December 2022 Grocery Challenge

K9sandFelines

My month starts today, as usual. £120.for me please @elsiepac
Don't plan on getting anything fancy for over Christmas. Just the usual stuff we would normally have in, although I will have both DDS and GD here. And DD 2 will be here for the majority of the uni holidays.
I wonder how creative I can get? 

jacko220

Monthly budget set at £325, I am lucky to be able to afford this for one, I like cooking and more appropriately eating

Budget so far for December, have order Christmas and New Year from Ocado

Ocado	04/12/2022	54.35
	12/12/2022	62.58
	20/12/2022	95.53
	28/12/2022	72.84
Milk		33.21
Fish		30.21
Turkey		13.24
		361.96	193.59

At the moment 193.59/325

Extra spend for Christmas £36.96

First time I have really looked at this always had a ball-park figure.

Happy Christmas everybody

Richardx

Its_time

Last week didn't go too well, spent

£63.95/£50

Nothing elaborate or special bought just attempting to buy some food to fit in with the new health diet I have been put on which has thrown the budget slightly.  Hoping for a better week next week.
Most of the Christmas meal is now bought other than beef, potatoes, bacon, sausages, white chocolate, eggs and margarine which will come in the Tesco order on Monday.  Usually I buy all sorts of deserts and Christmas treats so this year is a very frugal one but with all we need which is what is important.  I am making a Christmas pudding cake for desert on Boxing Day which I saw on pinterest.  It is a sponge dome with jam and butter icing filling, covered with chocolate butter icing with maltesers stuck on it, then white chocolate drizzled over the top to look like a Christmas pudding.  Hopefully it will taste as nice as it sounds.
I still do think it is better for us to do a weekly budget and will continue in this way for a bit.

Doom_and_Gloom

£68.14 spent since my post last week between A&C, O~box and Mr S.
Had a £4.50 off a £30 spend at Mr S so we did quite a bit of stocking up of tins and other long life items.

£162.47/£248.
£85.53 left.

PipneyJane

I have a shop to declare.  We went to MrT’s on Sunday, to do a bit of a stock up and to take advantage of a spend-£30-get-£4-off voucher.  £37.20 spent on things we can’t find at L!dl, such as own-brand, low-fat hot chocolate (£2.15 a jar.  Memory says it used to be £1.60-ish), bulgar wheat - now £1.35 for 500g, (used to be £1.15) - and the big 1.5L bottles of 4x concentrated squash (used to be £1.75, now £1.90).  

We got a £2 coin in our change so when we got home, I cleared the GC Purse of “shrapnel”.  £6.87 in £2 coins, 5p’s and coppers which are now in the coin jars and the “Running Away Fund” money box.

The above brings our December spend to £70.60/£142.20, leaving £71.60 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

diminua

I won't go through everything but I'm up to £109.43 spent. That does include half a bottle of whisky for hot toddies as I had a cold, nice but not cheap minestrone for lunch in high st ken, and posh olive oil in a fancy tin. 

SausageDogSandwich

Just a spend of £5.49, husband got some j20 for the kids since I last posted. Will be having an Iceland delivery on Friday for some frozen party food and a couple of things to see us through the first week of half term but I haven’t finalised it yet so unsure how much I will spend. I’m going to try and brave the ice to pick up my parcels before they get sent back, with my poorly daughter in tow I can see I will be spending again  Take care everyone.

£160.77 spent.

EssexHebridean

Blast - realised that I already have a spend to declare as it's a veg box week! Sigh! So £15.99/£250 for us at the moment. 


I need to do a ruthless meal plan for the next 10 days I think - not least as it is the christmas farmer's market on Saturday, and I need to make sure that there will be freezer space for Christmas leftovers too as we will actually have turkey leftovers to house this year for the first time. It probably needs a freezer audit first I think - which might get done this evening.  

I have just placed an order for plain and flavoured rapeseed oils and flavoured mayonnaise from a small supplier that we love - bulked it to get to above £50 for free delivery, however this comes from the food account "cushion" rather than from the monthly budget, so no declaration to be made there. 

Gettingmyshiztogether

Hello, just logging in to declare my grand spend of.... 40p on some reduced to clear leeks. They've been chopped and put into the freezer whilst I decide what I am going to do with them. Off of the top of my head I am thinking of mixing them with Cauliflower, doing some cheese sauce and baking them in the oven 😋 

Total for this month has risen to...

£203.71/ £460

ps86edi

I had my exams last week, and everything has suffered. We shopped a fair bit, and a good number of things were free to us using the cashback apps so we haven't blown our budget already.
The green chef box came, and we used one of the fish file packs to do fish and chips for my husband's birthday. The other ack of fish was turned into dinner for the meat/fish eaters and lunch for my husband today. We have added even more chicken to the freezer and will pull out some make bacon wrap chicken breast over the weekend. It is a meal kit recipe. We usually order a meal for 4 people, and while this particular meal kit doesn't leave us many leftovers, Hello Fresh does and we are waiting for that next week.
We bought a few filler items, but a major shop has not been needed. We are swamped in bread and pastries thanks to fewer people requesting food through Olio. I'm hoping that will change in the next few weeks with winter vacations beginning. I can understand it though, it's gone down to -7C here, and going out for some bread and treats might not seem logical to most.

The bulk expense I mention here is a bottle of Baileys from Tesco, which was reduced to £10 and a great bargain for us. We are not big drinkers, but I've come to appreciate the instant warmth a bit of Irish whisky can bring.
The kids' winter party I'm throwing next week is almost here and we'll be using the butter we bought in summer using the discount Sainsbury gave through its smart shop app. I'm planning on making mincemeat spirals and cupcakes for dessert and hopefully some sugar cookies too. 

Total expense for December- £57.66/£120 bulk expense- £38.71/£100