September 2022 Grocery Challenge

thriftwizard

I'm up to £146.33 already, having spent £49.41 in a quick dash to L!dls this morning; I didn't have much on the list, but they didn't have half of that anyway! But I'm thinking I shall just see what we can do without, whilst there's only 3 of us in the house. I can buy a few top-up items at our local (expensive) supermarkets before I'd justify the fuel cost (and time) of driving down there again.

It's actually quite a big adjustment, going from 5 full-time & 1 part-time inhabitants to just 3, especially having come down from 7-8 for 20+ years. I'm making some scones this afternoon to use up a half-jar of HM strawberry jam, & have just realised that the recipe I normally use makes 12, and we're not likely to go through that many whilst they're still fresh. So I'll probably halve the mixture & do half plain & half with cheese & chives; the freezer's (currently) too full to freeze half a batch, and savoury scones do make a nice breakfast.

Now to start working through the freezer contents, to make space for some of the autumn harvests & bargains... 

PipneyJane

katkin said:

First spend of the month for me yesterday in L*dl. A leaflet came through the door with a £5.01 voucher for a £25 spend so off I trotted.

There were lots of temptations with what looked like the remains of a Provence special week. I bought anchovies in cute little jars which will come in handy, jar and flavour wise, and olive tapenade. Of course I had to stock up on chocolate. Also got a few other interesting bits and took advantage of the loose nuts getting small quantities of cashews, pistachios and brazils. The ground coffee was cheap at £1.59 for 500g so I'm trying their French and Italian style. I'm not a coffee snob (unlike my OH) so I'm sure it will be perfectly fine. I actually quite enjoyed this shop, lots of novelty items - but it did encourage me to spend more. 

Anyhoo the total came to £36.63 - with the voucher £31.62. Leaving a balance of: £218.38 for the rest of the month.  

To follow on from those speaking about fridge-freezers and food storage I have decided to sort out my pantry. I'm lucky to have the space and mostly use it as a dumping ground for my numerous kitchen gadgets, bake ware, hoover, pet food etc. I have an old CD book-case thingy in there that holds my stash of tins etc but my other food stocks are scattered illogically around in kitchen cupboards. 

I'll be on leave at the end of this week for 3+ weeks (another story about that as it was to be a big euro road trip holiday arranged pre-pandemic, now not deemed un-affordable...also been trying to get a refund on expensive overnight ferries for the last 6 months..grrr) Well I'm now going to use some of the time to refurb the 4x10 foot pantry into an actual pantry!  It won't look like an instagram pantry but it will be functional and organised    

Must not buy wicker baskets and kilner jars....

Back to budget - I can see my money stretching less and it's only going to get more difficult. I had wanted to start slowly reducing the GC budget down a bit more but it looks like treading water may be the best option for now. Other budget lines will be reviewed. 

Did the MSE energy calculator this morning and oh boy is it eye watering    

@katkin Good luck sorting out your pantry.  May I suggest that you measure out the heights of your containers and space your shelves out accordingly? In my old flat, I had one shelf for tins, one for my spices (in re-used Douwe Egberts coffee jars), and another for flour and rice.  Each shelf had an inch clearance on top, all carefully measured out.  (My flour and rice are stored in the largest Lock-n-lock boxes.)  

Also, the most useful pantry "drawers" I've ever found were fruit boxes, perfect for large jars of spices, as well as loose tins, packets of pasta, pulses, etc. We lived for 3 years in this house with a very rudimentary kitchen - we ran out of money mid-renovation - and my kitchen storage was a couple of Ikea "Ivar" bookcases, with fruit boxes for drawers.  Not pretty but very functional.

HTH

- Pip

PipneyJane

LittleGem said:

Checking in to declare our spends this week. Made the mistake of sending DH to Lidl with DD - he did stick to the list but as always additional items were added (bags of marshmallows and sweets 🙄). I also popped in today and got the extra bits needed to complete this weeks meal plan, so a total of £50.97/£200. 

One thing I’m struggling with is keeping a well stocked store cupboard. I was doing ok picking up a couple of tins a week but have basically used those up! Do people buy like a whole tray of baked beans/tinned toms for example? And at what point do you restock?

Not necessarily GC related but I’ve decided it’s time to get a slow cooker (never had space for it and still don’t but can’t be having the oven on as much as we have been). Does anyone have any recommendations or perhaps there is another thread that I should look at.

Yes, @LittleGem, I do routinely buy a whole double tray, cling-film-wrapped package of tinned, chopped tomatoes at a time, 24 cans, usually to take advantage of an offer. MrT used to do 40p each or 4-cans-for-£1 on chopped tomatoes a regular basis (now 49p a can or 3-for-£1).  L!dl are doing tinned tomatoes for 28p each, which is the best price I can find now. 

We always have some tins in a drawer in the pantry in the kitchen, with the remainder in "storage" on bookcase elsewhere, restocking the pantry drawers before we do the monthly "big shop". We start looking for the next offer, when we start transferring the bottom tray of tins to the kitchen.

I worked out, years ago, that we'd routinely go through 8 tins of chopped tomatoes and 4-6 cans of kidney beans a month.  

On the slow cooker front, mine is a 6L Crockpot.  Love it. Check out your local L!dl ASAP because our local one had Crockpot brand ones on sale on Saturday, in the Aisle of Surprise.  May not be there for long.  My recommendations are a) buy the largest one you can get because you'd be amazed at how much space, say, 4 chicken legs can occupy*, and b) always check that the lid sits properly on it to form a seal.  (We had a cheap, 10L slow cooker which did not seal well and always boiled dry.) 

HTH

- Pip


ETA:  My first slow cooker was a 3-litre one, which turned out to be too small to cook pretty much anything.  Seriously, I struggled to cook a chilli in there, the first time I tried (one tin of beans, 1lb of mince, 1 chopped onion and 1 can of chopped tomatoes, IIRC). Couldn't fit in four chicken thighs for a chicken stew.  That's why my advice is buy the largest you can.

London_1

Day five of NSDs today.

Tomorrow I will have a small spend as my 'need to get' list is extremely small at the moment .

It's coffee morning for me with my friends at my local Dobbies, so I'm hoping as its been for the past couple of weeks they have a glut of tomatoes as they do quite good reductions on them. Two weeks ago they had a 500gm  bag of carrots for 12p which was brilliant as it eventually ended up as a spicy carrot and coriander soup

Not much to buy at all really .I was thinking I might like to try slow cooking some jacket spuds as I can get 4 for 45p according to my local Tesco website , and Tesco's is next door to Dobbies.

 I then wanted to wait until they cool and freeze them Has anyone tried this ?  as a jacket spud at twelve and a half p would make a nice lunch at some point this month with a cheese filling or some tuna and mayo.

I also want to buy some semolina, as I like it as a pudding, and also I use it for making shortbread and Tesco seems to stock 500 gms for a pound, so not too bad value at all.

I think we are all doing so well in tightening out belts 

JackieO xx

Doom_and_Gloom

LittleGem said:

One thing I’m struggling with is keeping a well stocked store cupboard. I was doing ok picking up a couple of tins a week but have basically used those up! Do people buy like a whole tray of baked beans/tinned toms for example? And at what point do you restock?

Not necessarily GC related but I’ve decided it’s time to get a slow cooker (never had space for it and still don’t but can’t be having the oven on as much as we have been). Does anyone have any recommendations or perhaps there is another thread that I should look at.

We buy an extra or two of the item we are buying if it has a good shelf life. Tinned tomatoes, beans and the like we buy a tin basically every time one of us shops even if it isn't needed that shop. That way we easily build up a stock.

Only I eat baked beans and I currently have 9 tins in (I have many different varieties of dry beans in, including kidney beans, that get put in my electric pressure cooker so this number I am okay with though am hoping to up a bit). I'm more concerned about upping our tinned tomatoes as we both use them alot during the winter and currently have 10 tins in which is lower than normal at this point.

We are already planning to do alot of cupboard and/or freezer meals this winter with the odd fresh item. So while some people right now are doing shelftember we are actively stocking up instead to make sure we have food to eat. Food prices are just going up and having that safety net is crucial to my mental health. 

As for the slow cooker I have an old 6.5L M0rphy R one that I've had since 2007 and still works perfectly. Cost £22.64 at the time and one of the best purchasing choices made back then.
My OH has a small one, though I'm not sure of the size, it is big enough for him to cook a small to medium joint of beef in and has a 180w output at most. He was originally hesitant about getting one but it serves him well and in the colder months especially gets a lot of use. 
However I also love my PKP electric pressure cooker. If you eat a lot of beans then it really is a game changer. It also does full meals and times I use it to do stews instead of my slowcooker as it can produce a batch in less than 40 minutes on the stew setting including frying off items in it first and also getting to cooking/pressure point. Highly recommend. 


JackieO - not sure if this helps but Mr S are selling Natco 1.5kg course semolina for £2.25 at the moment making it 75p per 500g. They also sell the fine for £2.40 making it 80p per 500g. Obviously it only helps if your store stock it and you will go through that amount but thought I'd mention it incase it does help. 

£47.83 spent in Mr S since last post. 

£157.40/£285.
£127.60 left. 

London_1

Doom_and_Gloom said:

 

 
 

 


JackieO - not sure if this helps but Mr S are selling Natco 1.5kg course semolina for £2.25 at the moment making it 75p per 500g. They also sell the fine for £2.40 making it 80p per 500g. Obviously it only helps if your store stock it and you will go through that amount but thought I'd mention it incase it does help. 

£47.83 spent in Mr S since last post. 

£157.40/£285.
£127.60 left. 

Thank you D&G I shall make a point next time I go to Sainsby I will stock up.I do use a fair amunt as I make a deal of shortbread for presents etc at Christmas for friends 

JackieO xx

LittleGem

Thank you all so much for the tips and recommendations for stocking up and slow cookers. Off to spend some pennies 😆

redofromstart

London_1 said:

I was thinking I might like to try slow cooking some jacket spuds as I can get 4 for 45p according to my local Tesco website , and Tesco's is next door to Dobbies.

 I then wanted to wait until they cool and freeze them Has anyone tried this ?  

Yes I do this when there is a good buy on a big bag of decent flavour potatoes and a spare shelf in the oven.  I let them cool and freeze individually wrapped.  Defrost in the morning and microwave for my lunch.  Not quite as nice as freshly baked but still good.

Caroby

Our first main shop today. Went over budget by £12.36 last month but we've used up almost everything in the fridge and freezer by today. First spend of the month was in the local Co-op on the 2nd of £4.95 for a loaf, cereal, apples and not much else. Today we went to four shops, Lidl £35.06 inc a kilo of frozen green beans for 69p, then Morrison's £10.06 inc 3 packets of Savers instant mash at 29p each - this is the nicest instant mash we've tried and it's only got 2 ingredients, potato and rosemary. One packet makes 4 good-sized servings, I use half a packet then fold it down and keep it shut with a clean plastic laundry peg. Next to Aldi £28.58 inc 100g black peppercorns £1.19, then finally Tesco £25.73 inc £2 off DH's favourite teabags, 6 small kiwi fruit YS 35p and £3.18 on things for the food bank. Their Stockwell dairy-free spread is 10p dearer now but still cheap compared to more well-known brands, it's 95p for 500g.
Total spend today was £99.43, plus the £4.95 from the other day leaves £75.62 for the rest of the month with one main shop to go.
Hope everyone's well and doing ok in these trying times.

cheerfulness4

goldfinches said:

LittleGem said:

Checking in to declare our spends this week. Made the mistake of sending DH to Lidl with DD - he did stick to the list but as always additional items were added (bags of marshmallows and sweets 🙄). I also popped in today and got the extra bits needed to complete this weeks meal plan, so a total of £50.97/£200. 

One thing I’m struggling with is keeping a well stocked store cupboard. I was doing ok picking up a couple of tins a week but have basically used those up! Do people buy like a whole tray of baked beans/tinned toms for example? And at what point do you restock?

Not necessarily GC related but I’ve decided it’s time to get a slow cooker (never had space for it and still don’t but can’t be having the oven on as much as we have been). Does anyone have any recommendations or perhaps there is another thread that I should look at.

I have this one Sear & Stew 3.5L Slow Cooker | Morphy Richards which is good because you can put the pot on the hob and then move the whole thing over to the slow cooker base. The pot is also non-stick and very easy to wash. There are a couple of drawbacks that I've found which are that the non-stick scratches very easily and the pot is so light it skates around a bit on the hob. I also think that the oval shape is slightly awkward when you're emptying out the last little bit of a dish and would prefer a round shape but that's a minor niggle. I get so much use out of mine that I've bought a second pot for it just for the convenience and it is one of my most used bits of kitchen kit.

I'd second that. Have same one in cream. Lightweight, super easy to clean and a perfect size for a whole medium chicken. Swapped from a ceramic 5.5 ltr one which was way to heavy for me and a beast to clean.