November 2022 Grocery Challenge

leftatthetrafficlights

£11.50 spent yesterday - I bought a cauliflower, onions, potatoes, basil and some de-scaler and dh bought some stuff for his lunches. 

Shouldn't need anything additional until we shop on Sunday for fruit and salad. 

£42/£250

happydenial

£27.91 spent in Aldi so far - just a top up shop which included some fruit and veg, compost bags, ibuprofen, vitamins and butter/cheese. 

£472.09/£500 left. Will need to pop for milk later this week but so far so good 🤞 

IAAM

Could I join this little gang? 

I've had a look at my credit card bill for October and we spent £239.64 last month on groceries. This is definitely less than normal as we were on holiday for a week visiting friends and family and saved a week's worth of food and drink as a result.

For that reason, I'll start off by trying to keep November at the same level (£240) - and then review the spend after that.

I've tried to find the main top tips for people starting on the Grocery Challenge (so that I don't unnecessarily bother people to repeat it). However, I've not been able to track down the golden answers yet so if anyone is happy to give me some steer then that would be really kind.

Edit: I've now seen all of the helpful tips and recipes etc. (Not sure how I missed it!!) so that is really helpful - and a lot of bedtime reading I think

In the meantime, I'll start by making a list of what I have in my cupboards and making sure to use those up before I buy any more. (On my MFW challenge, I mentioned that I found 5 different types of teabags in my cupboard as well as 4 tins of chickpeas!).

Once I've made the list, I'll then write a meal plan.

I might also cost some meals to see what is the cheapest option (but still healthy, as that is more important to me than just cost). Maybe lunches would be the easiest start? What's the cheapest fruit to buy (per serving) and is it cheaper to make sandwiches or to have tinned soup & a roll. (I will eventually make my own soup but, for the moment, it's baby steps!!).

Good luck for November everyone

Edit: I've already costed some things and it was a very helpful exercise. (This is based on my grocery receipt and how much I paid for things). So, per serving:

Banana = 15p
Grapes = 29p
2 x satsumas = 38p
Blueberries = 65p

Plus, my lunch today (Moroccan houmous & a huge carrot) cost me a grand total of 35p! At that price I won't be making homemade houmous yet (not until I make it taste better than Morrisons or Lidl).

It's certainly helpful to do this little exercise as that was a much cheaper lunch than I expected. I'll check out the price of some of my other lunches and see if I can get the price around the same mark. 

Soontobeoap

Had 10 mins spare to literally do a trolley dash around Aldi between dropping hubby off and collecting neighbour for singing group. Bought milk, 2x lacto free milk, 3 different flours, caster sugar, 2x tinned rice pud, 2x ready made custard (for when hubbys on his own), black and white bin bags, 2x tinned peaches, tomatoe sauce, eggs and fresh parsley. Total £17.01. Pastys from freezer tonight and i have 2 tins of tuna so will be making fish cakes for tomorrows dinner and will freeze some for another day. 

sarahj1986

Hello all 

£63.67 spent today online 

weekly shop in with fresh, frozen and cupboard items. I’ve got quite a freezer full now so I think next week is either a small shop or I’ll do it later in the week to use up what I’ve got first. 

£186.33 left 

FrugalThymes

We will be trying to stick to a budget again this month, £200 for all groceries, not including extra for two birthdays at the end of the month.
Also a pantry stocking up budget of £100 this month

£200

Soontobeoap

Whilst cooking dinner tonight there was a loud pop! I turned round and my 2 and a half year old hob has stopped working. From my experience electricians on our island are like gold dust. Fish cakes will be cooked in the oven tomorrow. 😒. 

LittleGem

Hello all, happy November!
first spend of the month in at £64.94 - in my foolishness I sent OH to the shops with a list which to be fair he did absolutely stick to, but when I wrote beans x 4 I meant the 22p tins and didn’t mean the £3.50 pack of Heinz 🤦🏻‍♀️And the McVitties biscuits, and the rest 🙄

anyway, got 1kg of beef mince which I cooked in an enormous batch with grated carrot, courgette, peppers, and lentils, splitting it into 3 portions bolognaise, 4 portions chilli with a few added extra spices and some kidney beans, and a big lasagne. Felt incredibly productive and like the meat really stretched so I’m happy with that to start the month off. Slow cooked whole chicken eaten with chips and salad tonight will also become a chicken and veg pie, and some fajitas too this coming week.

good luck to all!

thriftwizard

I'm tearing into the November budget with a not-so-massive spend of £5.74 - I don't normally bother the shops on a Tuesday, but managed to run out of baking parchment whilst DD2 & I were having a bake-a-thon - cinnamon & almond buns (a favourite of mine for a quick breakfast) cheese scones, and plain scones to use up a quarter-jar of "extra" jam made last week from blackberries, raspberries & blueberries from 2021 that were still clogging up my freezer. (There's always a small amount left in the pan when I'm making jam, no matter how carefully I calculate quantities! Hence the quarter-jar.) I normally get stuff like baking parchment, greaseproof paper & tinfoil from the market, but must admit I hadn't checked quantities lately as there's been less baking with DD1 away.

Hoping to stay within my admittedly-generous target this month; it's a 4-week month for us and only 3 of us here FT for half of it, plus stocks of most things are high. As against that, allotment produce is winding down now; I picked the last of the runner & green beans this morning and we ate them just now. Time to cut the stalks down and mulch the roots to keep them "warm" through the winter; I'd love to see whether we can get a 3rd year out of the plants! Now all we have over there is kale, chard, Asturian Tree Cabbages (a huge, perennial cabbage relative, very tender & tasty) ordinary cabbages and some leeks, though most of the leeks won't bulk up until spring now. But there are 5 squashes "curing" in the conservatory, several pots of herbs on windowsills or in our little greenhouse, and I'll be sprouting beans & peas on the kitchen windowsill for extra fresh stuff through the winter. I'll have another go at growing salad leaves & I've dried lots of chillis & a jar of parsley too. There's enough quince chutney made to keep OH happy for several years. Also looking to start making my own bread again, so I've hauled my sourdough starter out of the back of the fridge & started feeding it up again, which seems to be going well. I adore our local baker's bread & want very much to continue to support a real asset to our town, but I keep buying (and eating) too much of it!

PipneyJane

Apologies @elsiepac but I need to modify my GC budget for November.  We have £6.90 to roll over from October. 

Please change my GC Budget to £146.90.

Many thanks.

- Pip