March 2023 Grocery Challenge

Soontobeoap

Bit of a slip up today. I was absolutely sure that I could just buy essentials this month and shop from store cupboards and freezer but heres the thing. If I discover a bargain that is not regularly available I would be a fool to leave it. £12.50 spent today on 880 tetley tea bags! Thats under one and a half pence a tea bag! I have been finding it hard to find them for under 2p a bag.

Also cant stop planning for sumner visitors. So this month I have already bought
Pizzas, garlic bread, chips, sausage rolls, lasagne ingredients, fish, tinned beans and sausages that were on offer but are for April.


Think that it is inevitable that I will bust the budget this month but I am still going to try my hardest not to overspend by too much. 

joedenise

Just a small shop of £4.90 for some apples and oranges for the week.  Now spent £55.91/£200 so have £144.09.

sarahj1986

sarahj1986 said:

sarahj1986 said:

sarahj1986 said:

sarahj1986 said:

£52.83 spent 

I only did it today as the offers in Tesco ran out. Big pack of Pepsi 24 for £7 instead of £9.50 not on offer, plus a few other offers expiring today. Made sense to get it today instead of tomorrow. I won’t need anymore fizzy pop till probably end of March or early April but I’ll keep an eye out at the offers. A few things out of stock that I find bizarre - coffee and chicken noodles, no suitable substitute? Weird. I used my £3 points also.  

£197.17 left 

£6.92 spent

As Tesco didn’t deliver a few items I cycled into town to get them. Coffee and noodles. My husband asked for some more biscuits too and I picked up another bag of apples on Clubcard as I only put 1 bag on the shopping instead of 2

£190.25 left 

£4 spent 

I got a too good to go bag from the Spar. It was still a good bag but the “worst” so far from there. 

Edit -£186.25 left 

£8.56 spent

i went into the Tesco express this afternoon. I found some pies, sausage rolls and ham reduced. I also got a cheeky meal deal. I don’t get them often but I really fancied some sushi 

£177.69 left 

big shop coming Wednesday morning to last 2 weeks 

£143.66 spent

it was slightly higher but I’ve taken off a birthday card for my sister and daffodils I got because my daughter is obsessed with them on the grass verges

this will last 2 weeks, although we may need bread and milk. There’s enough meals, snacks etc 

£34.03 left it’s gonna be tight! 

nat21luv

£12.57 in Morrisons
£5 TGTG fresh veg box from wholesalers

£119.94 / £250

I was so pleased to find the unicorn, the magical £1 for 4pt whipping cream! I’ve never seen them before, only ever heard of them as fairytale, I picked 2 up and look forward to making butter! Not sure how many blocks it’ll make but I love the buttermilk in coffee and I’ll make pancakes too. I do love a good cooking weekend! Nothing will be wasted and it’s a good excuse to use up the bananas on the Fritz. 

TGTG box was exceptional today, for £5 I was very pleased. This is my 15th box from them but they aren’t consistent at all. Once I had a box with 8 broccoli and 2 MASSIVE onions. Today was peppers, carrots, pak Choi, spinach, passion fruit, potatoes, oranges, chillis, tomatoes, broccoli, cabbage, garlic, and even edible flowers! 

Nelliegrace

We went to pick up my prescription from the hospital, and we did not stop for anything at Adsa on the way back. The little top up shops do add to our spending.
I spent less when we had to do a weekly click and collect for over two years, and we got used to the limited choice of basic range fresh ingredients from just one supermarket, on a set budget. There was so much more time to cook proper meals.  It was a bit overwhelming to go back into the various supermarkets at first, and to have so much more temptation to return to bad shopping habits.

Suffolk_lass

diminua said:

I went for a walk and pub lunch with friends in Langley at the weekend, and bought some nice but expensive blue cheese, sourdough bread, and a half bottle of wine on Friday night, so with that and the usual groceries, I'm up to £81.99 spent. 

What a lovely shopping list. It transported me to my friend's local park in France, where we sat on the banks of the river with a picnic like this, with some foraged fruit

Suffolk_lass

My purse is staying closed this week. I did consider an online Morries click and collect but I can manage without so will have a milkman only week. I might make bread today though. We have the six slices I cut and froze but we have eaten the rest. Hopefully there is some sourdough discard I can add

mumtoomany

Two bottles of milk to add, but I've no idea how much they were. OH went out for chicken feed and picked them up from the feed suppliers. They are organic, so I'm going to add £4, until I find out how much, if I ever do. Trying not to shop until at least next week now. 

Total now, £443.53/£2640 for the year.

I have a new freezer coming on friday. One of the chest ones won't stay closed. It will it you put a large bucket of sand on the top, but this is a little impractical. It was left for us in a house we bought 20 years ago. According to the lady at the repairers, it might be possible to fix, it's a bosch, but would require new hinges and a new lid. The new one will be cheaper to run. 

Hugs to all, mumtoomany.xxx

joedenise

As we need to go out to buy paint for our bedroom we decided we might as well pop into the shops as we needed more eggs and butter.  Total spend so far this month is £64.39/£200 leaving £135.61.

Nelliegrace

I do prefer to buy British bacon, but for this month it is cooking bacon from Adsa, 90p for 500g. I looked at the packs for one with thinnish slices. I have divided it up and frozen it in weekly portions for the two of us. 
Mum would make bacon and egg pie, making a little bacon and a few eggs feed a family of six with plenty of pastry, and a good helping of vegetables and potatoes. 
Macaroni cheese and Welsh Rarebit stretched a bit of cheese with a bit of mustard to add to the flavour. And then there was soup, a real standby when there were too many days to payday. 
It seemed daft to me that the allotment committee frowned on useful nettles and preferred us to root them out to grow spinach instead of cooking the nettles. The first nettle leaves are emerging already. We have the perennial, Good King Henry growing in the garden.