July 2022 Grocery Challenge

wishus

The end of my July budget is going to be a challenge I reckon. 

Spent £5.80 today grabbing Heatwave 'essentials' - squash, Professor Peppy, mint choc ice creams, a bit of salad, bread and wholemeal tortillas. I think chicken fajitas for dinner tonight, and refried bean burritos tomorrow. £17.49 remaining for 9 more days. Eek!

Bluegreen143

I’m currently pondering whether reducing the use of my freezer would save me money. I feel like it’s become a bit of a food graveyard where things go to hide and get freezer burn 😆 I think I’d like to stop using it so much for random bits and bobs and try hard to make proper meals with things before I freeze them. 

Things which don’t tend to get wasted in the freezer:
- fruit & veg (if I stick to the types we actually use)
- chicken, mince, sausages (meat the whole family actually eat)
- cooked HM “ready meals” or meal components I’ve batched up (eg marinaded meat, made up burgers or meatballs, pasta sauce, soup, stews) and frozen in family size servings (or single servings if it’s for my lunch)
- emergency beige food (chips, chicken nuggets)
- batched HM muffins and flapjacks for school snacks
- full loaves of bread or packs of pittas
- ice cream, ice lollies etc
- batch cooked chickpeas, but other beans seem to get forgotten (as I use them less) so think I’ll keep buying chickpeas dry to batch cook but switch to tins for other beans 

Things which just get lost in there and go there to die:
- putting single slices or small portions of ham, bacon etc in to save the end of the pack being wasted
- buying YS meat which the family doesn’t actually like to eat 🤦‍♀️

- putting small amounts of “ingredients” eg cream or cheese or hummus in there, especially if not properly labelled
- in fact anything which isn’t labelled 🤦‍♀️ 
- leftovers we didn’t like much to start with 🤦‍♀️ - putting single or small servings of pittas, wraps etc in as we never go back to them and they get freezer burn easily
- single servings of dinner leftovers 

What I’ve decided is rather than putting small amounts of leftover stuff in the freezer, I’m going to have a tub in the fridge to keep it in and aim to always use the next day (even if it means soup for breakfast) and have more buffet style lunches where I pull out the random
leftovers to serve alongside whatever the main bit of lunch is. I think that this approach of using leftovers the next day will serve me better than freezing them as I find they become “out of sight out of mind”. 

Also I need to accept that putting unappealing food in the freezer is a waste of time as it certainly doesn’t make it nicer! So the plan needs to be to try to transform it within a day and if it’s really not nice then accept the loss and bin it rather than kid myself on that I’ll eat it from the freezer three months later…

This “next day buffet lunch” approach should also help with using up stuff I don’t tend to freeze (but which can get forgotten in the back of the fridge). Eg chopped up veg sticks. 

pamsdish

katkin said:

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!

Wow well done.

pamsdish

Bluegreen143 said:

I’m currently pondering whether reducing the use of my freezer would save me money. I feel like it’s become a bit of a food graveyard where things go to hide and get freezer burn 😆 I think I’d like to stop using it so much for random bits and bobs and try hard to make proper meals with things before I freeze them. 

Things which don’t tend to get wasted in the freezer:
- fruit & veg (if I stick to the types we actually use)
- chicken, mince, sausages (meat the whole family actually eat)
- cooked HM “ready meals” or meal components I’ve batched up (eg marinaded meat, made up burgers or meatballs, pasta sauce, soup, stews) and frozen in family size servings (or single servings if it’s for my lunch)
- emergency beige food (chips, chicken nuggets)
- batched HM muffins and flapjacks for school snacks
- full loaves of bread or packs of pittas
- ice cream, ice lollies etc
- batch cooked chickpeas, but other beans seem to get forgotten (as I use them less) so think I’ll keep buying chickpeas dry to batch cook but switch to tins for other beans 

Things which just get lost in there and go there to die:
- putting single slices or small portions of ham, bacon etc in to save the end of the pack being wasted
- buying YS meat which the family doesn’t actually like to eat 🤦‍♀️

- putting small amounts of “ingredients” eg cream or cheese or hummus in there, especially if not properly labelled
- in fact anything which isn’t labelled 🤦‍♀️ 
- leftovers we didn’t like much to start with 🤦‍♀️ - putting single or small servings of pittas, wraps etc in as we never go back to them and they get freezer burn easily
- single servings of dinner leftovers 

What I’ve decided is rather than putting small amounts of leftover stuff in the freezer, I’m going to have a tub in the fridge to keep it in and aim to always use the next day (even if it means soup for breakfast) and have more buffet style lunches where I pull out the random
leftovers to serve alongside whatever the main bit of lunch is. I think that this approach of using leftovers the next day will serve me better than freezing them as I find they become “out of sight out of mind”. 

Also I need to accept that putting unappealing food in the freezer is a waste of time as it certainly doesn’t make it nicer! So the plan needs to be to try to transform it within a day and if it’s really not nice then accept the loss and bin it rather than kid myself on that I’ll eat it from the freezer three months later…

This “next day buffet lunch” approach should also help with using up stuff I don’t tend to freeze (but which can get forgotten in the back of the fridge). Eg chopped up veg sticks. 

I am the same @Bluegreen143 I even mark the packing, delicious, vile, passable, then when looking for space it gets binned.

Soontobeoap

thanks @PipneyJane, I am a big fan of the flat zip lock bags. The large size fit my freezer shelves beautifully and you can eradicate all extra gaps around boxes. I think I am going to be decanting shopping into those when it comes!! I am very interested to know how you gat so much into your door shelves my fronts don’t come up high enough to hold 2 containers one on top of the other.

when they make these fridge freezers I don’t understand why they always make the fridge side bigger than the freezer side. I would much prefer it the other way round.

newlywed

@Bluegreen143 yesterday I added a few random slices of pepperoni and some Serrano ham to a spag bol, as the same thing happens with meat slices in our freezer!  Very tasty it turned out, and a bit different.

Soontobeoap

@Bluegreen143 I must admit I used to have the same problem but since starting this challenge I do try to eat up the left overs for my lunch the next day. The only thing I store in freezer are left over sauces and bubble and squeak which I now add to the same tub until we have enough to have with sausages or some cold ham. I don’t have to throw anything away anything now. It’s taken 6 months though. 🤦🏻‍♀️

pamsdish

Soontobeoap said:

thanks @PipneyJane, I am a big fan of the flat zip lock bags. The large size fit my freezer shelves beautifully and you can eradicate all extra gaps around boxes. I think I am going to be decanting shopping into those when it comes!! I am very interested to know how you gat so much into your door shelves my fronts don’t come up high enough to hold 2 containers one on top of the other.

when they make these fridge freezers I don’t understand why they always make the fridge side bigger than the freezer side. I would much prefer it the other way round.

you can buy them with a bigger fridge than freezer, mine is, as I already had an upright freezer.

diminua

I've not posted in a while, but had a very spendy week where I was out two evenings and at the weekend, followed by a very cheap one as I was cat sitting and food and drinks were left for me, so am more or less on track with £113.81 spent so far. I've bought tomatoes, bread, brie, fruit and cream for this week as I can't bear to cook in the heat. 

PipneyJane

JIL said:

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. 

Thanks @JIL for the recipe suggestion.  Also thanks to @London_1, @Wraithlady,  @joedenise and anyone else who has given me suggestions.  All much appreciated.

- Pip