August 2022 Grocery Challenge

ms_iiwii

hello again, ive still never managed to keep focused enough to grocery challenge for more than a month at a time but we really cannot afford to carry on spending silly on food. not with the prices rising daily! so can i be put down for £200 to feed 2 adults and a cat from now til 25th august please!
i did a big shop last week and bought lots of cat food, litter and treats so she should be covered for most of the month! also got 72 cans of pop from mr A for £20 so that should keep our fizzy drink habit happy for a good few weeks! 
have quite a few bits to make meals from the freezer, need to pop out this evening or tomorrow for fruit and salad and milk but other than that were okay, currently have chicken pesto pasta bake with garlic doughballs in the oven. 
good luck everyone

goldfinches

Waving hello to everyone and a warm welcome to all the returners and newcomers too.

I added this note that I thought might be helpful to my July declaration and have posted it here in case others had already come over to this thread and might miss reading it.

Just in case anyone here would find it useful someone who commented on a recipe in the Guardian earlier today recommended this vacuum sealer, I've copied what they said about it below the link.

1pc/set Manual Vacuum Sealer Set Vacuum Bag Hand Pump Handheld Food Vacuum Sealer Vacuum Ziplock Bags Kitchen Food Storage Bag|Saran Wrap & Plastic Bags| - AliExpress

"I wonder if you may also like one of these, it is a tiny inexpensive hand-pump to vacu-pack for the freezer etc. It extends the freezer life of vegetables etc hugely. Everything takes up less room, doesn’t get freezer burn and keeps longer as air is excluded."

Blackcats

I'm really pleased with my July challenge - helped by Olio but meal planning has been the game changer for us.  I used to think I meal planned but it was actually a vague outline that I digressed from as soon as I got into the supermarket.  I also wasted food too and I'm trying to improve on this.  It's very inspiring on this challenge.

£295 for August please 

London_1

Good Morning all ,well at last we have a brand new shiny month ahead of us and its time to rein in our spends if we can. I have my budget set for August and will be shopping very sparingly for the next 31 days

Today I literally only have two things to buy on my list. Tomatoes and a cucumber  I still have stacks of stuff in the fridge thats still fresh and will be used up before buying more.

I have two hefty bills to pay in the next two weeks so its definitely essentials only this month, but I don't mind as it focusses me on stuff I have and means I can experiment with different things.

My 'bookcase storage' in my study is nicely filled up, plus my kitchen cupboards downstairs are pretty full as well. So meals are going to be mainly stuff I have in stock already and thinking of new ways to turn them into something different if possible.

So fingers crossed the nest few weeks will be tasty ones  

JackieO xx

                                    August budget £64.00

PipneyJane

@elsiepac, apologies, but I need to amend my August budget to include the £12.50 leftover from July.  (We aren’t being amazingly frugal, it’s just that we went on holiday during the last week of the month and haven’t done that last shop for the month.). Therefore,

please change my August GC budget to £152.50.

Many thanks.

- Pip

London_1

Well ,popped to the local Tesco and got my tomatoes and cucumber, and came out have spent a grand total of £1.28.So thats one day gone for shopping in August only another 30 to go  

I am aiming for as few shopping trips as I can to only buy real essentials, and will spend this afternoon sorting out stuff to use this week.

Having done a pretty big shop mid july when I cam home from my holidays I am quite well stocked for most stuff.I found a reduced pack of pasrty in the freezer that I think I will use up and make a quiche as the weather looks set to be warm for a good few more days. I usually make my own pastry but this was reduced to 55p so I got it and froze it straight awat.Any left over pastry will possibly be Ok as I'm pretty sure I can stretch it to two cases and will hav eone for a quiche and the other for a custard tart so the oven will be well worth switching on to cook them As i seem to have a bit of a glut of eggs I may make some meringues as well as they will be nice with some fresh fruit.

I'm OK for apples and pears and haven't bothered to buy bananas as they go brown too quickly and I'm not keen on banana bread/cake.
Also have a good stock of spuds, plus five sweet potatoes which seem to be indestructable:)  so they may be turned into a sweet potao and chickpea curry and portioned up for the freezer for my meat free Monday nights dinners.

Everything is going to be adapted and used if possible this month to save me from needing to shop

JackieO xx

                                             Spent  £1.28/ £64 August budget, leaving £62.72 remaining

joedenise

I'm planning on doing a big shop for the month but doing it over 3 days as to get to all the different SMs I need to go to my local town (Aldi, Mr Ts) and the next town (The Food Warehouse, HB, Lidl, Morries).  Sainsbugs are also in that town but the opposite end of the town so I will leave that until Wednesday when I am in that part of town for my Slimming World group - it's just across the road so worth leaving the extra day but I should only need baked beans by that time as we prefer those to the other SMs own brand.

I'll post after I've done all the shopping with a grand total for most of the months shopping.  Hopefully the only things I should need to buy the rest of the months is fruit, fresh veg (although we use quite a bit of frozen), yoghurt, bread (although I still have a couple of loaves in the freezer).  We use UHT milk and I think I've already got enough for most of the month but may need to replace that later in the month.

JackieO - do you have any tips for keeping potatoes fresh and don't sprout so rapidly?  I keep them in a proper dark lined vegetable bag but they still sprout in less than a week!  I do still use them but it seems such a lot of waste!

CynicalPinnacle

@elsiepac thanks for the new thread and please put me down for:

£500 for August GC budget

That's for 2 adults and 1 child, and will cover all food, toiletries, and household cleaning stuff. I already have a spend to declare £71.71 in A1d1 😱, it was a bit of a stocking up shop plus buying lunch stuff for the little one's holiday club. I feel bad about it but we're probably not going to restart the milk deliveries after getting back from our holiday and I really need to start using up our pulse stockpile this month.

£71.71 / £500, £428.29 remaining

Has anyone any tips on keeping the plastic usage down as well as keeping the groceries spends low in these cash strapped times? I've noticed since going to A1d1 our plastic recycling bin is overflowing 😞. We did have a milk and veg box delivery during the first lockdown, and online shopping from Sainos and it was lovely to have very little recycling, but we could easily spend 30% of our income on food. It infuriates me that the cheapest way to feed ourselves creates so much waste and god knows how much increased carbon emissions from our food being transported from here, there, and everywhere.

try_harder

Great start to the month ..£1.24 spent in a reduced punnet of mushrooms and a salad bowl with lots of toms ,lettuce etc in it ,that was reduced too .This evening i am collecting bread and vegs from Olio .Lets see how well i can do tomorrow

atrixa

CynicalPinnacle said:

Has anyone any tips on keeping the plastic usage down as well as keeping the groceries spends low in these cash strapped times? I've noticed since going to A1d1 our plastic recycling bin is overflowing 😞. We did have a milk and veg box delivery during the first lockdown, and online shopping from Sainos and it was lovely to have very little recycling, but we could easily spend 30% of our income on food. It infuriates me that the cheapest way to feed ourselves creates so much waste and god knows how much increased carbon emissions from our food being transported from here, there, and everywhere.

I've done two 'zero waste' month attempts before, and both times my grocery spends were through the roof. I found that specialist packaging free shops were outrageously expensive and I couldn't always buy veg loose from normal supermarkets. I'm now just focusing on trying to just buy what I need and no more. I do occasionally feed back to supermarkets about their packaging and I bring back soft plastics for them to recycle when I have some saved up.

I'm up to £101.79/£145. The N3ctar prices were looking good today, so stocked up on some essentials in Mr S.

For tea tonight, I tried the Tarka Dal budget BBC recipe. Tarka dal with rice recipe - BBC Food

I'd make it again, but have it with a side of veg as well as rice and add in way more chilli and spices. I tasted before serving and it's a bit bland with only the directed ingredients, so I chucked in some extra chilli powder and some other ground spices I had lying around. Very quick and easy recipe, though.