May 2024 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

I’ve got two shops to declare from this morning £1.14 in L!dl and £8.21 in Sainsbugs.  The Sainsbugs shop was on fresh veg: mushrooms, sweet potatoes, potatoes, carrots, and peppers.  In the L!dl shop, we picked up our free easy peel oranges and free chillies, as well as buying plain bagels (79p) and a large tub of fat-free fresh yoghurt (35p).  

Once you deduct 23p of shrapnel, this brings our total GC spend to £152.20/£160 leaving £7.80 for the rest of the month.

This should be doable. We’ll probably only need to buy milk.  My biggest challenge now is to work out meal plans for the next few days.  Fortunately, DH will be visiting his best mate tomorrow/Sunday, so I don’t have to worry about feeding him.  (I can live on baked potatoes.)

Meal Plans

All breakfasts are cereal and all lunches are leftovers, unless otherwise stated.  I may change the order but I reckon this will do:

Today:  Toad In The Hole, accompanied by baked sweet potato and peas.
Saturday:  since it’s just me, I’ll have the leftovers from today.
Sunday:  broccoli pasta, made with chorizo and crème fraiche.
Monday:  faggots in onion marmalade, cooked in the slow cooker.
Tuesday:  L!dl’s One Pot Chicken Curry with Noodles made with the stem of Sunday’s broccoli pasta.
Wednesday:  Chicken pie from the freezer, accompanied by potato croquettes and roasted carrots.
Thursday:  Bagels filled with HM chicken liver pate or cream cheese and smoked salmon.  (We’re at the cricket that evening.)

- Pip

goldfinches

I've managed to get here having only once backslid and entered a supermarket because I was walking past my local Tesco and saw some lovely tulips being reduced so nipped in and bought two bunches as well as two packs of silken tofu that was being offered at a clubcard price right by the door - I think they must have seen me coming! That little detour cost me £11.20!   
Then this morning I popped into M*rks to top up on salad bits and bought ys tomatoes, ready-made tabbouleh as a treat, ys pack of chillies, celery, 2x radishes, ys bag of bananas and coriander which came to £8.96.

That makes my new total £140.20/£150 which means it's going to be very tight for the rest of the month but I am grimly determined that I'm not going to be beaten so tomorrow I shall be sitting down and working out what I can make with what I've got.

Soontobeoap

Two £33.00 shops done since I last posted. I have bought loads of things to tempt DH. Our lovely neighbour has recieved a lot of the mousses rice and trifles that he didnt fancy and I couldnt fit another thing in the freezer! I am consoling my self that the only thing wasted was a white loaf that I tried to give to 2 different neighbours but they didnt want it.

Dh is still eating little meals and snacks but has started to know what he fancies so I have stopped buying random stuff. I am just so pleased that he is able to eat again that I will happily take the hit. He lost over a stone in 2 weeks. 

I am hoping that we can shop from stores next month!

I think I have said that for the last 2 months now! 🤣.

thank you all for good wishes for hubby. I think we have turned a corner. I am in awe of @PipneyJane who keeps her budget low despitr her health and other struggles. You are all amazing and have kept me motivatex through a difficuly few months. Thank you all. I am looking forward to trying to do better in June!!! 

elsiepac

June Grocery Challenge now available!

PipneyJane

Soontobeoap said:

Two £33.00 shops done since I last posted. I have bought loads of things to tempt DH. Our lovely neighbour has recieved a lot of the mousses rice and trifles that he didnt fancy and I couldnt fit another thing in the freezer! I am consoling my self that the only thing wasted was a white loaf that I tried to give to 2 different neighbours but they didnt want it.

Dh is still eating little meals and snacks but has started to know what he fancies so I have stopped buying random stuff. I am just so pleased that he is able to eat again that I will happily take the hit. He lost over a stone in 2 weeks. 

I am hoping that we can shop from stores next month!

I think I have said that for the last 2 months now! 🤣.

thank you all for good wishes for hubby. I think we have turned a corner. I am in awe of @PipneyJane who keeps her budget low despitr her health and other struggles. You are all amazing and have kept me motivatex through a difficuly few months. Thank you all. I am looking forward to trying to do better in June!!! 

Thank you for saying that, @Soontobeoap.  Very kind of you.  The majority of my secrets are spelled out in the post that @elsiepac has kindly linked to in the GC first post.  With the Grocery Challenge money (£160) and the Meat Fund (£40/month), we eat really well.   Beyond cooking from scratch, I guess my biggest money-saver is that I rarely do meat-and-two-veg meals.  My mother put me off those for life - she never got her timing right, so either the meat or the veg would be stone cold (and the veg was always soggy).  

The other thing is that most nights before bed, I’ll stand in front of the fridge looking at what is about to expire/needs to be used up, and figure out from that what I’m cooking for dinner the next night. Even when I meal plan, the need to use something up will change it. Not a lot gets wasted in this house.

There’s a song that I quote in my signature, which regularly ear-worms its way into my head:

It ain’t what you do; it’s the way that you do it.  That’s what gets results!

I guess that’s my motto.

- Pip

diminua

I'm now over £250. Realistically, cutting myself the slack I'd cut anyone else, I think I should have skipped this month. I had two funerals and a charity walk and two bank holidays and some pretty gloomy anniversaries and my heads just not in a money saving space (I do realise I'm lucky I can do that). So I'm bailing here and will come back in June

thriftwizard

{{{diminua}}} - there are times when the budget really isn't the most important thing to take care of. Put your (aching?) feet up & relax!

I've been doing an event yesterday & today so had to miss the market again; Thursday's spend, between the butcher & the supermarket, was a smidgeon over £100. We have guests for lunch tomorrow which will be lovely but a small top-up spend may be required; the main course is sorted but I'm racking my brain for a pudding that will suit everyone! If I can dredge enough fruit out of the freezer to do a crumble or similar though, the top-up can wait until early next week & should be small enough to keep me under my target - yay!

goldfinches

@Soontobeoap - I'm very glad to hear that your OH is beginning to improve. Long may it continue.
@diminua - sounds like a good idea to skip this month, that's an awful lot to have to cope with.

I'm claiming a NSD for today, due entirely to having powdered milk in the larder, which stopped me just popping into somewhere to do a top up shop, so that's probably some money saved knowing my habits!

weenancyinAmerica

Pudding (or dessert in US) isn't always necessary. We seldom have it here. Usually just a couple of times a week at the most. Not something that anyone should be stressing over anyway. If you have to, just keep a tin of instant custard on hand, and long-life milk, add sliced fruit on top. Or freeze some slices of cake or brownies or Twink's hobnobs to pull out as needed. If you can get the cake YS even better.
  

scandimore

£145 to declare for this week's shop. There have been a couple of top ups and changes to the plan in the last week as we've all been ill so some didn't fancy the planned meals, needed lemsip and tissues etc. Always seem to be getting derailed by one thing or another each week! This week we were due to top up freezer, tins, dishwasher tablets etc so it all adds up. I really don't know how some manage to get it done on much much less!