April 2024 Grocery Challenge

diminua

£14.45 spent so far - I now have 2/3 of a large packet of crisps and five satsumas at work, so only need to make a sandwich for Friday and next Monday (probably egg and tomato or veg sausage). Butter, shampoo, T rolls, milk and green pesto bought on the way home - quick in and out as I already had the weight of my laptop to carry. I've drafted a vague meal plan for the rest of the month including three batch cooks (fish pie, chilli and veg curry). I'm also reckoning on at least fortnightly drinks with my dad and what will either be one lunch or takeaway out, or four coffee shop coffees, or a nice bottle of vermouth I can have with tonic as the weather gets warmer in May. 
If I want more than one of those things I will need to economise elsewhere (putting this here so I stick to it!). 

Sallyp2

debtfreewannabe321 said:

Omg I don't know what's happening this month but we have three (maybe two if I can eek the last week out) more food shops left in this month and I'm already at 400.54/500 😦
I also didn't plan for Easter holidays...kids haven't stopped eating 😭 I made homemade snacks for three days and they scoffed the bleeding lot in one night after DP and I had gone to bed. I've only just noticed when I went in the fridge to put the shopping away. They left the empty Tupperware in there with the lid on so I thought it was still full! Sigh...I think April will be more about containing overspends and damage limitations 🤣

One of my friends gives her kids “treat” tokens. The kids get so many for the week and can use them daily or weekly to buy various yummies from the house tuck shop. A packet crisps is 5 tokens / choc bar might be 10 etc
it makes the kids think about snack consumption and also helps with £££

leftatthetrafficlights

Went shopping yesterday and spent £65 😳 it's a lot but I bought 2 large kitchen rolls as they were on offer, 2 jars of red pepper tapenade which were very expensive but I only use them a couple of times a year and they can be tricky to find and some other bits and pieces that I only buy a couple of times a year. We have more than enough food to see us through the next week (and beyond!) so I expect to underspend on my next shop to balance it out 🤞

Suffolk_lass

@Sallyp2 I saw your post about Co0p dishwasher tabs and I just wanted to mention the Morries Savers lemon ones are £1.99 for 40. We use them for an eco quick cycle but use a jelly one in-between if doing a full 70c wash. They are fine and a faint lemon smell is not unpleasant. Most importantly they work and are a shed load of cash cheaper than most.

I finished the first quarter a smidge over 25% of my £3000 annual budget. I need to remind myself that we have four weeks away booked and won't be buying groceries and we grow veg and fruit, so come summer, these things all but disappear from the basket. A good tip about using a basket instead of a trolley, Sallyp2 - although with my once a month main trip I upsize this advice; I try to cram everything into a small trolley instead of a large one, and with four bags of cat litter it does no always work.

Hang in there everyone, preserve your leftovers and make something out of them! Here we no longer buy naan bread - we make do with hm flat-breads, just SR flour, salt and Greek-style yogurt, cooked on a griddle, maybe with caraway or fennel seeds added for a bit of something. DH makes them using a JamieO recipe. 

PipneyJane

thriftwizard said:

I suspect I'll also go over but I'm intending to try to stick to the target; where I'll come unstuck is if DS1 & DDiL do come down for a few days, as they've said they may. Or may not! They're decorating their house so may stay put to finish the job - or may really, really need a break! 

Just added £9.99 on a quick supermarket top-up today - bread, milk, apples & bananas (DD1 here tonight, will need these for her lunchbox tomorrow, and OH will eat the rest anyway) & mushrooms. I need to try to do the non-perishables shop tomorrow as we're close to running out of one or two staple items, but we're back with transport problems again - sigh. (One car back to the garage, the other advised to "stay local" until the main dealers have assessed it.) So may have to put it off for a few more days.

@Sallyp2, Asturian Tree Cabbages are a delight! Easy to grow & rather delicious, mild enough to eat in a salad & great in a stir-fry. Also - mildly perennial! Ordinary cabbages just turn to slime in our shady heavy clay at allotment 1 (we currently have 2 though we'll be giving plot 1 up eventually; plot 2 is smaller but much closer) but the tree cabbages are thriving.

Oooohhhh….  Thanks for the link re Asturian Tree Cabbages, @thriftwizard.  I may give them a try in one of our beds.  We could do with more brassicas in our diet, but DH loathes kale and barely tolerates cauliflower.  We don’t eat a lot of cabbage, because there’s only two of us and we’d be eating it every day for a week, just to finish one off.  We’ve grown broccoli in the past, which were decimated by pests.  I remember cooking some, then discovering just before serving that the “broccoli” included dozens of small caterpillars which had been hidden by the florets.  (That all went in the compost bin.)

@Soontobeoap - hope your DH’s shingles aren’t too itchy or painful, and that he feels better soon.

- Pip

K9sandFelines

£150 please @elsiepac

This is for all food items, cleaning products and toiletries

My month starts on the 13th and runs til the 12th.
I still need to to tot up my receipts for March, but I'm not officially done with that month yet.

Crazycatlady2

1 shop to declare of £90. Been in a mess due to new kitchen but getting straight now and back to meal planning best I can ATM 

LadyWithAPlan

£150 please for the month + £30 bulk @elsiepac

Just me and food (meals out are rare and counted separately) ...plus odd meal cooking for new chap.

I am late to this.. Yet to Grocery shop in April  but I got back to London yesterday and have been eating out my freezer a lot so I do need to stock up.
My local Lid* closing has been worse than I thought  - I miss it ! I used it for veg and their great FR cornfed chickens etc - so now need to trek further to the Aldi which often has no chickens.

I am starting to buy more Icelan* frozen veg though therefore to stock up - their frozen cauli flower rice is great - 2 packs of 4 for £4 - just pop into microwave and works out cheaper than buying fresh and grating it yourself.

March  GC spend was an incredibly low £79 plus £34  abroad supermarket spend  plus of course meals out...  I was away for Easter  as well and also went away for a 5 day vacation - 

thriftwizard

Oh dear! The non-perishables shop came to £91.61 between L!dls and the Chinese supermarket; this would only leave me just over £40 per week for the next 3 weeks, to feed 3 adults FT plus one PT and guests; this is not realistic, although if we were locked down again, I could probably do it. But there'd be riots... So I'm regretfully going to ask @elsiepac  to increase my target to 

£480

for April, please. Sigh... but at the same time, recognising that we are actually very lucky to be able to do that without jeopardising the family finances.

Sallyp2

K9sandFelines said:

£150 please @elsiepac

This is for all food items, cleaning products and toiletries

My month starts on the 13th and runs til the 12th.
I still need to to tot up my receipts for March, but I'm not officially done with that month yet.

Wow am in awe if you only spend £150 in 4 weeks!
Ive smashed that and plus in a week