August 2022 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

@Saver-upper , I'm in awe of £320-£380 per month to feed 5/6 - that's awesome already from where I'm standing! Especially with teens - mine were mostly bottomless pits at that stage!

Confessing to spending another £19.85 today, mostly at the butchers. My plan to coast through the week on leftovers from the weekend (of feeding 9 people for 3 days) has come unstuck, because there's not a whole lot left! There's enough Stroganoff to get a couple of pies out of, but the ham vanished completely. Luckily there's a fair bit of produce in the garden & at the allotment; potatoes, French beans, salad leaves, tomatoes & courgettes mostly, with the runner beans (any that survived the contaminated manure) & corn-on-the-cob just beginning. The Girls are still laying well, too.

Soontobeoap

@Saver-upper , I too am in awe of £320 - £380 a month for your family. Even if you havnt been around for a while you have obviously kept up the habit.

Family still on island so popping in daily rather than staying with us. I don’t know who I will be feeding when,  but I have had a bit more time on my hands. Decided to use today to work through the left overs from the last two and a half weeks so as not to waste anything.

stewed up some small eating apples that seemed like a good idea for little ones as they never complete an apple. However they were pretty tasteless and even the kids wouldn’t eat them. I will add these to cooking apples to bulk up pies in the winter.

had some chicken and ham left so mixed with peas, onion and a tin of chicken soup. Made pastry from a little bit of trex added to margarine that was left in fridge and made  up 5 pies ready for colder days.

DS and family arrived at 4.30. Offered them pizza and left over salad bits with a few chips. They accepted for the 3 girls but Mum and Dad decided that they would eat later. One and a half pizzas still in freezer. 

We had leftover jacket potatoes as wedges for our dinner with bacon and some eggs that were slightly past their sell by date.

Did an inventory of the freezer which still seems to be crammed full and hopefully we have plenty of meals to see us through the next couple of weeks before grandsons arrive.

unfortunately I had to throw a small tub of sweetcorn away from fridge which I had saved for the 14 month old that she didn’t eat. With everything going on I was too late getting it into the freezer.

Need a good sort through the fridge tomorrow and might need to get more ice lollies!

goldfinches

I have several spends to declare as well as an unexpected cash boost to the baking fund which was pressed into my hot little hand on the museum steps last Wednesday.
The Baking Budget now has an additional £20 so I've decided to just pop that to one side for now and use it whenever I see an ingredient worth bulk buying in future as trying to add it to the current month's money would just make everything too complicated to keep straight in my head.
My main GC expenses are £10 at M*rks on 4x organic semi-skimmed milk, 4x tinned tomatoes, f/f greek style yoghurt, onions, tomatoes, cucumber, 2x radishes and 2x lettuces. Then I spent £3 at Mr T's on mushrooms, tortilla chips and a tin of kidney beans followed by £5.75 at a different branch of Mr T's on paper hankies, frozen fruit and a net of limes. That makes my new monthly total £33/£124 and my average daily spend £4.12. 
The Baking Budget has spent £1.50 at M*rks on a net of lemons, £1.65 at the Am***n pick up point shop on lemon extract and £5.85 at Mr T's on CC price lemons, caster sugar and light brown soft sugar. That makes the new monthly figure for the Baking Budget £11/£25.

Overall I can see that although I'm doing my best to use up what I already have my total spending is higher than I'm budgeting for so I shall have to fall back on store cupboard dhals and soups for some of this month I think.

goldfinches

Forgot to add that I made this recipe yesterday in my slow cooker subbing in mushrooms for the aubergine as the shelves were bare when I got to Mr T's Burnt aubergine veggie chilli recipe | BBC Good Food It was very easy and turned out extremely tasty and I got 5 portions from it rather than the 4 given in the recipe.

ms_iiwii

have a few spends to add, £1.64 at mr M on flavoured water and ys sausage rolls, then £4.50 at mr T for "protein drinks and a pack of cupcakes, another 2 trips to mr t £3.80 on bread, milk, eggs, mayo and butter (with clubcard vouchers to bring it down) and again £2.84 spent on ys natural yeo v yoghurts, ys iced coffee, ibuprofen and an oreo ice cream

brings us to £31.15/£200! were going to have to top the fridge up with salad bits and yoghurts etc in the next day or 2 but were doing pretty well for us, im actually pretty shocked!

elsiepac

Budgets updated to here

Very pleased with myself that I have indeed managed to stay out of the shops since my last post like I had wanted!

I will need to go today though for some fresh items as it's the night when mum comes over for our supper and film evening (every Tuesday basically) and I want to make something nice. 
So I will go to L1dl later for some fresh veggies/salady bits - I will have a look and see if there is a cheap olive oil as I do like to use it for dressings etc.  I have a couple of lemons and bottled lemon juice and also tahini etc so that would just round me out.  No biggie if not, as I can use the spray olive oil, just takes forever if you do want to use a tsp or tbsp! I also want to see if there is cider vinegar in there as I've run out.  I just don't want to go to Mr T or Mr S as there is too much temptation to buy things I don't need and I'm feeling confident so far, plus I have more than enough in, it's pretty much just fresh stuff for the rest of the month.  Look at me trying to convince myself!

It's just occurred to me I have a butternut which would be a nice addition to a salad if roasted, and before it gets too hot would be the ideal time to put the oven on and get it out of the way - I'm loathe to use the oven just for that though!  I must say buying my air fryer the year before last was one of the best £40 I've ever spent - I get so much use out of it and as someone living alone it's often a really valid replacement for putting the main oven on so must save me something in electric too.  I even experimented doing baked oats in there in my glasslock containers and it works very nicely.  It's probably the one thing I most recommend to people to get, and also it doesn't heat up the kitchen like the main oven.  I eat a fair bit of tofu, and it's great for cooking that, also crispy chickpeas! Anything like veggie sausages or some kind of perepared item you would normally do in the oven - like burgers or breaded veggie fingers or nuggets - all work brilliantly in there too. OK, sales pitch over, I promise I don't get commission! Mine is the Tower one and I buy greaseproof paper air fryer liners from Amaz0n with holes in them - you can get packs of 100 for a few pounds - that helps with cleaning it faster and also I'm slightly dubious of the non stick and don't want to ruin it, which is why I use them.

Anyway, may update later if I make something exciting for our supper! Have a wonderful day everyone!

purpleybat

morning all,

a couple of small spends during the weekend of £1.49 and £2.25 and my morries delivery today of £46.59, that takes this months spends so far to £81.85
this is a bit more than i'd hoped for this early in the month, but the freezer is rammed full, store cupboard is bulging and fridge is looking okay other than a block of cheese that i forgot.
my sister is staying for 6 days and i forgot how much more expensive her carb free diet seems to be, i'm hoping she's going to chip in some pennies.

hope everyone is keeping as cool as possible, i keep doing rain dances but they're not working

mumtoomany

Went to the local garage for... You've guessed it, milk! Two bottles £3.40. Total now £1691.47/£2640. Still feeding two extra ones and DD3 back for a few days. Will need to shop before the end of the week, running out of nappies again, and milk! Hugs, mumtoomany.xxx

LittleGem

Popping in to update my spends - a couple of trips to L!dl mostly sticking to the list but some ice lollies found their way into the basket too 😆

£64.82/£200 so feeling ok so far and still have another weeks worth of dinners on my meal plan although might need some more eggs soon. 

This month I switched the way I mealplan - normally it’s just a list of say 10 meals with no specific days assigned to them. This time I’ve actually assigned days and so far this is working better as I can see where I need to defrost something for the next day rather than just picking from the list. Will definitely stick with this way of doing it!

Greying_Pilgrim

Morning GC'rs!

Small spend of £3.03 to own up to this morn.  Popped into MrA on the way back from an errand and picked up a few 'snacky' bits.  Took a cruise past the reduced section and spotted boxes and boxes of extra large eggs - assumed they would be still too expensive, but was delighted to pick up a dozen eggs for 56p with 7 days still 'on the date'.  

Hope everyone is 'keeping on keeping on' and not wilting under the relentless heat nor pressure of woe-news days that are a constant.........

Greying X