November 2023 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

weenancyinAmerica said:

@PipneyJane - Hi Pip, we have a lot of couples on here who are spending £400 or more for 2 adults. You are always doing so well. Do you have any hints for them that might help with this challenge? Any one else out there have some hints for our struggling savers? 

Where do I start, @weenancyinAmerica?  That’s quite a question.  Be prepared for an essay of an answer.

Firstly, the Grocery Challenge money is only part of our monthly “housekeeping budget”. The full budget is as follows, and each of us contribute half:

£140 - Grocery Challenge, general grocery shopping.  It’s been £140 since July 2020.
£ 40 - Meat Fund - this is usually spent at the butcher shop but we don’t go every month, so it builds up
£ 40 - Bulk Fund - covers purchases at Costco, Wing Yip and anything bought in bulk (again, not spent every month)
£ 20 - Booze Fund - recent addition.  Wine/spirits/beer used to be purchased from the Bulk Fund
£ 20 - Christmas Fund - for the goose/turkey, tree and other Christmas treats.  Also buys Easter chocolates
£ 10 - Gardening Fund - for seeds, compost, etc
———
£270
====

With the exception of the GC money and the Meat Fund, which are withdrawn in cash, everything else gets directly deposited into designated savings accounts on payday.   The GC money goes into its own purse, while the Meat Fund is stored in a cookie jar.

My GC money includes cleaning products, toiletries bought at the supermarket (but not my hair dye), DH's shaving products, etc - basically everything we buy at the supermarket.  I've been a careful shopper since the early 1990s, when a very tight February taught me the value of a well stocked pantry, dried goods and fresh produce (I had £25 to feed 2 adults for the entire month). So here are my tips and techniques:-

1. Focus your spending what you need to eat, not treats.  Fibre and protein fill you up.  Will you get your Five-A-Day?
2. Cook from scratch.  Homemade is always cheaper.
3. Portion control 1: Food.  Most recipes feed 4 or 6. The trick is to only eat one portion each instead of doubling up because it's there (and tempting!). The only way I've found to stop myself nibbling is to dish up lunch boxes at the same time as dishing up dinner. 
4. Portion control 2:  cleaning products.  Have you read the packaging to see how much you actually need to use?  Washing powder is a classic example - most people use twice/three times the specified dose.  
5. Portion control 3:  toiletries.  I decant my shampoo, conditioner, body wash, body lotion and facial cleanser into pump-action bottles (recycled from hand wash).  I always use the same number of pumps, e.g. 3 for shampoo.  When I started doing this, I discovered it made a bottle of shampoo last twice as long.
6. Breakfast cereal.  Firstly, focus on food quality.  Good breakfast cereal is high in fibre and protein, e.g. muesli or porridge and not loaded with sugar.  Secondly, weigh your morning serving. The specified serving size of most breakfast cereals is 30g-40g, which is a lot smaller than you might think.  To make your expensive breakfast cereal go further, mix it half-and-half with cheap bran flakes. 
7. Buy your vegetables loose.  As well as being (probably) cheaper, they'll last longer, because they won't have spent days deteriorating in sweaty plastic bags before you get them home.
8. Eggs are cheap. How about Bread-and-cheese Pudding? Combine 2 eggs with a cup of milk, pour over 4 slices of bread layered in a loaf pan/small lasagne dish, sprinkle over 100g of cheddar and bake at 180C for 45-ish minutes.  For a change, add in a tin of tuna (drained) +/- a tin of sweetcorn (drained) before pouring over the liquid.
9. Pad out meat meals with vegetables and/or lentils. 8oz/250g of minced beef can easily feed 4 people if you add the diced pulp of an aubergine  (zap in the microwave first to soften), or a grated courgette, plus a grated carrot or two and some sliced mushrooms. To stretch it to feed 6, add half a cup of split red lentils to your sauce (i.e. to a bolognese sauce for pasta). Always enhance the "meatiness" by crumbling in a stock cube, before you add the sauce ingredients. I routinely use only 4oz of mince or 8oz of stewing steak per person per meal and use veggies/dried beans to make up the rest of the meal.
10. Use grains creatively. We don't just have rice or pasta with a sauce. We have cous-cous (technically a pasta), polenta (cornmeal) and bulgar wheat (tabouli anyone?), too. These vary the taste of one of my main sources of "meal padding".
11. Think Indian or Chinese or Mexican! Cure dietary boredom by varying the flavours of the foods that you eat.  MInced-Beef-With-A-Sauce may become bolognese, keema curry, chilli con carne, moussaka, corn pone, or piccadillo (sorry about the spelling). Use leftovers to fill samosas or pasties or cottage pie.
12. Consider vegetable based dishes. During my very tight February, I lugged home a 15lb bag of potatoes and onions. They became onion quiche, potato-cheese-garlic-&-onion flan, home made gnocchi, and baked potato with sauce or cheese on top. I also turned the half-dead contents of the vegie draw into a curry. Another idea: Mexican Pilchard Pudding (add a can of pilchards in tomato sauce to 1lb of mashed potato; stir in a well beaten egg and 2 teaspoons of baking powder; tip into a greased dish and bake for 3/4 hour at 180C). 
13. Canned fish is your friend. Tuna is cheap and versatile. Tins of pilchards or mackeral in tomato sauce can be curried or, with a bit of imagination, turned into fish pie or fish stews. Salmon can be mixed with cheese sauce and left over rice to become a salmon casserole. Or dress it up as salmon mouse.
14. Use pulses and nuts. Try a lentil loaf or a carrot & hazelnut loaf, instead of meatloaf for dinner. Curry mung beans. Make your own refried beans and serve them in homemade, soft, wheat tortillas. Blend a can of tomatoes with 2 cans of butter beans then heat for a filling, "instant" soup. Add kidney beans to stews. [To cook from dried: Soak beans overnight, rinse and drain. Turn into a clean bread bag and freeze for 6-8 hours minimum (breaks down the cell walls). Defrost, cover with fresh water and bring to the boil. Boil for 10 minutes to kill of toxins then simmer until soft (or pressure cook for 20 minutes at 15lb pressure). The freezing cuts the cooking time. I do 1lb of dried beans at a time and freeze the excess.]
15. Post-stock-stew. After I've made chicken/poultry stock and drained it, I go through the bones and strip off any remaining meat. This will be cooked up later in something that doesn't need a big chicken flavour (a vindaloo, perhaps). 
16. Don't just cook for today. Double up quantities so that you have a readily available second meal for those nights when you'll be too busy to cook. Most of my recipes start “fry onion with sliced mushrooms, add garlic” so I make up batches of this base and store them in the freezer.
17. Plan your leftovers. I'll roast the largest chicken or turkey I can fit in the oven precisely because they'll result in leftovers. Then I'll use the leftovers in stir-fries, soups, stews, or whatever.
18. Your freezer is your friend. Use it to store bulk bought bread, cheese and meat, as well as freezing the items mentioned above.
19. When you're shopping consider whether a convenience food is really that convenient. Can you make it more cheaply from scratch (soups for example)? Will it save you that much time? Most expensive jars of "cook in" sauce can be replaced with a cheap tin of tomatoes and some herbs or spices.
20. Shop carefully. Make a shopping list. Know what you already have. Plan your meals in advance to make the best use of what is available. If a recipe calls for half a cauliflower, can you do something else with the rest or will it end up in the bin?
21. Know your prices.  Some people keep a “Price Book” of the things they most commonly buy.  I don’t, but I record a lot of prices in the spreadsheet I use to keep track of the GC Challenge. 
22. Do a little bit of maths. Is brand A in the big box really cheaper than buying two of the same thing in brand B?  Just because something is on special, doesn't necessarily make it cheaper. Cans of tuna are a good example: I often see cans of John West on sale as "four cans for £x" then walk down the aisle to find the own brand is still half the price.
23. Utilise the "pantry principle". Keep a well stocked pantry and that way you'll always have something you can make a meal from. Shop to replenish your pantry and not just for dinner next week.
24. Buy in Bulk where you can because it’s often cheaper, e.g. 10kg sacks of Atta Flour/Chapatti Flour is frequently sold for less than 40p/kilo, while the small bags are double that price. You need to be able to store it, so use your Bulk Fund to purchase air-tight storage containers. (I0kg of flour fills two of the largest sized Lock-n-lock boxes.  Ditto 10kg basmati rice.)
25. I only have one type of flour in stock: Atta flour, which is a semi-wholemeal bread flour.  To convert it into self-raising flour, I just add a teaspoon of baking powder per cup of flour.

- Pip

ETA - I knew there was stuff I missed but my Darling Husband kept interrupting me…….

• When money was really tight, I was the woman in the supermarket with the calculator, adding up my shopping as I went.
• My favourite “filler” these days is bulgar wheat, instead of rice.  Yes, it’s more expensive BUT it has 3 advantages:  1) it is even easier to cook (see instructions below); 2) it bulks out to a larger volume than rice, so I only need to use 1 cup instead of 1.5 for 4 portions; 3) it has 8 times the fibre and 4 times the protein of brown rice!
• How to cook bulgar wheat:  use 1 part bulgar wheat to 2 parts boiling water (e.g. 1 cup bulgar wheat to 2 cups boiling water).  Put the bulgar wheat into a saucepan, add a sprinkle of salt and cover with twice the volume of boiling water.  Bring back to the boil.  Cover and switch off the burner.  Leave, undisturbed for 15 minutes.  The water will be absorbed and it’s ready to serve.
• You will have noticed that we don’t do a lot of meat-and-two-veg meals.  That’s partially because my mother put me off for life - she never got her timing right and would boil veg to death - and partially because it’s the most expensive way to eat your protein.  For example, to feed 4 in a meat-and-two-veg meal, you’ll need 4 chicken breasts;  in a curry, you can get away with two, while in pasta or  stir-fry, you only need one.
• Shop with your eyes.  When shopping, have a look at what is available, what is on sale, and consider adapting your meal plan.  Don’t forget that supermarkets will often have ingredients in 2 or 3 different places, at completely different prices, depending on whether they have an “ethnic aisle” or two.  Also, often the cheapest version of something is on the bottom shelf.
• If you have a friend who likes Douwe Egbert coffee, ask them to save the jars for you and use them to store your spices, tea and coffee.  (That’s what I use.) The cheapest spices come in 500g/1kg bags in the Asian food section.  One bag will last years.  Store your spices in a cupboard, away from the light.
• Read all the posts listed at the start of the Grocery Challenge thread.    It’ll take time - it took me months - but the knowledge that is stored there is worth it.   (@elsiepac, please add this post to the list, so that others can find it in future.  Many thanks.)

weenancyinAmerica

Wow, thank you Pip. I made a copy to see what I can do as we get our food budget tomorrow. I ended up last month with $1.02. I really hope to do better this month. I know your information will help a lot of people. 

CRANKY40

Yesterday was NSD for food (or anything else) number 2. We had sausage, hash browns, beans and toast for dinner. I need to go and gaze at the freezer for some inspiration for tonight....

Soontobeoap

Quite a large shop at Aldis, today. Lots of staples bought. Whole shop only came to £14.91! DH went alone and came back with an enormous swede for 62p They were all priced the same! He was very pleased with himself and he stuck to the list. 🎉🎉
Meanwhile, I have made the leftover chicken and scraps of ham/ bacon that have been frozen over the last 3 months into 8 pies. I have made a 2 week meal plan and written a shopping list accordingly. Very pleased with our start to November. 

Blackcats

£22 spent in Lidl today on a variety of things to help create meals using mostly items we have in the fridge, freezer and cupboards.  We needed walnuts which we have with breakfast and we had almost run out of cheese which is unusual for us.  I thought we had a pack in the fridge door but nope, unfortunately not.  We were so strict with ourselves when we were walking round the shop and stuck diligently to our list except for a pack of revels which I was unable to resist.  I just need to avoid the coffee cream flavour and as they look so similar to the orange cream it's like a high stakes roulette game.

AnotherNewDay

Hi @elsiepac can you put me down for £100 again this month to cover 1 adult woman and 2 v hungry cats for food, household and toiletries 

lilly81

@PipneyJane I'm loving all the tips and will definitely try them.
Can I add:
*Join your local Facebook freebie group 
*Download the OLIO app
*See if you have a community fridge nearby 
*If you're using the oven try to fill it (put pasta bake in whilst doing a roast etc)

And finally a lesson I learned this week - label what you put in the freezer 🤦

I spent £2.75 today on some chocolate for a friend that's stuck at home with a poorly toddler.

Spent £53.17/£200

PipneyJane

@lilly81 and @weenancyinAmerica, I’ve added a few more points. I knew there were things I was forgetting to mention.  

- Pip

CRANKY40

Yesterday was a small spend day. I went to collect some doughnuts for the HT's birthday treat so I also bought some of the heavier items like cat litter. £13.90 spent from the grocery budget, £306.10 remaining.

Dinner last night was a cheese and bean toastie and a doughnut for the HT, I had the remaining chickpea dahl with a small garlic and coriander naan bread. There is still no space in the freezer and tonight's dinner will be takeaway pizza paid for from the birthday/christmas pot at the HT's request. 

joedenise

As I did a shop on 31 October from October's money then very little needed today although I did buy some meat which comes from another budget.  Today's spend was £4.83/£200 leaving 195.17.

Sainsbury are doing half price pork and beef roasting joints on Nectar price so well worth getting if you have the freezer space.