August 2023 Grocery Challenge

gill5blue

Hi all
can I join in august challenge-im so grateful-it really helps me stay within target.
I can see prices really rising in the shops, so the next few months will be carefully planning and pricing up my meals.
@elsiepac-thankyou for this thread.

August will be £240 budget please

gill5blue

Florenceem

I have done a menu plan for a week - eating from stock. Plan to have an austere August.
Only spend of my 4 weeks shopping(pension) money is £18.45.

2Scratters

Hi @elsiepac et al,


£250 total for August of which £50 will be moved sideways towards any bulk buying in the future. 

Its a 5 week month too   
As of today still not withdrawn the money from the bank account for us to use the cash. DH does not help with spending on treats outside this mission. He is getting better at logging the spends though. £8.56 left in the wallet. Might spend that to bulk buy some milk and freeze it. WE have 2 meals each in the fridge marinading curry type dishes which will see us over the weekend. Think will leave this as an NSDs weekend. 
As there is just the 2 of us and 2 dogs we generally do ok, I love to save bits of coins i.e 5p,20p and £2 coins. We round those coins up into the spends so manage small amounts of cash savings during the year.

2 Scratters xx

Suffolk_lass

Florenceem said:

JingsMyBucket - Saver. sell them.

Ahem! Welcome back @Florenceem I haven't seen you other than crafting, for ages (esp on this thread!) - and I see you still manage your budget at £100 per month. Remarkable

For anyone recently looking, our Florenceem a bit of a legend for me!

joedenise

Small spend on fruit this morning of £4.44.  Now have £224.80 left.

Florenceem

Suffolk_lass - I thrive on keeping costs down. Just had lunch - fried off lo roast potatoes + a large tomato from the community shop + a fried egg and a slice of buttered toast. Dinner is going to be hm pizza.

JingsMyBucket

@goldfinches I think it was the same last summer for both of us. Profligate eating of delicious strawberries. I'm currently mainlining them whole instead of frugally cutting up just a few. They're the only good thing about the rainy past few weeks. I've also been shopping nearly every day this week. I almost went to M & S again yesterday after the local agricultural show but thought, "Screw it. I'll make do with what I have." I skipped going to M & S and went straight home and took a long luxurious nap. 😂

That said, while at the ag show I spent £3.00 on a bottle of local unfiltered apple juice and Mr. Jings spent £8.00 on local honey. We bought some pies and scones but we're putting those in the entertainment budget. 

£60.54 / £400.00 spent. £339.46 remaining. 

goldfinches

@JingsMyBucket - guess what I bought in Marks this afternoon, more strawberries! I'll turn into one at this rate. 

I did manage a NSD yesterday and have eaten out of the fridge today with the exception of the strawberries so that's something I suppose.

I visited Marks on my way home from an organ recital because I needed milk and while I was there I also bought yoghurt so that I don't need to go back for at least four days; I spent £4.20 on those and have decided the strawbs will come out of the treat budget so I don't have to include them in my totals. 

That makes my new total £42.25/£124 which is an average daily spend of £7.04.

LittleGem

Hi all,

managed to avoid the supermarket this weekend which makes a change, £27.43 spent so far which was a Lidl shop last week, will need to do another big shop probably tomorrow as have been eating out of the freezer and have depleted my stores of bolognaise and shepherds pie for the kids.

Would love some ideas for batch cooking child friendly meals, have definitely got stuck in a rut with dinners lately!

£27.43/£250

joedenise

@LittleGem - worth googling as loads of websites for family batch cooking which might have something.  Difficult to recommend anything in particular without knowing the ages of the children.  If they are very young it might be worth checking out Annabel Karmel recipes - https://www.annabelkarmel.com/recipes/; suspect a lot of them will be OK for older children too.