September 2024 Grocery Challenge

JingsMyBucket

@PipneyJane glad to see you’re out of the hospital and back into your routines. Here’s an example of a strata recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/spinach-bacon-breakfast-strata/

Basically, you line a casserole dish with (day) old bread, create a custard mixture of eggs and milk, take your favourite toppings and pour them over the bread. In some cases you refrigerate it overnight to let the mixture soak into the bread and soften it. Then you bake it in the morning. An ex-boyfriend’s mother taught me how to make it years ago. 

If you don’t have all night, you can leave it to soak in for an hour or two depending on how hard your bread actually is. Heck, I’ve even baked it about 15 min afterward because my bread wasn’t too stale. It’s an extremely flexible recipe system that accepts all kinds of leftover veg, cheese, and meats. 

Soontobeoap

Today we went to Tesco with our £11.00 off a £110 spend. We have stocked the freezer up with meat. Got a few bits for our neighbour whilst we were there and saved £36.00 with tesco club card. Our final total was £94.00 so we have nearly hit our budget but will not be buying any more meat for a month or two. I am also justifying it because we live on iow and the ferrys have become very unreliable. They only need to stop for a day and our supermarket shelves can be very empty so I am happier being stocked up. 

weenancyinAmerica

Had to go get more bananas yesterday because the hot weather here over the weekend 105F (40.55C) actually cooked the bananas we had out on the counter. Used the cooked ones over my cereal anyway but glad to get some more. Making sure these aren't in the sunlight. Temperatures going down though this week, thank goodness. I feel cooked too - no air conditioning here.

crazybunnylady4

Right, I have been good this week by comparision. 

Two smaller grocery shops this week and then a pet shop/top up run, so groceries this week are totalling £131.17.
Coffee/lunch/takeout wise I have been REALLY controlled and only spent £18.94!

So totals so far from 1 - 10 Sept is £219.55/£400 on groceries and £99.35/£220 for the coffee/lunch/takeouts.

We may need to do quite a big shop next week as we are using up a lot of older stuff in our freezer but we have enough for this week until Sunday or thereabouts.

thriftwizard

@Soontobeoap, it can (and does) happen on the mainland too; our two smallish supermarkets often seem to have large-ish gaps on the shelves now. I suspect that when supplies of things are a bit low, they concentrate them on the bigger branches in & around the cities.

I was just congratulating myself on sticking to my budget & general plans when I realised I hadn't added a small top-up shop from yesterday. £10.81 spent, between the greengrocer & the co-op, mostly fruit & veg but also OH's beloved sliced bread - I'm still humouring him. And it may all go a bit sideways tomorrow, when DD1 & BF are here; she's only just announced which day they're coming, so I wasn't able to plan ahead, as Thursday is end-of-budgeting-week/eat-it-up day! To be fair, she does know our routines & probably won't be expecting anything different.

t14cy_t

popped into morrisons for a few basic bits. £46/100 spent this month. very hard being on this budget but definately makes you more mindful of your spends. finding things in the freezer i never knew i had!

LotsOfTea

I spent £34.20 today. I stuck to my list of things I needed for planned meals but it was more than I expected as I'd hoped to be able to get a small bottle of vodka for a recipe (nice pasta sauce recipe that only needs a couple of tablespoons each time). I only had time to pop to one shop (Aldi) and they only had full bottles so I guess at least I won't have to buy another one for ages. I'm still doing fine though and won't need anything else until next week. 

£73.02/£250

PipneyJane

JingsMyBucket said:

@PipneyJane glad to see you’re out of the hospital and back into your routines. Here’s an example of a strata recipe: https://sallysbakingaddiction.com/spinach-bacon-breakfast-strata/

Basically, you line a casserole dish with (day) old bread, create a custard mixture of eggs and milk, take your favourite toppings and pour them over the bread. In some cases you refrigerate it overnight to let the mixture soak into the bread and soften it. Then you bake it in the morning. An ex-boyfriend’s mother taught me how to make it years ago. 

If you don’t have all night, you can leave it to soak in for an hour or two depending on how hard your bread actually is. Heck, I’ve even baked it about 15 min afterward because my bread wasn’t too stale. It’s an extremely flexible recipe system that accepts all kinds of leftover veg, cheese, and meats. 

Thanks @JingsMyBucket. It’s essentially a savoury bread-&-butter pudding, which I make with grated cheese, tuna and sweetcorn.

I have two spends to declare from Wednesday:  £13.67 in Sainsbugs and £13.86 in L!dl.  Can anyone give me ideas for what to do with 2 beetroot?  Many thanks.  They were in the fruit-filled £1.50 veg box I picked up in L!dl, which also contained several kilos of bananas and sweet apples, a kilo of decent sized potatoes, one lemon and one red pepper.

The above brings our total spend to £55.18/£182.60 leaving £127.42 for the rest of the month.

- Pip



ETA:  I’m not a fan of pickled beetroot.

thriftwizard

@PipneyJane, if your beetroot is fairly small & young-looking, it's really nice peeled & grated into a salad. If it's a bit larger & maybe a bit wrinkled, I'll peel it, chop it into quarters, dust with herbs & spices of your choice & drizzle it with olive oil & maybe a little balsamic. Cover with foil & roast for about 45 mins, serve as a side. There are lots of other things you can do with them; I'm very much regretting the years of thinking I hated them thanks to my poor mother's very limited culinary skills - she had an uncanny knack of making them taste like boiled mud.

A little overspend of £98-odd today, between the butcher, supermarket & street market. That said, the two chunks of meat I bought will each do 2-3 meals this week, as mains then minor ingredients in omelettes or stir-fries, or on pizza, with chunks frozen towards future pies for next week or beyond, so I'm not too worried. I'll have a little over £80 for each of the two weeks afterwards, which should be entirely do-able. Plus there's still a little carried forward for bulk buys from whichever month - July, I think - I came in well under budget. Hoping to "score" a sack of potatoes with that shortly!

JingsMyBucket

Evening all, just a quick check in before bed. The Tesco order arrived Tuesday evening and it cost £113.29. That brings us to:

£266.96 / £386.00 spent. £119.04 remaining

Our fridge is full and we just need eggs and strawberries. We’ll get those tomorrow most likely. Maybe we could use the £6 Love To Shop digital wallet voucher that Mr. Jings has so we can keep money in the joint account. I may stop at Lidl to get a few snacks for traveling which will be a separate budget. I’m attending a conference Tuesday — Saturday and want to have easy protein available to avoid eating the cakes and sweets usually laying around at these events. 

Have a good night everyone and a lovely weekend. 🙂