll be seafood "paella" using up fish & prawns in the freezer & there's plenty of salad. There was ham already, plenty of eggs and I'm digging new potatoes at the allotment & picking baby courgettes from a bucket right outside the kitchen door. I think we'll survive!

SausageDogSandwich

Hi everyone, hope you are all doing well. I have spent quite a bit since last posting, I have got my sons cake ready for the weekend, but this was already taken out the 150 so is accounted for. Also let him make a list of what he would like to eat, so this has been purchased from the birthday fund as I did not want to be worrying about staying in budget for birthdays. Freezer is now full with *party food* and I am not sure I’m going to be able to have the oven on with the heat. We did get some picnic stuff aswell, so will see how we go 

Anyway! Between icelan and asd@, then Aldi for chicken, stir fry and my little girl bought her dad some flowers because he was feeling poorly (turns out to be covid) I have spent £37.71 from the grocery budget. Which would just about be ok if that was it for a few days however I know I need a couple of things already tomorrow. After that I am planning on hiding in the house until the heatwave passes   

Total so far £85.54/134   

PipneyJane

joedenise said:

Pip - do you like scotch eggs?  You could deskin the sausages and add some herbs to the sausage meat and use to wrap hard boiled eggs to make scotch eggs.  You can either bake them like that (which is what I do) or egg and breadcrumb before baking.

Another thing I used to do years ago when the kids were little was to use sausage meat and make meatballs and then fry them off and add to a sweet and sour sauce and serve with rice.  It was one of the more "grown up" foods that they liked when they were pre teen!

Something like La Potee would be another option.  I use the Delia Smith recipe usually.

I'm sure if you googled sausage recipes there would be loads of options!

Let us know what you decide on.

Thanks for the suggestions @joedenise.  While I like scotch eggs, it had never occurred to me to make them with those sausages.  It’ll probably be a few weeks before I even make an attempt to do anything with them.  (We’re away for 10 days at the end of the month, going to the Commonwealth Games.)

I have a shop to declare:  £55.17 spent in L!dl this evening. (Anyone would think I lived there, the number of times we’ve been this week.)  “Highlights” include tinned sweetcorn still on offer at 3-cans-for-£1.15 (6 cans bought), two packets of YS steak at £4.89 and £3.49, Salmon fillets 6 for £9.99, butter 2x£1.72, 750ml extra virgin olive oil £2.59x2, 1.5kg loose baking potatoes 88p, and a tub of strawberry ice-cream £1.99.  

Don’t know about your local shops, but I was really surprised by the gaps on the shelves tonight.  Virtually no fresh fruit or veg, no yoghurts, no quiches, no fresh pizzas, no frozen pizzas, no frozen fish and virtually no ice-cream.  With the exception of raw meat/fish, almost everything that could be turned into an instant meal had vanished.  Anyone would think there was a heatwave on and nobody wants to cook!

The above brings our total GC spend to £118.10/£140, leaving £21.90 for the rest of the month.  

It’s do-able but we will need fresh veg:  carrots, mushrooms, salad leaves, onions, possibly more sweet potatoes and/or potatoes.  At least I won’t need to buy fresh milk, since I have about a pint left in the fridge and 3L in the freezer (but it needs 2 days to defrost in our fridge).  I am still in two minds about whether to have the Meat Fund pay for the steak and the salmon.

- Pip





ETA:  DH just phoned me to say that he saw my text about no ice-cream - I was planning on surprising him with his favourite desert - so he’d popped into the c0-0p next to his office and bought a tub of Ben & Jerry’s, with two free pizzas on the side.  He also took advantage of one of their member offers, so got 75p off on his tub of ice-cream. £4.25 spent on this “meal deal”.  

Total spend is now £122.35/£140 leaving £17.65 for the rest of the month.

Greying_Pilgrim

PipneyJane said:

....... £55.17 spent in L!dl this evening. (Anyone would think I lived there, the number of times we’ve been this week.)  “Highlights” include tinned sweetcorn still on offer at 3-cans-for-£1.15 (6 cans bought)......

.....Don’t know about your local shops, but I was really surprised by the gaps on the shelves tonight......  

Pip - I thought that I had read on here before about that sweetcorn offer - I think you must have mentioned it..... last week?  It's not on at our local MrL.  They have 4 small tins (150g) for £1.29 (down from £1.35 I think), or the larger 300g tins are 49p 'standalone' price.  What are the size of the tins in your offer?  I bought the 4 pack, as the tins are the right size for a meal accompaniment for us, and will be useful on our SC holiday, and I'm taking advantage of LG liking sweetcorn whilst I can 😊👍

Re the empty shops, I was in MrM on Tuesday night whilst LG was at their club.  I was flabbergasted at how little was on the fresh produce shelves.  I don't know if it had all been removed into cold storage (I was in there at about 6.30pm), or whether it had all been sold, or divvied up for TGTG.  But for example, there were NO bananas on the display gondala - not a single banana.  No carrots, few potatoes.  It literally was as if the store was closing/closing down.  I don't use MrM much at all anymore, and whilst I know our local one is a popular store, and serves quite a crowd, even I've never seen the shelves that bare before, not even in lockdown.  

Greying X

JingsMyBucket

Checking in to declare some shopping trips and to correct my Tesco order estimate. Somehow it ended up being £3 more than anticipated even though one of the items wasn't available. Maybe some of the items went off sale between ordering and delivery? The total came out to £136.80 (vs. estimated £132.83).

Today we went to the high street for errands and hit the stores. £13.11 at Savers for foil, 2 Neutradol, 3 tubes of OH's dental fixative, and toilet discs. I wanted to visit there just to check prices on antiperspirant/deodorant and discovered the ones I buy are a lot cheaper. I'll go there next time.

Next we visited the halal shop and bought a 5kg sack of basmati rice, ramen, and 2 packs of garlic powder for £15.00. We also had a good chin wag and told the guy about our trip. He let us leave our items at the store while we visited other shops since the basmati sack was so heavy.

Off we went to Boots to collect prescriptions and then to Superdrug to buy a couple toiletries for £6.61. On the way back to the halal shop, we stopped by a charity shop and we found a nice bright yellow hoodie and beautiful green wool sweater for me which cost a total of £5.00 so I'm very happy with those scores. After that we returned to our halal shop and spent another £3.79 there for garlic and couscous before heading home. 

Just put in an Amazon order for KIND nut bars, peppermint tea, and 3 different tubs of Mae Ploy Thai curry pastes (yellow, red, and massaman curry) that totaled £33.86. I highly recommend Mae Ploy; the pastes are authentic and last forever. 

£263.03 / £250 spent so far. 

What a spendy day! We're totally over budget! I knew this was going to be a stock up month but I was hoping we'd have at least some money left to last us the rest of the month. We're still two weeks to go but our fridge is full of fresh veg and we likely have enough meat to last us a while. There's milk in the freezer, lots of yoghurt in the fridge to keep us going, especially next week when the heat hits. I may just give us a £30 limit for the rest of the month to get incidentals like more toilet paper tomorrow and a buffer. Speaking of which I'm going to head to Aldi tomorrow so that I can get that done before the heat really hits us so I can avoid schlepping TP in the sweltering heat. 

Mr. Jings made a great soup out of the veg he harvested from the garden yesterday after we returned home and I'll do some meal planning and cooking tomorrow. Have a good evening everyone. 

------------------------

ETA: Actual spent £229.17

We're not actually over budget! I knew it felt weird. Turns out I double counted the £33.86 order from Amazon. We actually have £20.83 left in the budget for the next couple weeks. That feels a lot better in terms of breathing room. That should cover toilet paper, any yoghurt if we run out and any YS meat bargains we can find. Whew! 

London_1

Well , I went and got all my fruit and veg this afternoon and out of my £30.00 I spent £15.37 leaving me with £14 63 for odds and ends for the rest of the month.

I drew some of my squirellied away cash for stocking up the freezer and spent £80.35 and restocked it, so have very little to buy for a good several weeks. So quite happy if a bit worn out after shopping.Spent a couple of hours de-boxing things and rewrapping stuff to freeze in portions, boxes take up too much room in the freezer.
I thought as next week will be very warm, I'd raather do everthing today and stay out of the heat  

JackieO x

 
July budget for last two weeks £30

spent £15.37 /£14 63 left.