March 2023 Grocery Challenge

otb666

509/600 One week left as I go from 24th-24th.  Been another tough month but managed to stay in budget.  We have moved away from roasts dinners and therefore gravy granules as gone more for vegetables for which i use stock cubes.  If we have meat its mainly pork now with sausages pork pies etc

KajiKita

Not going well here. I have £1.31 for groceries till pay day, a full week’s shop to get in including feeding the parents in law on Sunday 🤷‍♀️

Minimising my spend as far as I can by making relatively cheap bolognese (Mr KK wanted a roast chicken dinner, any left overs of the bolognese can go in the freezer for Mr KK) and dessert will use up two ingredients that didn’t even get opened (including a £17 bottle of lemon oil! 😳) when they were supposed to come for lunch at Christmas and didn’t because of horribly heavy colds. 

KK

Suffolk_lass

I snagged a Morries TGTG bag last night. Clearly a different team to my previous bags. Three packs of spring onions, 3 bags of oranges, some cut coriander (bleugh!), bagged organic carrots, wonky potatoes, tomatoes on vine, a portion of cucumber (I suspect this was just too small to sell, only about 10cm long) and a punnet of really going over strawberries - 12 items is good though and apart from the coriander (bleugh!) it will all be used. We had some strawberries on the salad for supper last night, and will use the rest of that pack of spring onions with a couple of Little Gem Lettuces in the braised lettuce recipe that @joedenise put us onto. To that end I whizzed round with a trolley and spent another £24.99 on grocery (including 6 extra large eggs) items that included two pots of cream, plus £20.59 on store-cupboard things (mostly dried fruit, peel and cherries) and £12.38 on treats.

In justification, it is my birthday soon so I made cakes for my meeting last night (the last one until September). The brownies used four eggs, the other (butternut finger) squares only two, but I had no cherries for these so doubled up on sultanas. I realised my cake supplies box was severely depleted with some slightly crystalised currants, half a packet each of mixed fruit, sultanas and raisins, and nothing else, hence the replacement eggs and store-cupboard dried fruit stock up. It does mean my month is at £169.58/average £250. I realised I have a birthday loyalty scheme voucher I should have used. I might just let it go rather than make up an order big enough to use it.

I noticed there was no frozen veg whatsoever at 17.30 last night, with the one exception of chips that is.

Nelliegrace

We haven’t made much of a dent in the food stores yet. I went shopping without DH and with a shopping list yesterday. It has become a habit to stock up, but it needs using too. No more tinned stuff for the foreseeable future. I have sorted the cupboards, lots of tinned pulses, tomatoes and tinned fish.
Had a lovely chat with the young man in the vegetable aisle, some idiot had tipped two boxes of bags of peppers out on the floor to try to find a later dated pack from the bottom box. (They were all the same date.) He said some customers just don’t care about spoiling the produce. I see customers drop their items in the trollies, and the fruit and veg are at the bottom.
The bananas are often bruised, but I weighed a bunch of seven nice bananas and saved 10p by not having them in plastic. We have half a banana and half an orange each at breakfast and so all the benefits but half of the sugars and half of the cost. We eat plenty of green vegetables. 

2Scratters

Hmm to add to the challenge - no children at home 2 of us trying to be careful. Someone forgot to tell our 2 collie dogs that  1 is food orientated the other he is ball bothered. I fed them last night a bit later than their usual time as was finishing off making our tea, DH offered them their tea - hell yea! we'll have some of that. 2 meals within an hour no wonder they slept well last night. 

2 Scratters xx

Nelliegrace

My sister’s cats were on to a good thing, food on demand because Mum could not remember that she had fed them. They cleared their dishes leaving no evidence, and ganged up on her claiming to be starving. 

Suffolk_lass

2Scratters said:

Hmm to add to the challenge - no children at home 2 of us trying to be careful. Someone forgot to tell our 2 collie dogs that  1 is food orientated the other he is ball bothered. I fed them last night a bit later than their usual time as was finishing off making our tea, DH offered them their tea - hell yea! we'll have some of that. 2 meals within an hour no wonder they slept well last night. 

2 Scratters xx

Nelliegrace said:

My sister’s cats were on to a good thing, food on demand because Mum could not remember that she had fed them. They cleared their dishes leaving no evidence, and ganged up on her claiming to be starving. 

When Grandma had the first evidence of dementia, we all lived together and parents had gone away for just over two weeks. Both dogs were being fed by Grandma. After a week she said we must get some dog food, so I thought I would get two week's worth so my Dad didn't come back to an empty cupboard. We had some episodes with dogs having accidents and put it down to Grandma not recognising the asks to go out. When parents returned, the first thing Grandma said was that we needed dog-food. I quietly pulled Dad to one side and explained I had bought to two weeks supply the week before. He confessed he had bought a month's worth before leaving. So they had happily eaten six week's worth in two weeks. Nightmare!

gill5blue

hi All,

week 3 spend £57.61

total so far.  £187.02/£300

on target and happy
gill5blue

2Scratters

@Suffolk_lass that made me laugh 6 weeks of food - 

2 Scratters xx

JingsMyBucket

Hello folks, I’m catching up on the thread after the past intense two weeks of client deadlines and Mr. Jings and our carpenter friend building out office shed in the garden. So much money has been flying out of our accounts for things like wood stain, an extra ladder, etc. I also spent a lot on feeding Mr. Jings and our friend. 

After doing a lot of hemming and hawing, I decided to claim a third of it as GC spends and the rest as going to the home improvement fund because it was spent buying and cooking food for the guys while they were working.  

So that means since March 3rd, we’ve spent £204.99 on GC food/supplies which includes a £99.56 Morrisons order. 

£335.46 spent so far. £319.53 / £114.54 remaining 

The house is an absolute tip though. We’ve let tidying habits slack because I’ve been on intense deadlines and OH has been busy as well. I’m going to spend the morning cleaning and tidying the kitchen and bedroom along with meal planning to get some order back into our lives. There’s a lot of food in our fridge and freezers but we’ve been eating easy food due to being busy. Maybe we can finally do that inventory this weekend. In terms of cooking and eating, here’s what I’m thinking: 

• Leftover green soup - OH made a soup zucchini, parsley, etc. and added a knob of goat cheese then blended it all

• Vegetable tart - sauté all the kale, roast some old tomatoes and roll out some shortcrust pastry; top it with herbs, cheese and sliced red onion and bake for a bit. We’ll have salad on the side

• Vegetable and chicken stir fry - use up the bok choy, green peppers and some noodles 

• Bacon chops and beans/vegetables type of casserole - any recipe suggestions? 

• Roast vegetable couscous