January 2023 Grocery Challenge

Ginmonster

£2.91 spent on sweets from the no plastic shop yesterday as a weekend treat for me and the boy. We chose dark chocolate covered honeycomb and vegan fizzy jelly sweets and there's still enough left to enjoy today. 

£120.23/£200

mfwin2019

Just a bit more to add to the total 1.49 for milk on Wednesday and 46. 23 on L shop yesterday.
Resisted the temptation to fill the trolley with vegetarian items as I still have a lot in the cupboards and freezer. 
Still to go this month 2 veg boxes, a weekly shop and a delivery of spice kits so should be comfortably under budget with the freezer and cupboards still well stocked as opposed to bursting.

203.24/350

FoxFace

Back from the weekly shop, it is pretty neat that we have only had about 4 spending days this month (3 weekly shops and one top up). The budget is really good for us since we cancelled the G0usto, we are cutting back but comfortable.

£78.04p spent this week, and that included £8.11p of savings as quite a few things I needed were on offer. £64.46p in the kitty.

Menu plan (vegetarian) in case anyone is interested:

Sunday: Lentil hotpot
Monday: Cajun chick’n wraps 
Tuesday: Baked potatoes with beans & cheese
Wednesday: Korean BBQ tofu udon
Thursday: Butternut Mac & Cheese
Friday: Red cabbage & cashew biryani
Saturday: “steak”, chips, peas & onion rings

I’ve reverted back to porridge for breakfast, something with eggs for lunch and generally throw in a banana and an apple somewhere daily. I like to keep it simple and just focus on our main meals.

Anyway, that’s hopefully my update for the week, have a good one, everyone

snowbird20

FoxFace said:

Back from the weekly shop, it is pretty neat that we have only had about 4 spending days this month (3 weekly shops and one top up). The budget is really good for us since we cancelled the G0usto, we are cutting back but comfortable.

£78.04p spent this week, and that included £8.11p of savings as quite a few things I needed were on offer. £64.46p in the kitty.

Menu plan (vegetarian) in case anyone is interested:

Sunday: Lentil hotpot
Monday: Cajun chick’n wraps 
Tuesday: Baked potatoes with beans & cheese
Wednesday: Korean BBQ tofu udon
Thursday: Butternut Mac & Cheese
Friday: Red cabbage & cashew biryani
Saturday: “steak”, chips, peas & onion rings

I’ve reverted back to porridge for breakfast, something with eggs for lunch and generally throw in a banana and an apple somewhere daily. I like to keep it simple and just focus on our main meals.

Anyway, that’s hopefully my update for the week, have a good one, everyone

would you please share the recipe for the Korean bbq tofu?  and good on you for only 4 spend days!!

FoxFace

snowbird20 said

would you please share the recipe for the Korean bbq tofu?  and good on you for only 4 spend days!!

I don’t really have a recipe as such, it’s just a block of tofu, a bottle of Korean BBQ sauce, some stir fry veg and pre packed Udon noodles. Cube and fry the tofu, set aside. Stir fry the veg (I use frozen) and the noodles, add the tofu back in and add the sauce. I also bought some kimchi to top it with… Pretty simple but delicious

SausageDogSandwich

Asked my eldest to grab a bottle of milk while he was doing his papers this morning. Have already opened the emergency milk but this will stop me going  to the shop tomorrow. Have decided to wait until Friday to do any more shopping as I was going yesterday but then couldn’t face it. The kids have enough cereal for breakfasts until then, have quiche that will do them the next two days and then tuna sandwiches another two days, will defrost ham for Friday and weekend. And have made a meal plan to use most of what’s left of the freezer for teas. 

My eldest and youngest have just been baking with me as I finally shook myself enough to do something productive today, used up elderly fruit to make banana and cherry flapjacks, banana and blueberry cake, gooey brownie and bread pudding just using the chocolate pastries and brandy cream from the freezer. So that will last them the week aswell. 

£81.50/250 spent

SecondStar

Bother, ended up having to buy a specialist medicine, and had to take it from my grocery money as I didn’t factor in a miscellaneous category budget.

Spent £163.05 / £200.

£36.95 left.

I’ll be sure to allow £25 for misc. purchases next month.

I refrained from buying any expensive & unnecessary food or drink while I was put with a friend in town today. Very difficult, as she was in the Foodhall of a nice department shop, and was buying yummy things for herself.

Soontobeoap

@SecondStar that is real commitment to the challenge. Well done.

I have done a freezer stock take this evening. I have plenty of meat and veg in there for at least 4 weeks! Also cleared a shelf by rearranging stuff. Nothing has been thrown out. I have finally discovered  how to manage to build a meal around what i have in and just buy small additions to the meal. I used to do it the other way round. I would write a meal plan, see what I already had and then buy the rest. It is a subtle difference but I have saved so much money.

Thanks for the tips guys. Please keep them coming. 

Bluegreen143

Instead of doing my usual, setting a target but never checking back in… this month I’ve been lurking and tracking and waiting til near the end to post 😂😅

I’m feeding two adults, one seven year old and one four year old. My 7yo son gets free school dinners and my 4yo daughter gets free lunch at nursery, except on a Friday when she’s off. So only packing sandwiches for my DH (I work from home so generally have leftovers for lunch).

We usually spend £500-600 on food and household items (toiletries, cleaning products etc). SO MUCH. Before the pandemic my target was about £300 for two adults, a preschooler and baby! 

This month I tentatively thought I’d aim for no more than £500 all in. 

Really pleased to say I’m currently at:

Food - £264.19 
Household - £54.08

I get my main shop delivered on a Monday, so have two left this month and am hoping to keep these under £60 each. I also spend £20-30 on a top up shop on a Friday, so one left this month. I do think I should be on track to come under £470 all in, if I’m not sabotaged by my lovely husband 😆

I’ve achieved the reduction partly by being absolutely rigorous about eating all leftovers to eliminate waste, and partly by buying way less packaged snacks etc. Not that we buy many of these anyway (except crisps for DH) but I had gotten into a habit of buying cereal bars and yoghurt squeeze pouches as children’s snacks, and keeping in breadsticks, pretzels etc too. This month I’ve stuck to buying “ingredients” mainly and baked my own flapjacks for sending to school, but I’ve also simplified snacks so they now just get a banana or apple on the way home, with the option of a little fromage frais tub or cup of milk when we’re back (instead of me buying squeeze pouches so they can have them on the way home). I also find peanut butter sandwiches cut into little fingers are a filling, cheap snack when you know you’ll be out later than normal. 

I do see the effects of food inflation though as I genuinely don’t think I’ll be able to reduce much further next month. I do feel I’ve really had my “A game” on this month and yet we will still be at £400+ on food even with that! We do eat meat, make sure to get our five a day, and I like to cook so will buy nice spices and condiments etc but I don’t think we’ve bought anything too crazy this month.

CRANKY40

I cooked a gammon joint previously in the freezer (Asd@ one not a posh one) in the slow cooker yesterday. The HT eats a couple of slices chopped up with some form of tomato and marscapone sauce so that's what he had for dinner tonight. I took the left over bolognese sauce out of the frdge and added a tin of cheap baked beans, some extra mushrooms, a jar of frozen homemade passata and some hot chilli powder. It made loads and I have put four portions back into the freezer. At least there was enough space to do that

I've also done an order for delivery on Tuesday.