January 2024 Grocery Challenge

Blackcats

@London_1 - such a lovely post about your mum.  I use the recipe for melting moments that you kindly shared a while ago.  When I cook them with my granddaughters I tell them about how clever your mum was in times gone by.  

I still have have over £150 left in my budget this month.  We will do one more Lidl shop on Thursday and an order for some of OH's favourite coffee.  He doesn't drink alcohol and good coffee is his treat.  I can in part attribute my fairly dryish January to the underspend so will keep going with reduced buying of wine for February.  A bottle of wine a week at £9 a bottle certainly adds up.  

I made a cake tonight as we have a friend popping in for a catch up over coffee tomorrow.  I used my basic loaf cake recipe, added a layer of quality street penny toffees (that never get eaten here) and a layer of thinly sliced apple and made a cinnamon crunch topping to create a spiced toffee apple cake - well that's what it would be called in a fancy coffee shop and likely cost a couple of pounds a slice too!  I tasted some earlier, purely for research and quality control purposes and it was nice.

£158.89 remaining 

LadyWithAPlan

Well done for winning in Jan vs the grocery budget @CMD79 and as you so eloquently put it , all us Responsible Grocery  Shoppers I think I mentioned amingst others as not buying stuff unnecessarily - as I did it with nectar double points over Xmas  for xmas gifts..

Grocery spend £18.79   so £139.82/£170    + £5 bulk   £24.49/£50 + £24 HF = £170 total so far so under
I dropped into the Ald on way home from seeing a lovely  flat (I am starting to flat hunt to finally buy a London flat - at which point my Grocery budget will become more squeezed, though there is an actual fishmonger on the high street  (not central London) - which would be amazing to live near. Plus there are actual ethnic food shops and green grocers.

 I   picked up some groceries and some bulk baking stuff - seeds, flaxseeds, chia, raisins, stevia  plus extra kale, frozen blueberries and some GF beef burgers and more veggies, df almond milk etc.

I bought as a treat/fridge snack  some GF ready made falafel from Ald - similar but cheaper than the Gosh ones... £1.39 v £1.75 upwards - I love them heated in the oven/halogen   I really need to try and make falafels  as I am sure it cant be that difficult - anyone got a decent recipe?

I am coming in on budget and have a fullish freezer - I did also want to buy a whole FR chicken today but the ones they had didnt look great - I will pick one up from Lid the corn fed FR 
Still on 10/13 NSD.  


FOOD
Had more of my chicken orange rice extravanganza - with a large side of you guessed it - gently fried in coconut oil - kale  - I now miss it when I dont eat kale. 
I have had a few raisins I bought for baking - want to make  a gf fruit and nut loaf  ... so i need to not eat all the raisins before then - there is a recipe in my Panasonic bmaker 
I have had no harib* or such sweets this year - I did have 2 lots of  crisps but candies/sweets are my absolute no in 2024 

I have bought some more cashews for cashew cream - I ate the whole pack I bought on Sunday .. so going to soak some now - never tried it but KajiKitka  assures me its good .. You soak the cashew nuts in water (apparently hot or cold then blend )  then blend/

lianne1984

£75.24 in Ic3land on Friday. Eugh. 

£233.24 / £250

CMD79

LadyWithAPlan said:

Well done for winning in Jan vs the grocery budget @CMD79 and as you so eloquently put it , all us Responsible Grocery  Shoppers I think I mentioned amingst others as not buying stuff unnecessarily - as I did it with nectar double points over Xmas  for xmas gifts..

Grocery spend £18.79   so £139.82/£170    + £5 bulk   £24.49/£50 + £24 HF = £170 total so far so under
I dropped into the Ald on way home from seeing a lovely  flat (I am starting to flat hunt to finally buy a London flat - at which point my Grocery budget will become more squeezed, though there is an actual fishmonger on the high street  (not central London) - which would be amazing to live near. Plus there are actual ethnic food shops and green grocers.

 I   picked up some groceries and some bulk baking stuff - seeds, flaxseeds, chia, raisins, stevia  plus extra kale, frozen blueberries and some GF beef burgers and more veggies, df almond milk etc.

I bought as a treat/fridge snack  some GF ready made falafel from Ald - similar but cheaper than the Gosh ones... £1.39 v £1.75 upwards - I love them heated in the oven/halogen   I really need to try and make falafels  as I am sure it cant be that difficult - anyone got a decent recipe?

I am coming in on budget and have a fullish freezer - I did also want to buy a whole FR chicken today but the ones they had didnt look great - I will pick one up from Lid the corn fed FR 
Still on 10/13 NSD.  


FOOD
Had more of my chicken orange rice extravanganza - with a large side of you guessed it - gently fried in coconut oil - kale  - I now miss it when I dont eat kale. 
I have had a few raisins I bought for baking - want to make  a gf fruit and nut loaf  ... so i need to not eat all the raisins before then - there is a recipe in my Panasonic bmaker 
I have had no harib* or such sweets this year - I did have 2 lots of  crisps but candies/sweets are my absolute no in 2024 

I have bought some more cashews for cashew cream - I ate the whole pack I bought on Sunday .. so going to soak some now - never tried it but KajiKitka  assures me its good .. You soak the cashew nuts in water (apparently hot or cold then blend )  then blend/

Ah! It was you who was just sitting there on my shoulder..... "DO YOU NEED ALL THIS S#!TE CMD?"   

That sounds really exciting to get onto the property ladder! Well done for cracking January too!! (And thanks for planting that little niggling feeling into my head!!)

lovemula21

I have to update my total. I haven’t been shopping this week but plan to go tomorrow after putting together a meal plan that will last until Monday. 

 I previously stated I was getting £10 cashback from an ASDA online shop and £4.50 from a Morrisons online shop. Sadly, the ASDA delivery didn’t have a number of items which took me below the minimum spend limit. So the cashback won’t be credited. With my Morrisons cashback I thought I would gain an extra £4.50 from using my bank account to pay but I used my OH’s card and it appears it needed to be mine. We have a joint account. Oh well, a lesson learned but still annoying. 

I got a refund from ASDA for the out of stock items of £11.70 plus £1.75 for a missing item. I also sent my OH to the shop this evening to get snacks so that was £7.71 spent at coop. So overall I need to add the difference to my total. This gives me an extra £5.74 to spend tomorrow. I will update this comment with the new total tomorrow evening. 

Edit 24th Jan: Shop today was £125.28. I bought multiples of some items because they were on offer. 

Total now is £455.11/£500 

I have £44.89 left for Monday’s shop. 

CMD79

I have looked at my bank account this morning; it's payday  I'm in the, maybe quite unique position, that I have £87 on my Cashback card from the shopping at Tesco I didn't do, I have a £46 Sainsburys customer service voucher for a refund, and £12.50 to spend in Nectar points... 

Given my very low spend for January, my freezer of meat still from Christmas eve bargains, I think I can do February without spending anything else!!  I have £145.50 - let's see, shall we?! 

joedenise

LadyWithAPlan said:

Well done for winning in Jan vs the grocery budget @CMD79 and as you so eloquently put it , all us Responsible Grocery  Shoppers I think I mentioned amingst others as not buying stuff unnecessarily - as I did it with nectar double points over Xmas  for xmas gifts..

Grocery spend £18.79   so £139.82/£170    + £5 bulk   £24.49/£50 + £24 HF = £170 total so far so under
I dropped into the Ald on way home from seeing a lovely  flat (I am starting to flat hunt to finally buy a London flat - at which point my Grocery budget will become more squeezed, though there is an actual fishmonger on the high street  (not central London) - which would be amazing to live near. Plus there are actual ethnic food shops and green grocers.

 I   picked up some groceries and some bulk baking stuff - seeds, flaxseeds, chia, raisins, stevia  plus extra kale, frozen blueberries and some GF beef burgers and more veggies, df almond milk etc.

I bought as a treat/fridge snack  some GF ready made falafel from Ald - similar but cheaper than the Gosh ones... £1.39 v £1.75 upwards - I love them heated in the oven/halogen   I really need to try and make falafels  as I am sure it cant be that difficult - anyone got a decent recipe?

I am coming in on budget and have a fullish freezer - I did also want to buy a whole FR chicken today but the ones they had didnt look great - I will pick one up from Lid the corn fed FR 
Still on 10/13 NSD.  


FOOD
Had more of my chicken orange rice extravanganza - with a large side of you guessed it - gently fried in coconut oil - kale  - I now miss it when I dont eat kale. 
I have had a few raisins I bought for baking - want to make  a gf fruit and nut loaf  ... so i need to not eat all the raisins before then - there is a recipe in my Panasonic bmaker 
I have had no harib* or such sweets this year - I did have 2 lots of  crisps but candies/sweets are my absolute no in 2024 

I have bought some more cashews for cashew cream - I ate the whole pack I bought on Sunday .. so going to soak some now - never tried it but KajiKitka  assures me its good .. You soak the cashew nuts in water (apparently hot or cold then blend )  then blend/

I use this recipe for falafel but bake rather than deep frying:  https://toriavey.com/falafel/ - lovely warm with some yogurt to dip them in.

SausageDogSandwich

A couple of small spends totalling £11.60, having big shop delivered Saturday night. I did want to go to ffoods at the weekend but don’t think there will be any money left after big shop.
£225.20/300 spent 

Thevalueofless

Closing January at £292.86/£300

It feels like it has been a very long month and it has also felt a bit out of control at times with regards to grocery shopping, however I have somehow managed to come in under budget. Only by a tiny bit so not carrying it forward. See everyone over in February.

TVOL

London_1

Well done CMD79 That's brilliant news, good luck with February's challenge.I think it really does help if you use every single thing to your advantage. I have a birthday coming next month, and already I have had two vouchers for a free meal one from the Beefeater chain, and one from another pub chain as I have loyalty cards for both of them so at some point.  I will go and have a main meal for free between now and 6th March. I'm not one to turn down a nice bit of pub grub for free

I have one more small shop to do on Friday after I've picked up my car from the garage to finish off this month and I am hoping I too shall come in under budget for January  


I had a great hot chocolate and squashy cream cake for the two of us, with my friend today as a very kind lady on this site sent me a Dobbies voucher which had to be used up by the end of the month so thank you Kayannie we really enjoyed it and my friend said thank you as well.

Onwards and upwards chums 

JackieO xx