September 2022 Grocery Challenge

Doom_and_Gloom

£49.39 spent since last post between A&C and Mr S.

£277.46/£285.
£7.54 left.

We are skipping the A&C delivery this week coming as we want to at least try and come close to budget. 

Caroby

Last big shop of the month yesterday. Lidl first £36.99, then Aldi £19.00 (inc two 1kg bags of carrots 29p each but couldn't get any of their 85p oat milk so had to get it at Tesco), then to Tesco where we paid 8 x £1.20 a litre for their own oat milk. Alpro even dearer at £1.75, and no offers we'd try; wary of other brands as some separate/curdle in boiling water. Spent £42.00 inc £2.08 on food bank stuff and a 13p charity round-up donation.
Total of £97.99 means we've now spent £203.37, over budget by £23.37 but hopefully won't be buying anything else.
Shan't declare yet though.

LadyWithAPlan

@caroby the lIDL almond milk does not curdle. You might find a cashback offer for the Alpro 'I cant believe its not milk'  on Shopmium etc - its very good as well but expensive w/o the CB offer.

GC Sept  £105.94 /£160  + £23.20 /55.50 bulk

I have realised I had not planned my grocery buying well  as I am cat sitting for my friend as a favour for a week and yet for some reason I bought loads of food on Wednesday for home.. I have bought a few things with me but really couldnt be bothered to drag it all with me...so will be more spending ... and its an expensive tourist area here. 

Had an unexpected spend yesterday after picking the keys,  £10.53 inc throat sweets as got a cold. 2.50 (in bulk) for Xanthum gum for baking and £5.50 for grocery - coffee for being away and some DF milk that was a Shopmium Wunda pea protein DF milk offer which for some reason wouldn't claim CB even though it was the correct one

I also got a TGTG on the way home £5 yesterday from Wasabi  - was enough for last night and tonight.

I have been pressure cooking the squash after you all inspiring me to try cooking squash - added some to a HM soup alongside beetroot and bacon  on a frozen chicken stock which was v tasty and helped given I have been feeling awful the last two days.
 I also rush pressure cooked the other 2/3rds  of the squash before I left - had to pressure cost twice and I have one of those energy monitors just arrive - it cost 11p for 2 lots of pressure cooking 2 x 10 mins - I have bought one with me and froze the second batch. 

London_1

hazeldreams said:

One week to go here as we shop on a Friday. 

So far we've spent £614.57/£750 and I am so chuffed with this! Roughly £135 left for next week's shop and hoping to steer clear of popping to the shop for top-ups again to make sure we deliver under the £750.

I am in awe at some of you GC'ers and the amazingly low budgets that you manage to stick to! I worked out our daily spend after seeing some of you do it and was horrified that even this month when we've been exceptionally good, it was on average £25 per day!! Frightening!!

Hi there I live alone as I am widowed, so consequently have a great deal lower budget than folk with husbands or families to feed. I also have my Sunday dinner at my younest DDs every week so only have 6 main meals to make.

 I rarely eat much in the way of breakfasts ,unless in the wintertime I may eat a bowl of porridge to warm me up (having a Scots Mum ingrained it in to me at an early age that 'porridge was a great way to keep the cold out'   )

I also am a great soup maker and will have soup for lunch and make at least one good sized pot a week. This also helps to streetch the budget out quite a bit .

I do enjoy my cuppa though  

JackieO xx

Ginmonster

hazeldreams said:

I am in awe at some of you GC'ers and the amazingly low budgets that you manage to stick to! I worked out our daily spend after seeing some of you do it and was horrified that even this month when we've been exceptionally good, it was on average £25 per day!! Frightening!!

Don't compare yourself to anyone else, everyone's circumstances are different. We all have different amounts of people and pets to feed and like/need to eat different things. Access to a range of places to buy food isn't the same for everyone and it depends how busy the rest of your life is as to how much time you can spend on shopping and cooking. If you're managing to improve things for you, that's all that matters. 

mumtoomany

I must agree with the others @hazeldreams. Everyone on here has different circumstances. Although i am feeding at least seven of us most days, I can keep the cost small, because: 
1. I grow a lot of our vegetables and fruit, saves a lot.
2. We produce some of our own meat, two pigs to go for meat next month, still some mutton in the freezer, and I think we have more than one cockerel again so chicken soon. Also have our own eggs.
3. As my "day job" is a smallholder, although i also cover all the child care for DD1, I'm at home all day. I can cook from scratch.
4. I have plenty of space to be able to buy in bulk and save money. Also when relatives visit i am able to make use of two different, supermarket, staff discount cards. I can stock up at a lower price.
5. We also have an amazing greengrocers. They sell boxes of fruit and veg for £1 each. This be for example 20-30 apples, or 6 lettuce, or 15 peppers, sometimes mixed boxes, say two cauliflowers,  a cabbage, a swede, and a pineapple. They also sell sacks of potatoes, never more than £10, often as cheap as £6; sacks of carrots, onions, beets, etc.
6. We try to waste NOTHING. The freezer is your friend. We have three!

Hope this helps. If you can cut your costs month on month, then you're doing something right. 
Hugs, mumtoomany.xxx

Forgot to add spent £1.70 on milk. Total for the year to date now stands at, £2062.91/£2640 for the year. Getting tight!

Greying_Pilgrim

I absolutely echo the points made by others hazeldreams - all our household compositions are different, our access to various food outlets varies wildly, as do what our tastes, preferences or medical conditions enable us to eat, or indeed, the household income we have available for food - hence this is reflected in our individual budgets. 

You have done so well to maintain your spending in line with your available budget to meet your household needs - and that is a super achievement, worthy of celebration.  Well done!

Greying X

ancientmum

I did a fridge sweep last night and made soup with some YS celery, an overgrown courgette and a potato for thickening.  Also found a couple of YS sweet peppers so made macaroni cheese with them, some of the courgette and a few chard leaves from the lottie.  I had this for tea with leftover garlic bread.  

I'm trying to be extra frugal for the last week of the month as I have only got a few pounds left and will need milk, bread and fruit before the weekend.  Tins and freezer are my friends, but then that is why we squirrel stuff away I suppose. I found a couple of tins of fruit whilst having a sort out of the cupboard which were well past their BBE dates but they have been fine to eat.  Only me to worry about, so I'm not about to poison anyone else!

Let's keep going with smiles on our faces folks, despite this government seeming to want to turn the clock back 100 years.  

thriftwizard

Time & available storage space are two huge components in keeping grocery costs as low as possible, and simply aren't available to everyone. That said, there's often space available for bulk-buys of long-dated tins & packets that just hasn't occurred to people; under beds, chairs and bookshelves, for example. (@GreyQueen has some excellent ideas for utilising these spaces unobtrusively.) The trick is remembering to rotate your supplies as they come in so that they get used up in date order! 

London_1

I have taken a stack of read books to the local CS and have used two spare shelves from my upstairs bookcase to stack tins with long dates and dried goods for the winter.

I think my two DDs think I have turned into a squirrel by storing stuff up for the coming seasons  

JackieO xx