October 2022 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Afternoon All

I think I have 4 spends to declare from this week, but I have totally lost the plot re what has/hasn’t been declared and can’t find my last post on this thread.  £4 was spent in the C0-0p on Monday, when DH bought 4 Yeo Valley Yoghurts at £1.25 each and then used a £1 off voucher.  On Thursday, I spent £15.70 in L!dl (milk, mozzarella, onions, loose carrots, loose courgettes, but no eggs, tomato purée or tinned veg).  Yesterday, we dropped into L!dl to buy pizzas for dinner, a YS pie for today’s lunch and finally got some eggs (15, mixed size, free-range eggs for £2.09, up from £1.95).  £12.70 spent.  

Finally, today, we walked down to Sainbugs to take advantage of a Nectar offer on “Eco” toilet paper made from recycled paper: £2.70 for a pack of 9 rolls instead of £3.50 if you used their scan-as-you-shop widget.  The Bulk Fund bought 4 packs for £10.80, while the GC spent £4.91 on peppers, loose broccoli and crème fraiche.   The downside to scanning as you shop is, of course, that you can’t pay cash.  Fortunately, the GC purse had change and reimbursed me when I got home.

The above brings out total spend to £69.73/£147.60, leaving £77.87 for the rest of the month.

I just wanted to have a word about buying loose veg that hasn’t spent days sitting, sweating, wrapped in plastic.  It lasts so much longer.  Dinner tonight will be a carrot & cashew nut roast, using up the last of the loose carrots I bought two weeks ago.  Bagged carrots don’t keep for more than a week. The broccoli I bought today will keep for two weeks, while the plastic-wrapped broccoli goes mouldy in less than a week, even if released from its plastic prison.

- Pip

joedenise

@PipneyJane - the trouble is not a lot of SMs sell loose veg, particularly the discounters.  However if you tip the veg out onto the worktop as soon as possible after buying and dry them out before putting away they will keep a bit longer.  I always do this with potatoes as they are always particularly wet when sold in plastic.  Why the SMs don't do the same as they do in France and sell veg in "string" bags like oranges are sold in we really wouldn't have to put up with the wet veg.

Doom_and_Gloom

PipneyJane said:

The downside to scanning as you shop is, of course, that you can’t pay cash.  Fortunately, the GC purse had change and reimbursed me when I got home.

Most of the self serve you go to to pay should have the option of cash or card. At our nearest Mr S they have card only, cash only and those that take both cash and card. 
A good thing too as we have switched to cash for in store spending to help with our budgeting. My OH or I will use the app a lot of the time and it means we have an idea of what it bill will be (I say idea as some loose produce gets added at the till) as it is easier than using the calculator on the phone that if you press something wrong can be wiped out, yes this has happened to me.

LadyWithAPlan

I have not downloaded the scan and shop yet, however I can see from here there are some cheaper prices as well as the Necta* card points so I will look. I rarely shop nowadays at Sains, maybe once a month

I also much prefer spending cash but yesterday was on credit card. I have moved cash over already from my grocery pot to my CC pot. I would pay it off immediately but I need to wait for the statement to help build my credit score ahead of buying.

Grocery spend over weekend £26.54
Grocery Oct  22 GC £46.56/145   +    0/£55.30 for bulk

Sat Lid* £16.66 food including:
some polish sausage as they doing a polish special food event(worth checking out as some lovely meats and cheeses), frozen berries, houmous, DF yogurt, bananas and oranges, df milk 95p  each now - was 85p a week ago!
baby potatoes, broccoli, pomegranate on special so bought those. I keep reading recipes with pomegranate seeds so I will find one and cook this week - suggestions welcome.

Treats £2.19 - MR L mint dark choc (DF and v tasty) and sweets - separate pot
Hse spend (in different pot) £3.39 9 toilet rolls Mr L

Sun Coop £9.88 - paid cash
DF plant butter on offer  £1.70 as had ran out and I will try this new brand + YS GF bread £1.05 (from £2.79)  for the freezer, had a 50p off frozen fruit voucher on the app so got blueberries for £1.50, Coop own brand baked beans 47p and they taste pretty good - heinz were £1.55 so... DF grated cheese was on offer as well  £1.70 vs the £2.50+ it normally is so bought some of that as well. 
One pack of tortilla chips 90p that comes off my treats budget

I  made a potato and leek soup today all in pressure cooker with a veg stock only,  I blended it in my nutribullet, it was so lovely and I have frozen a portion. I also fried up some of the sausage and served with gherkins as needed lots of fat to get over my hangover.
I sincerely hope there are no winter blackouts as all our freezers will not be happy.


NSD Oct 5/17 still 

joedenise

Freezers will be fine as long as the power cuts are no longer than 24 hours and doors and not opened.

PipneyJane

Doom_and_Gloom said:

PipneyJane said:

The downside to scanning as you shop is, of course, that you can’t pay cash.  Fortunately, the GC purse had change and reimbursed me when I got home.

Most of the self serve you go to to pay should have the option of cash or card. At our nearest Mr S they have card only, cash only and those that take both cash and card. 
A good thing too as we have switched to cash for in store spending to help with our budgeting. My OH or I will use the app a lot of the time and it means we have an idea of what it bill will be (I say idea as some loose produce gets added at the till) as it is easier than using the calculator on the phone that if you press something wrong can be wiped out, yes this has happened to me.

Not an option at our local Sainsbugs, unfortunately.  (We asked.  Most annoying.). We used their handset and went to the specific batch of checkouts for scan-and-shop, not the self-service tills, which are all card-only.  If you have loose veg to weigh, there are scales in the produce section which will print out a bar code for you to scan - that’s what we did with the broccoli.

- Pip

JingsMyBucket

Morning all. There are some Morrison's and Tesco online orders to declare from this weekend. Morrison's gave me a £15 off £60 voucher I had to spend by Sunday (yesterday) so I did a comparative Tesco shopping cart and bought items from M that were either less expensive or possibly better quality, along with items new to me to give myself some variety. 

£53.58 at M online for yoghurt, fruit, laundry sanitizer, onions, butter croissants, and various items that are hard to find locally. For example: capellini/vermicelli pasta, beef marrow bones, frozen okra, good quality Korean ramen, Mutti passata/sauces etc. I also filled my freezer with beef shin, a whole chicken, ground beef and more. I had ordered turkey thigh mince as nobody else stocks it locally but they subbed it for turkey breast mince and I sent it back.

Just a heads for baking season, Morrison's currently has the high quality Nielsen Massey vanilla extract for only £5.75 while it's £7 at Tesco. @goldfinches that might be a good deal for you. I snapped that up immediately after realizing the price difference. While making the apple cake last week I noticed I was finally running out of vanilla after about 3 years so decided to restock.

The Mutti passatas are also currently 3 for £3 vs. the usual £1.79 each so definitely grabbed those as I've been wanting to try them and that's cheaper than our usual local sources. I also picked up some Lloyd Grossman pizza bases which were 2 for £3. There are two in each pack so we have 4 pizza bases to work from over various meals. 

On the flip side, £71.34 was spent online with Tesco. I originally wasn't going to do an order from there but noticed that M doesn't have a lot of our regular items, or some were slightly or much cheaper at Tesco. Fresh herbs were literally 50% less at Tesco so I got them there. Also in this order were the regular oat bars, our favourite (inexpensive!) toilet paper, veg, more pizza or tomato sauces, peanut butter, olive oil and other staples. 

Overall, I think may have over indexed on the Italian food/sauces. 😬 Our pantry now is stuffed full of tomato sauces, pizza bases and I’ve got two bags of mozzarella in the fridge that will eventually move to the freezer. And more pizza dough in the freezer. I think I wanted to cover our bases to not have to order delivery when we can just make things ourselves at home. With all the restocking, it kind of feels like I’m nesting – bedding down for the winter / fall so we can survive without going outside or wasting money on last minute fast food delivery. Might as well have the indulgent food right at home and save money/calories, right? 

Is anyone else feeling this nesting sense take over them with Fall closing in? 


£182.28 / £300.00 spent. £117.72 remaining

This week I'll have to get eggs, milk, trash bags, compost bags, and will order another £20 veg and fruit box. That would leave us with £80 for the last two weeks of the month. We can do it. 🙂 Especially if I keep Mr. Jings away from the stores when he returns later this week. Currently the freezer is literally bursting to fullness right now. Time to make a list of its contents along with the fridge and newly restocked pantry so we can keep our eyes on the prize. This post is long enough! Have a beautiful day everyone! 

SausageDogSandwich

Morning all, spent more than planned and didn’t manage to get a lot of my list as the shelves and freezers had big empty gaps when I went shopping yesterday and after clothes shopping with the kids I was to tired to try another shop, so will have to go again probably tomorrow when husband is off work. On my last post I forgot I owed my brother £6 for getting me some curries so I have added that on now. £1.25 on an energy drink on Saturday. Along with £3.70 on cookies and cereal yesterday from asd@ and £10.51 in ald1 on the “main shop”. Got home to cook dinner yesterday and the oven has given up for the second time, only had it about 18 months  the one before this lasted 20 years! Hopefully it’s an easy fix like last time.

£51.81/200 spent. Slightly over where I would want to be at the moment as I didn’t get a lot on my list but it’s already spent now 

hazeldreams

Morning all,

Quite a spendy week on groceries for us (our budget includes all food, household products, and alcohol), but I'm not too concerned as we had run everything right down in September so we needed to restock. Also, to avoid nipping to Tesco's midweek for milk, extra snacks, etc, we just bought extra of everything from Aldi, which bumped the price up a fair bit. I'm still feeling pretty confident we can manage to stick to the budget again this month.

We're now on £185.98/£725.

Thanks, 

Hazel x

goldfinches

@JingsMyBucket - thankyou for the vanilla tip, unfortunately I can't take advantage because I don't have access to a Morrisons branch locally.

The Baking Budget has spent £6.59 at Mr T's on YS ground almonds, YS dates and porridge oats which makes the total for this month £6.59/£20 + £17.06.

For my main shops I spent £4.05 at Mr T's on frozen fruit and a cucumber. I then gave way to temptation in M*rks and spent £8.35 on milk, yoghurt, butter and eggs which makes my new GC total £27.33/£133.30 and my average daily spend £3.03. Looking back I was tired and my knees were very painful and the shelves were empty of fruit and veg so I've decided to shop earlier in the day from now on.