September 2022 Grocery Challenge

Blackcats

Good to finally catch up with all the inspiring Grocery Challengers.

Trying a lower budget this month as we are away for a week.  

A freezer inventory has helped a lot and also produced some nice meals.  £10 lidlee voucher helped too.

Vietnamese pork tonight - very tasty.

£184 remaining from £210.

Soontobeoap

@thriftwizard I have still got lots of flowers on my runners but dispite many ladybirds the black fly are taking over. I have been so busy that I have not had time to wash them all off and they breed like rabbits. 

I have invested in smaller tupperware type pots this week and more zip lock freezer bags so that I freeze less air and get more in the freezer. Pureed up more tomato sauce for pasta. Relying on the ones that seeded themselves in the concrete path last year now. 

Still struggling with portion control when cooking rice but think that I found a cup tonight that holds just the right amount for the 2 of us. 

boultdj

Glad the glaze was a hit @mumtoomany.  

ancientmum

£10.95 spent, mainly in the market, on milk, bread, eggs, potatoes, apples and satsumas today. 

LadyWithAPlan

Saturday  Spending day so NSD 5/16 still

Grocery spending Sep 22 GC £51.81/£160  + £15/55.50 bulk - all paid from cash

Last shop was Sunday  so a week later was good, no top ups,  helped by freezer & previous batch cooking. I still have loads veg from last week and apples from FM orchard. I did empty fridge out before I left for 3 weeks in August so I am actively having to start fridge from scratch and stores are down.

Sains had really good reductions   £4 to 88p etc for lasagne etc  - about 6.45pm  after my swim- but a lot had wheat in - so had to ignore -  still  YS oriental  veg stir-fry 44p, mushroom stir fry 39p  and 4 courgettes  34p  - came to £1.17

Coop - bought lots of reduced meat and fish inc GF baked fish, GF fishcakes, a piece of  YS sirloin ( a treat I rarely buy), gf sausages, pork kebabs, organic potatoes, - all  50% + off - so have frozen loads.
Co-op came to 14.36 - 

Jackie O on here  has really put me off buying crisps! However I did buy  a reduced pack only as it had a competition on - still £1.50! ...so the competition was the reason/decider and budget comes  from a different pot than my grocery  pot. 

Actually if I bought ones with wheat in I could gift them in xmas hampers  as I cant eat the wheat...

I did look at the 150g packet  crisps ingredients and then tried a la Jackie O's mum to make 150g of an YS organic potato (I calculated as costing 11.14p  + electric after my 25p Coop veg offer and YS) into crisps! I tried super thin slicing and  sauteing them with spices - not quite the same though tasty but I am going to try and re-create potato crips at home again - I have a halogen oven so may try that next, They started out too damp cos of slicing them thinly, maybe I need to leave to dry for longer .- lovely but not that crispy --more like potato dauphoise without the cream and gruyere!  Maybe need to dry for longer first.

 The bought crisps were actually very sweet - sweet chilli flavour - i guess they stack them with sugar and salt to make them moreish..and make you buy them... ( I did intellectually know this but having  not had any all week (tx jackieo ;(()  I really could taste it. 
Expect many more  diary entries as I try to make artisan crisps from organic potatoes. Any advice? I dont want to have to dehydrate in oven as too expensive to run ...

Tortilla chips I can buy for 35P/40p - and seem more value  the lowest brand ones I prefer as just corn, oil and salt  - lIDL/ald*,, Sains - all do great cheap corn ones .. its these expensive flavoured potato ones I am recreating - I really like crunch in my food. (I have the proper masa corn flour soaked in limes and its super expensive so hopefully Jackie O's mum will not be carving off bits of corn to make a further point re tortilla chips!)

I also had 75p of Coop offer weekly vouchers so have added 75p to my mortgage unicorn pig  from my cash purse.

Also popped to tesco  as they had some GF and DF CB items but for 4 GF white buns - £2.90 down to £1.50 with CB .. still expensive and the gf bread I made  last week was super tasty, more nutritious, less rubbish in it and came to the same rough cost as the mix was YS. Plus a long queue so I left them.

I popped into Iceland but too much stuff and so much with wheat in - so did not buy anything - i will tell my parents about the oily fish deal.

My amazon deal of 2 x 1 kg of Lavazza coffee beans arrived- so finishing off all others first before I open one - it will stop me from going to the shops when I get near to running out of coffee. If I run out of DF milk I survive but never coffee,

I was reading on a pensions board  thread about how much people need to retire and what they spend and so it really seems my current goal of £160/month for me plus £30/bulk  on groceries is too high, this does not include cleaning stuff, toiletries, restaurants.  I don't buy much alcohol  for the home unless I am entertaining and that can go into treats pot. I do live in central London.
I am planning to keep cutting £10 a month off the main til it feels too hard. I am a meat eater, GF, Dairy sensitive, I should be 100% DF but sometimes a bit of chocolate or cheese creeps in and I regret it) so TGTG is no good often as it has wheat or dairy in them most the time. So DF and GF adds up.

I also have a detailed list now of what I do need to buy and stock up on. I am still not meal planning in a focused way but I do know what I mainly eat and do batch cook and freeze portions into smaller packages.

I went looking for YS meat and fish as knew what was in freezer/fridge/pantry as doing that 30 day to a clean organised home by  Katie Berry amazing book  - its changing my life.

goldfinches

@LadyWithAPlan - I made some delicious crisps from this recipe not long ago Best Homemade Chips Recipe - How To Make Homemade Potato Chips (food52.com) Here's how mine came out.



I didn't bother with the seasoning given in the recipe as I prefer salt. Let me know how you get on if you decide to give the recipe a go.

I can claim another NSD for Friday and have a small top-up spend of £7.60 in M*rks on milk, yoghurt, 2 x mushrooms and 3 x radishes to add to my total. That makes my new monthly total £30.01/£120 and my average daily spend is £3.00.

I foraged half a bag for life full of windfall apples on Thursday morning so have been busy peeling, coring and chopping them up to make jars full of stewed apple to go in my larder. I'm planning to pick some sloes to make sloe gin tomorrow provided it doesn't rain again and I've spotted a lovely pear tree that's groaning with fruit so that should all help with keeping costs down.

FrugalThymes

I had an impromptu trip to the local pub to see a band last night. Took £10 and no card so I couldn't over spend, but a friend who has recently had a bit of a windfall insisted on treating me to a few nice drinks so I'm feeling a bit groggy this morning!  I added on the cost of a couple of ciders I had at home before we went, but the £10 I took with me is coming out of the 'fun money' budget

Today was going to be batch cooking but I think it's just slowly tidying up instead and playing some board games!

JingsMyBucket

Happy Sunday everyone. It’s beautifully sunny in our patch of Scotland this morning. 

Just a quick check in to note we spent £7.35 at M & S on Friday. Mr. Jings got a steak pie and we got some (British) biscuits for me. There’s something else but I’m forgetting. 

£167.87 / £300.00 total spent so far.  £132.13 remaining

For this week I’m aiming to keep below £30 and that should be easy enough because the fridge is bloody packed. 

I'm going to start cooking now for the week — from my cooking plan I posted earlier in the week. We ended up eating leftover soup or just randomly improvising the whole week. First up for cooking is going to be hamburger soup / minestrone. Later this evening I’ll do the Mexican beans. We’ll have variety for lunches for the week. 

thriftwizard

Beautifully sunny down here in the deep south too! I've just added a whole 69p spent in W8rose on the way back from the allotment, where I picked & dug enough veg (French beans, runner beans, a courgette, spuds & chard/Asturian tree cabbage leaves) for the 3 of us for 3 days, though some of the runners are already in the freezer for future reference. Plus a useful handful of raspberries & blackberries, & there's a large pot of windfall apples & quinces from the garden simmering away too. But OH has suddenly remembered to eat fruit, so more bananas were needed! Possibly W8rose's smallest transaction of the week?! Not to mention muddiest customer...

London_1

Good afternoon all, menu planned as usual this morning, plus prepped the veg for the week (Carrots and spuds peeled and in my long tuppaware container in the fridge in water.)
Making out my shopping list at the moment .

This weeks shop I've decided will be done on Wednesday which will be my second shop of the month. Have a fair amount of cash in my budget, so may get a gammon joint and a some  meat for the freezer.

I'm hoping with careful listing of prices from Asda's, Aldi's and Tescos, which I do via my laptop I can do it for around or just under about £30.00 at most. fingers crossed it will be almost halfway through the month by Wednesday so all is on track at the moment 

JackieO xx

                                  September Budget £4.89/£60.00spent so far:   10/11 NSDs