July 2022 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Greying_Pilgrim said:

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

Hi @Greying_Pilgrim, yes, it was me who’d mentioned it.  The tins are the 300g (285g drained weight) Freshona brand, shelf-price 49p, but 38p with the offer.  They are the same size as MrT’s cheapest but give you 25g more sweetcorn.

Since it was L!dl, who don’t have a huge amount of storage space, my initial thought was that they didn’t get a delivery because it’d been stuck somewhere in the heat.    

- Pip

PipneyJane

Soontobeoap said:

…

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!

….

I feel your pain re the Freezer, @Soontobeoap.  I’ve moaned on here before about how our current American-style fridge-freezer is considerably smaller on the inside than its predecessor, even though they have the same external dimensions.  We don’t have an ice-dispenser, which helps.  (When I first looked at getting a fridge of this style, I checked out the freezer dimensions with/without an ice-maker.  Without gave you a third extra storage space.)

The only suggestions I can make for squeezing extra things into the freezer are:

1. Decant from the original container, if it has a lot of empty space in it.  That’s what I did with the lamb cutlets we bought earlier this week.  Huge tray, not a lot of meat.
2. Stack.  Most of my freezer containers are those plastic take-away food boxes.  Some are recycled from takeaways, but years ago I bought a bag load from the Chinese cash-n-carry, Wing-Yip, for a couple of Pounds.
3. Freeze flat or in rectangles because modular shapes take up less room.  For example, if you get a tray of chicken breasts from the butcher, bag them individually, squish up into a rectangular shape and then tuck all the bags into the bottom of one of those aforementioned takeaway boxes and freeze them in there.  Once frozen, you can remove them and put them in a freezer drawer or leave them in the box until needed.    I do this with mince, too.

This is a picture of my old freezer, not a lot of empty space there:



- Pip (yes, I win at Freezer Tetris)

PipneyJane

PearlRose said:

Sainsbury's £62.63
Aldi £47.93
Iceland £5
Amazon Fresh £40.95

Grocery spending so far £156.51/ £400

Have been having overnight oats for breakfast recently, they are really nice for the current weather. Got Scott's Porage Original Porridge Oats (1kg) for £1.50 from Amazon Fresh. One box lasts about five to seven days for us.

@PearlRose, that’s a good price compared to what I saw in Sainsbugs yesterday while shopping with my MIL.  I think they sold them for £2.50 a kilo.  However, have you considered buying own-brand instead?  I do most of my shopping in L!dl and their 1kg pack of porridge oats are 75p.

”Every little helps!” to quote a well known supermarket.

- Pip. (No, I didn’t buy anything for us.).

Wraithlady

PipneyJane said:

Good evening All

Does anyone have a good recipe for using up boring sausages?  You know the ones that are cheap, have as much texture as foam rubber, and are pretty much tasteless too.  

Off the top of my head, the 2 we use most often are Cider sausages w pasta and Sausage & prawn Jambalaya - we tend to cook the sausages first, then freeze them as it saves a lot of time and, with these, there are enough other flavours in the recipes that the flavour (or lack of) doesn't make a difference.

Sausage and prawn jambalaya: https://www.bbcgoodfood.com/recipes/sausage-prawn-jambalaya (we've tweaked it over the years, but this is the original) - we've substituted sweetcorn or mushrooms for the prawns when I'd run our of the latter and it seemed to work.

Can't find the cider sausages recipe online - I copied it from the back of a pasta packet whilst at Uni. Think it's 2-3 sausages each, 1 onion (chopped), oil, carrot (chopped), 200-300 ml cider, flour, bit of mustard to taste and herbs, seasoning to taste. I chop the sausages first (as they're already cooked) - fry up the onion and the carrot for 5 minutes, add a little more oil and add the flour and herbs, stir until the oil has been absorbed then add the cider slowly then the mustard, season to taste and add the sausages. Cook over lowish heat for 30-40 minutes. Serve w pasta

nannygladys

I haven't been spending much at all this month as I've been using the freezer, stores and allotment, but anything I have spent has been added to Sig. I must admit it's mainly milk and salad stuff that isn't yet ready on the lottie. 
I did go to tosco last week as I had vouchers to use but bought future stock stuff and only went over by less than 50p, so was happy about that but did notice they seem to have lessened their variety of lowest tosco brand goods, which isn't a good thing when watching the pennies.
Nannyg

London_1

Dropped one of my grandsons off to work this morning and he works right by Asda's so nipped in to see what the meat was like and they were reduced lots of stuff and I got a great haul for my freezer
2kilos 5% fat mince £7.36.

3 large chicken breast £2.70,

5 boneless chicken thighs £2.20. I will make these into Hunters chicken with some bacon and sauce

1. pack of  Heck spring chicken sausages 10 to a pack £2.00,these I will have with a jacket spud or with egg and chips  

6 very lean good sized pork loin steaks for £2.87  ( dipped them in egg and coated with sage and onion stuffing before freezing)
nice midweek meal with mash and steamed veg

Even without working out how many dinners I can get from the mince thats 19 meals for me with possible another 16 portions of mince for cottage pie,chilli's lasagne or currys so 35 meals for £17.13 around 60p per meal plus veg so I now have a full freezer once more and absolutely nothing to buy apart maybe from fresh fruit and veg for the coming month.

I just got there at the right time I think there was lots left as well but I had sufficient to top my freezer up so I am a very happy lady My purse has now shut with a resounding clunk for the forseable  

I took the meat cash from my squirelled stash, so I still have £14.63 left for incidentals in my budget this month.If its not used it will go to my three month saving for left over budget cash.

JackieO xx

Greying_Pilgrim

PipneyJane said:

Hi @Greying_Pilgrim, yes, it was me who’d mentioned it.  The tins are the 300g (285g drained weight) Freshona brand, shelf-price 49p, but 38p with the offer.  They are the same size as MrT’s cheapest but give you 25g more sweetcorn.

- Pip

Thanks Pip - That offer definitely isn't on at our MrL - unless they haven't altered the SEL to reflect the offer, which wouldn't surprise me.... 🙁  

Greying X

Blackcats

Doing ok (I think) this month.  Lots of fruit and veg in stock - OH got a fruit and veg box at lidlee and it showed on the receipt as 20p!  Last time he went he didn't buy a box as it wasn't on the list 🤦‍♀️ and this time although the box had 5 peppers in it he still bought peppers because they were on the list 🤷‍♀️.  Tomato and red pepper soup this week despite the heatwave.

I really should come in on or under budget this month as I have

£190 remaining 

JIL

Boring sausages here are deskinned and mixed with stuffing mix and egg, plus any other bits such as red onion or chopped bacon. Then they become sausage rolls, or a large sausage plat (hard boiled eggs in middle) or just plain stuffing balls, that are cooked and refrozen to take out in portions with chicken or pork. 

You may be able to deskin them, flatten them into rounds and do a mcds sausage and egg muffin. 

katkin

I stepped away from the interwebz for a week and have 49 posts to read here! Going to enjoy some time catching up with a coffee in the shade now.

Lots of spend happened very quickly with in the last week - huge T order and a naughty purchase of crispy chilli oil from an Asian grocers. So very much worth it as it's addictive and very moreish but a little goes a long way.

GC budget is £250 this month, reduction of £25 on last month.
Spend to date: £224.60
Balance: £25.40

£25.40 for the next 2 weeks - £12.70 a week to top up fresh veggies, salad and milk. Can I keep away from the non-essentials, hmmm looks like I'm not going to have a choice if I want to stick with my challenge.

It's going to start getting tough for me now in I reckon as I'm now having to be super conscious and uber planned. But to think I started 2022 spending c£500 per month, good inroads are being made. 

Maybe we will have heating this winter!