September 2024 Grocery Challenge

K9sandFelines

Sorry I was AWOL
My September starts on the 13th til the 12 th of October

£150 (thanks @elsiepac)

This is for toiletries, cleaning and food. One person in a vegan household, with occasional weekend and overnight visits from both DDs and GD

<br>Does anyone have any fennel recipes please? Got 3/4 from TGTG box. I've looked at the beginning of the grocery challenge, but there's nothing for fennel.<br><span>I'm airing on the side of Fennel gratin, as I still have sliced potatoes from a different TGTG.</span><br>

joedenise

@K9sandFelines - a quick Google brought up this website - any good?

https://veganonboard.com/seasonal-vegan-fennel-recipes/

There's other recipes listed as well so maybe a quiet afternoon having a look!

SausageDogSandwich

Morning all, hope everyone is doing well. Have just had chance to catch up and total my spends. Was hoping to go to farmf this week but after adding up my spends I think I will have to give it a miss! 

£151.33/350 spent

JingsMyBucket

Afternoon all. We’ve had various top up shops over the past week at Iceland, Farm Foods and M & S. They total £40.70. We used a printed £5 Love To Shop voucher on one of the M & S runs and that was a bit of a pain. There’s a printed £25 voucher and a £6.50 digital wallet voucher remaining. We’ll save those for later in the month in case things get tight. 

I just put in a Tesco order for tomorrow evening and it’ll be about £115. That will cover restocking for bigger items like toilet paper, paper towels, yoghurt, as well as lots of chicken and some gyoza to fill the freezer. I’ll switch back to small shops after this order because I don’t want to go over this month.

£153.67 / £386.00 spent. £232.33 remaining

Here’s what I’m thinking for food this week. It’ll use up errant veg as well as items in the freezer. Ex: A frozen half loaf of bread will be used as the strata base along with bacon from the freezer. 

COOKING LIST 

• Cauliflower and pasta cheese bake 
• Shrimp Thai curry with noodles 
• Vegetable and feta quinoa salad 
• Mafalda pasta, arugula, mozzarella and pesto 
• Vegetable and bacon strata 

K9sandFelines

joedenise said:

@K9sandFelines - a quick Google brought up this website - any good?

https://veganonboard.com/seasonal-vegan-fennel-recipes/

There's other recipes listed as well so maybe a quiet afternoon having a look!

Thanks again

I did have a look myself via G👀gle; but most of the ideas featured the same recipes.

I'm going to try a salad with orange and cranberries and possibly the pizza 🍕, if I have enough left ( although I could use the fronds). I only got three, not four!

I'm currently cooking the gratin and have used coconut cream, as I had no other non dairy cream in. So, I'm hoping it tastes good 🤞🏻

PipneyJane

@JingsMyBucket, please share your strata recipe.  I’ve never heard of “strata”, but have a load of cooking bacon in the freezer.(Note to self:  do not buy bacon this month.)

We have several spends to declare from last week, but rather than give you all the gory details, I’ll just pass on the total:  £27.65.  I was in hospital for most of the week, so DH was going into the office for work, coming to see me for an hour afterwards,  and then heading to the supermarkets to see if he could pick up something YS and quick for dinner.  Fortunately, all went OK.

Sadly, I came home to a near disaster.  The onions I bought at the end of August had gone off and were invaded by fruit-fly.  Ditto the bananas.  The kitchen was swarming with flying beasties.  Gone now.

I’ve done a rough meal plan for the next few days:

Today (Monday):  Chorizo & Chickpea Stew.  (Uses up a tub of spinach frozen in November 2022, plus all the potatoes, which had started to sprout)
Tuesday:  Baked Feta & Tomato Pasta.  (Our cherry tomatoes are ripe, so this is perfect.)
Wednesday:  Nadia Hussain’s Ham & Cheese Crown. (From one of her BBC shows.)
Thursday:  Sausage & Lentil Casserole.  (Using sausages from the freezer and our home grown tomatoes.)

The above brings our total spend to £27.65/£182.60 leaving £154.95 for the rest of the month.

- Pip

Pennypincin

Sorry I've been awol.
£10 put into the bulk fund yesterday and restarted today.
£8.89 spent on a couple of bits in Tesco.
I really need to run the freezer down as there's hardly any room left.

Soontobeoap

Hope you are not feeling  to bad after your hospital stay @PipneyJane. It is amazing how you keep an eye on your budget when you are dealing with so much else in your life. Take care of yourself.

We came home from Torquay late on Friday. We stopped at Aldi on the way home to buy juice, milk, cereal, bread, ham and tomatoes. £17.00 spent. Tomorrow we are taking a rrip to Tescos to get another bulk buy of nectar price meat as we have another £11.00 off a £110.00 shop. My neighbour wants a few bits too so hopefully we can spend that much without doing too much damage to the budget!

TravelCrystal

Good morning everyone.

Hope everyone is well and @PipneyJane that you are recovering well.

A few things to report for this week.

I don't like to speak ill of DH but he brought me home a free very large beetroot.
I was looking forward to purple hands, not.
Donned some thin gloves, several hours later and a bottle of red wine vinegar I now have some bottled free beetroot to go with our lunch time salads.

So my trip to Lidl's included another bottle of red wine vinegar, fruit and veg and general top ups.
Managed to take advantage of YS on sausages, pizza, coleslaw and cobs.
Discounted grapes and bananas from the app and my free loaf.

Bought a few extras for our holiday in two weeks time, cheese to go with the wine we already have in stock.
Treated us to a Croque Monsieur for tomorrow's lunch which we had on the cheap last year, I remember it was very yummy.

I always make a menu list for each month but this gets moved around sometimes dependent on bargains!

I took a hand of pork out of the freezer last weekend to make a pork goulash.
When I cut up the meat found I had way too much meat for the slow cooker so I split in half and made a really nice sweet and sour pork Saturday and the goulash on Sunday.
Yesterday we had the rest of the sweet and sour and Thursday we will be having the rest of the goulash.
I think we will be all porked out for this week.

Today we are having breaded fish, peas and mash
Tomorrow and Friday cottage pie made with sweet potato mash
 Saturday, Cheese onion and potato pie with corned beef and baked beans.

As my hilarious rich neighbour, who is still working says "How the poor live"
I told him wait until he retires.

Anyway Total spent this week including discounted M and S loaf earlier in the week £46.84

Total so far £81.81/£300

Have a good rest of the day everyone.
T.C

LotsOfTea

I had to pick up some socks & pants I'd ordered for DS from M&S today so I got my food bits and bobs there too to save going anywhere else. Most things were more pricey but I didn't have time to shop around today. I did however get some useful stuff in their 3 for £8 deli offer which was 2 packs of ready roasted chicken thighs (4 in each) and a ready roasted half chicken. The half chicken will do a roast dinner for all of us (I'm veggie so it's plenty for DS & DH) and the thighs can be used for individual meals for DS with some veg & spuds as he still eats too early in the week for us to eat with him. I've frozen most of them to take out as and when they're needed. 

I also got various bits of veg I needed and some mushroom pate as a treat for me. 

£18.75 spent today and I'm up to £38.82/£250 overall.