September 2022 Grocery Challenge

LadyWithAPlan

@Suffolk_lass I am calling mine Soaring September so soaring towards my goals - 'sensible' makes me feel like I am wearing ugly shoes (never going to happen)

@London_1 I have done a roast chicken in my halogen before but never tried a slow cooker for a whole chicken. Will wait til I next see a YS one and have a go in your honour Also do you fry up the celery first when you make soup? I make lots of soups but they always tend to be only 3 flavours so I could do with branching out My parents always have a bowl of HM soup before dinner so now autumn is approaching I will start again

@FrugalThymes we have all done silly It is all about how quick we catch and correct ourselves - I can't even talk about my spending and lack of saving decisions when I was on a huge salary -  one can't look back, one has to use the wisdom to make today and tomorrow a better day. Your 'treats' in the freezer are a great idea.  I also think a lot of easy to defrost tasty batched cooked food really helps.
Mind you Jackie O may have solved my lifelong crisp addiction after her telling the story of her mum chopping up a tiny bit of potato to show her brother how much potato was in a pack of crisps. I walked past the Lid* crisp aisle on Sunday and smiled  
Maybe you can try making and batch cooking some treats as well - from HM pizza, currries, potato delicacies I may have a go at making crisps and tortilla chips!

Morning all - I am very excited to report a grocery spend for once as I have found a great bargain plus first time I have bought coffee in bulk
 £19 spent - I will split across £4 GC and £15/£55.50  bulk

I love my coffee and whilst I can and have downgraded many brands I discovered I can't on coffee. It is my one expensive habit Amazon had sent me an offer £5 off £15 spend until Sept 11 (check your emails as you may have it as well).

I was thinking there is nothing I need to buy ) but I am on my last pack of coffee  - I dont /cant/wont drink any instant - too bitter and I dont have sugar in it and often drink as black expresso so bitterness can be an issue
Either way some quick googling through Amazon and to check which coffee beans /ground coffee deals counted towards the £5 off  and I have bought 2 x 1kg Lavazza coffee beans - with free delivery and the £5 off it comes to £19. So £2.70 per 250g where it normally costs at least £4 something per 250g pack as standard.

Saving at least a pound if not £2 per coffee 250g is fabulous. I do and will continue to buy deals when I see them - Waitr*** sometimes gives me £1 off coffee and then I also combine with a 2 in 1. However this is bulk stores and it will stop me dashing to the store when I get close to running out.

Sep 22 GC £35.52/£160  + £15/55.50 bulk

Happy soaring/frugal/sensible (shudder) September all!

JingsMyBucket

Hello @elsiepac thank you for running the challenge each month. I'm back after traveling in August and taking care of family stuff that came up. Please put me down for: 

£300 for September 1 - 30. That's for 2 adults with no kids or pets.

This past Sunday was my birthday and on Saturday we went to a food festival, bought some fun stuff and then bought picky bits at M & S on the way home. So my monthly budget reflects the little birthday indulgence bump for this month instead of the usual £250 or £260. 

£5.80 at Tesco for berries, jalapeños, cilantro, and potato chips

£15.00 at the food festival for a truckle of cheese, sausage, and a fancy cocktail. 

£36.77 at M & S after the food festival for picky bits and some basics like berries, cheddar, yoghurt, etc. 

£20.00 paid this morning to farm supplier for a fruit and veg box 

£77.57 / £300.00 total spent so far. 

I just put in a Tesco online order for delivery tomorrow morning. The estimated cart is £66.37 but I'll update that tomorrow after it's delivered. 


ROUGH COOKING PLAN 
Here's what's on the plan for this week in no particular order

• Mexican black beans - Might cook quinoa to make it into bowls for OH. I usually just eat it as is with shredded cheddar, bacon, yoghurt, red onion, and cilantro on top. 
• Roasted sweet potato and roasted eggplant 
• Hamburger soup (with lots of beans and veg)
• Spinach and bacon quiche 
• Stir fried pork belly and vegetables 

This may change depending on what's in our farm box tomorrow. There's a lot to catch up on the thread – it's already at 170 posts! Have a good morning everyone!

Greying_Pilgrim

Morning GC'rs

More spending to own up to.  Had to pop into Greying Town for a spot of banking.  Popped into W1lks for a specific thing - but they no longer seem to stock it (own brand deodrant for chaps), they've even given up giving shelf space to it now.  I noticed that they actually had generic children's paracetamol in stock, but it's doubled in price - now £2.25 🙁 Doubly glad I found that stuff in p0undstr3tcher now..........

Then i went into HB.  Spent £13.32 in there, on seemingly very little, although I did stock up on batteries, so that bumped the cost up.  I'm delighted that LG is so enamoured with reading that they read in bed by torchlight.  Less enamoured with them falling asleep with the torch left on...... just like their dear mumma did all those years ago...... no wonder my parents ranted about the cost of batteries 🤔#comesaroundandbitesyouonyourbum

Had a wonder through M&$ f00dha11.  More yellow stickers than customers, but nothing caught my eye.  Was it goldfinches mentioning a lack of block hand soap for sale in M&$?  Purely out of interest, I noted that W1lks and HB didn't seem to have much block soap in stock today.  There wasn't the 'range' there used to be, and not much of what they did stock iyswim.  Interestingly they also had big bottles of hand san in HB, 3 for £1 - mere pennies, can you remember the riduculous prices charged in lockdown?  

£82.52/200

Greying X

London_1

LadyWithAPlan, No, I just chuck a handful of diced onion into a saucepan and with a tiny bit of oil and fry until soft and begining to caramalise, then diced celery on top and a couple of small cubed spuds and around a litre and a half of veg stock

If I haven't any in the freezer (can be made with veggie peelings and frozen until needed )then use two of the basic aldi's or tescos stock cubes.

I make the cubes up crumbled into a jug with a dollop of lazy garlic or a decent squirt ofgarlic purree, some dried mixed herbs  a spoonful ot two of paprika and a decent slosh of sweet chilli sauce add grandually water stirring all the time until you have around a litre and half of stock .Bung it all into the saucepan with a small handful of lentils if required.

Bring to the boil and lid on, and simmer until celery and spuds are soft. pour into a large blender or mix with a stick mixer.(I have a blender jug  attachment to my food mixer) mix for a few minutes until smooth ,pour back into the saucepan and bring to the boil stirring to make sure its all mixed up .
Then decant into soup pouches, or in my case  part in a tupperware tub, and the tub I keep in the fridge, and rest I portion up in soup bags and once cold I freeze for another day
Adding the spuds and lentils thicken it up so you can thin it a little when cooking for lunch with a bit of water its around the Campbells condensed soup texture.

I have been making soup like this for well over 60 years, and no matter what flavour, Leek and potato, tomato, vegetable (although if you like it a bit chunkier leave some of the veg out from the blender part)I sometimes add some broken bits of pasta towards the end of the cooking but dont blend obviously Handy for using up the broken bits from a packet that I always have in a jar in the cupboard .
Hope this helps a bit .Home made soup is the easiest thing in the world to make and when you think I can get a good 5-6 portions for a fraction of what a tin would cost ,even with cooking its still well worth it . Wonky or past its best veg is brilliant for this I happily chuck almost anything into soup, its very forgiving

JackieO xx

Lucyv

Good afternoon,

Today I went to my local sains to buy some kitchen foil,  jam, pitta bread and broccoli.  They didn’t have the cheapest jam which my children actually like best because it doesn’t have lumps in so I had to get a more expensive seedless one.  Maybe there’s a shortage of cheap jam because that is what was missing from my food delivery.
All that came to £4.23 however I used £2.50 of nectar points so only paid £1.73.  I then went to my friends zero waste shop and got a litre jar full of raisins.  Her raisins are slightly more expensive but they are the biggest juiciest raisins ever so I do occasionally buy some to keep for snacks and my husband sometimes has them on his porridge.  I think I hey we’re £3.73 but I paid cash and we were talking so I’m not 100% sure on that.  

I was going to buy a scientific calculator and maths set for a Ukrainian child in my daughters class.  He can’t talk English and isn’t understanding anything that’s going on.  They only started year 7 on Friday.  He hasn’t got any of the equipment that is required apart from a pot of coloured pencils.  I was talking to another friend on my way in to Sains about it who was sitting outside costa and she said she has so much stationary that she is a walking stationary cupboard 😆 and said if I go round her house she will give me the calculator and math set to give to the boy.  So thanks so much to her that didn’t cost anything and I was able to take those things in to the school.  I still feel so terrible for him but I don’t know what else I can do to help him settle in to big school 🙁

Sayschezza

2nd delivery shop of the month today after 6NSDs. I spent £65.67 but had £30 of nectar points so only parted with £35.67. The order of £8.50 loo rolls were substituted with£15 ones but MR S will refund me with the difference of £6.50 which I can take off the next shop. I have several bits of last weeks shop to use up so am planning to: chop and freeze the red pepper. Make a bread pudding with the leftover crusts. Make a quiche with rest of the cooked salmon and a beef and mushroom pie also with leftovers. ( The mushrooms are not actually leftovers until after I have made the chicken and mushroom risotto for tonight's tea.) I am pleased with how things are going so far. £154.44 left.

Sayschezza

BTW I forgot to say bar soap often comes into our CS so I usually buy mine from there for about 25p. 

FrugalThymes

@LadyWithAPlan thanks 😊 I do batch cook sometimes, but when pizza is a-calling its hard to choose the frozen burrito bowl or lasagne over a takeaway lol, so I'm going to get a few of the asd4 pizzas and potato pops I think! Crisps are a downfall of mine too, but yeah if you actually think about how much potato it is in a bag that IS kind of crazy for the price!

@Lucyv that's a lovely thing to do for the new boy. If you're worried about him making friends, are there any films or tv shows with Ukrainian subtitles/Ukrainian dubbed with English subtitles - you could see if your daughter wanted to invite him and some friends around for a film night?


Yesterday I didn't spend anything on groceries but had to pay for a school trip and a hoodie I found on Ebay for my eldest so not a nsd. DH went out to our regular games night while I caught up on work instead, and got a coke (an eye watering £3, but the pub lets us use the function room for free every week so that's our 'fee') which needs adding on to the total.

Oli0 app was good for us yesterday- two packet sandwiches, edamame beans, 4pt whole milk and some oat cakes. Sadly the oat cakes had mold spots on when I opened them this morning, but not the gifters fault as couldn't really be seen through the packaging.

£55.10/£200

Finstickle

Just a couple of small shops here:

£38 at Lidl for the weekly shop
£10.04 for odds and sods over a few Co-op trips
£23.40 for Take-away (i allocate this to grocery shopping as no other budget and keeps us focused on overall food spend)

Total for the month to date £445/£512
£67 remains with very little on the list currently as so well stocked.

Lucyv

FrugalThymes said:

@LadyWithAPlan thanks 😊 I do batch cook sometimes, but when pizza is a-calling its hard to choose the frozen burrito bowl or lasagne over a takeaway lol, so I'm going to get a few of the asd4 pizzas and potato pops I think! Crisps are a downfall of mine too, but yeah if you actually think about how much potato it is in a bag that IS kind of crazy for the price!

@Lucyv that's a lovely thing to do for the new boy. If you're worried about him making friends, are there any films or tv shows with Ukrainian subtitles/Ukrainian dubbed with English subtitles - you could see if your daughter wanted to invite him and some friends around for a film night?


Yesterday I didn't spend anything on groceries but had to pay for a school trip and a hoodie I found on Ebay for my eldest so not a nsd. DH went out to our regular games night while I caught up on work instead, and got a coke (an eye watering £3, but the pub lets us use the function room for free every week so that's our 'fee') which needs adding on to the total.

Oli0 app was good for us yesterday- two packet sandwiches, edamame beans, 4pt whole milk and some oat cakes. Sadly the oat cakes had mold spots on when I opened them this morning, but not the gifters fault as couldn't really be seen through the packaging.

I like that idea thank you,  I will speak to my daughter and try to arrange something 😊