November 2024 Grocery Challenge

diminua

I seem to have spent a lot this week - things like mince pies and wine-with-friends and cappuccinos are creeping into the budget. 'tis not quite the season, but things are definitely ramping up. I have about £25 left, and very well stocked cupboards - root veg, soups, wine, coffee, chocolate, mince pies, veg sausages, three pints of milk, fish in tinned and frozen form - but I'm also seeing some people for lunch at the V&A on Saturday next, so we'll see how it goes. 

sarahj1986

sarahj1986 said:

£28.44 spent

almost even split across Aldi and Lidl. There’s specific items I get in both. I’ve now gone over £50 so I’ve got my free fruit to get in Lidl now. I’d have spent less but my husband and eldest picked up a few things. I need to get fruit in Tesco tomorrow as I don’t like the fruit in Aldi or Lidl 

£72.33 left
£9 carry over reminder for December 

£13.71 spent

fruit, veg, milk and yogurts from Tesco. I was higher but I’ve used CC points (I’m not counting that spend) 

£58.62 won’t need anything else for the rest of this week apart from bread and milk which will be Thursday/Friday time 

£9 carried over to December 

sarahj1986

diminua said:

I seem to have spent a lot this week - things like mince pies and wine-with-friends and cappuccinos are creeping into the budget. 'tis not quite the season, but things are definitely ramping up. I have about £25 left, and very well stocked cupboards - root veg, soups, wine, coffee, chocolate, mince pies, veg sausages, three pints of milk, fish in tinned and frozen form - but I'm also seeing some people for lunch at the V&A on Saturday next, so we'll see how it goes. 

Sorry just to quote you. You said about mince pies…I used to buy and eat them loads but that was when a box was less than a quid. Now it’s £1.25 cheapest. The nicer ones are closer to £2. I just refuse to pay it. I got one box and I loved them but I probably won’t get anymore till mid December 

Soontobeoap

Just totted up my spends and another £72.42 spent across iceland, aldi and Sainsburys. Managed to get half price pork leg in Sainsburys for £4.85. It was too big for 2 so I cut it in half before freezing. £2.43 for roast dinner for 2 cant be bad. 

carboot_karaoke

Evening all,

A couple of food spends to declare totalling £50.32, £9.93 was in Asda on lunch box treats for the kids, pasta sauce, potatoes and two reduced patties. The other £40.39 was spent in Lidl the most expensive single item being toilet roll. My OH also filled up with fuel but I'm yet to be given the receipt so guessing at £100

New Totals £528.58/£600

Food £377.58 / £420
Petrol £151 / £180

Although we are precariously close to our months target £100 of the amount spent was on a gift card so there is wriggle room to go over budget. I have also spent about £100 on alcohol (not normally included in our budget), so actual food spend is reasonable.

I have done a food plan till the end of the month and have most of the fundamental ingredients already. That said, l do intend to buy a few joints of meat while offers are on which might end up coming out of Novembers money just depends on when l see what l want. 

Have a good week CK

TravelCrystal

Good morning all
Hope nobody is snowed in.

Where to begin this week?
Needed orzo for a veggie meal so went to Mr A and spent £1.40

Our treat wine calendar turned up so that was £89.99 (They are 100ml pouches so saving them up to have on a Sunday instead of opening a bottle, 3 each, well that's the theory )

In addition £20 deposit on wine for Christmas and beyond.
By my calculations we will have enough wine to last until the beginning of March!

We were away all last December, cat sitting for DS1 and had a very makeshift Christmas, so having a few treats this year.
 
Next confession was an Ocado delivery of Advent calendar's for all.
Kit Kat for me, (Cat calendar, separate budget) and cheese for DH
Also decided mince pies, Christmas cake and Christmas pudding would be nice!
Mince pies already eaten Sunday, when we had a neighbour round for lunch. (So will be making some for us)
Pigs in blankets and mini meat pies ready for our New Year's Eve party for the freezer. £35.79


Finally only spent £5.30 in Lidl's today
Discounted mushrooms and garlic, milk, sprouts x 2 and double cream.

Next weeks shopping will go on December's budget.

So declaring for November and just scraped in £152.48 this week

November Total £395.83/£400

Enjoy your day

T.C

MissRikkiC

Well after popping into the coop for grapes for the chickens (to give them their worming treatment) I also got a few orange sticker items. 

2 packs of beyond burgers - were not veggie but these are an easy and tasty protein source 
Turkey steaks 
2 beef medallions 
total spend inc grapes was 9.92 so considering the grapes were 2.60 I think, I figure 7.32 for what will essentially cover the protein for 8 meals total i think is fairly good. 

I’ve actually been waiting for the beyond burgers to be on offer so it didn’t feel like a wasted spend. 

If we hadn’t of used all the eggs at the weekend that I specifically bought double cream and butter for; to make a quiche then we’d have probably not needed the other bits but I blame husbands. He also ate the ham off cuts which were going into the quiche, used the cream as whipping cream for the scones he made with the eggs and butter so I’ve now given up on the idea of quiche. It wasn’t meant to be 🤣

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

Hope you are warm and safe.  Snow didn’t settle here @TravelCrystal, much to my disappointment.

I have five small shops to declare:  79p spent in L!dl last Tuesday on new potatoes (while hunting for yarn); £8.12 in Sainsbugs last Wednesday on bagels and fresh veg; followed by £20.14 in L!dl on Friday (I’ll swear I only went in for eggs); £8.62 on another trip to Sainsbugs (to take advantage of offers on recycled toilet paper and yoghurt); and, finally, a trip to L!dl on Sunday to collect our free Gouda, plus pastry and some prosciutto.  

It seriously feels like far too many shops, but our local L!dl and Sainsbugs are virtually on top of each other, so if I need things from one, then it’s more fuel-efficient going the extra quarter of a mile to the other.  (In the other direction, L!dl and MrT’s practically share a car park, but it can be horrible to exit.). I do try to take advantage of their various offers which, since most are weekly, means shopping more than I’d like.

Anyway, the above brings our total spend to £142.30/£160.40 leaving £18.10 for the rest of the month.

That should be do-able.  I’ll only need to buy milk and fresh fruit/veg for the rest of the month.  The freezer is groaning and needs to be emptied if we’re to fit in a back-up frozen Christmas goose*.   Time to do some planning.

- Pip



*It’s the only time you can get geese and last year’s bird flu meant our butcher couldn’t get any of the birds he’d ordered from his supplier. (He managed to get us a large duck.)  While I have ordered a large goose from him again this year, I want a backup.  L!dl have 4kg frozen geese for £30.

ETA:  @MissRikkiC, I feel your pain re the quiche.  I have to tell my DH “do not use xx” or “don’t eat yyy - it’s for zzz”, or he’ll nibble his way through it.  For example, last week we had a roast duck crown for dinner.  (Bought YS from MrT’s.)  Officially, it feeds 2. DH carved a small portion for me, a generous portion for himself and then went back for seconds even though I’d asked him not to and told him that the plan was to use the rest in a risotto the next day. Fortunately, you can get away with not a lot of meat in a risotto, because if I got 100g of meat off what was left on that duck’s carcass, I’d be surprised.  

TravelCrystal

@PipneyJane I couldn’t stop laughing at both your note and @MissRikkiC , these DH’s just can’t be trusted. Now when I want some food saved for another meal I take it away first so he doesn’t see it. 

We are all trying to keep to our budgets here!!
Cuts no ice 🤣
P.S I love goose
Have a good evening guys 

T.C

Bluegreen143

I really need to stop lurking and start posting on here regularly again! 

I run my budget in calendar months. So far this month I've already spent £507 on groceries and household consumables (toiletries etc), which is terrifying!

In October, I spent £730(!) and in September £664.

There are four of us - myself, DH who does a fairly physical job, nearly-9yo DS who can eat almost as much as me and nearly-6yo DD.

I don't have any expectations that we will magically start spending £300-400. I love to cook and like nice ingredients. We don't eat much UPF in our family meals, we eat mainly meat-based meals and buy plenty of fruit and veg (including expensive ones like berries and avocado). My DH also likes some treats which adds to the budget - he eats a couple of packs of crisps a day and drinks cola as his main drink, but thankfully own-brand versions. We don't have regular takeaways or meals out so are cooking pretty much every meal, but on the other hand the kids get free school lunches so I don't need to make packed lunches.

(I should also note that we've been having family and friends round for dinner quite a lot lately - my BIL, who was recently widowed, stayed here for 2.5 weeks at the end of Oct and start of Nov so we were feeding an extra mouth - he's gone now though).

All that said, I'm sure we must be able to spend less than £700 a month feeding four of us! Surely?!

The biggest barrier to doing this challenge I think is that I keep forgetting to come back and update. I think I might stick a note behind my computer monitor to remind me!

My aim for the rest of this month is to limit the damage as much as possible. I'd like to come under £700 this month, think about a realistic target for December and then start properly reducing in January. 

I do have a loose regular mealplan which goes like below:

Mon - soup (with sandwiches, if it's a light soup, or else bread - I've started making sourdough again) - favourites are chicken soup, blended butternut/lentil/carrot, minestrone, chunky lentil soups etc.

Tues - salad - some kind of meat or fish with a big mixed salad, maybe roasted veg, sometimes with chips or new potatoes depending what it is - quite a broad category. We had chicken caeser-inspired (i.e. with extra veg, not just lettuce) salad yesterday.

Wed - wraps/pittas - the favourite for the kids. We're having falafel, hummus, olives and salad in our wraps tonight. Often fajitas/burritos, or kebabs.

Thurs - pasta - our busy night (one child has Rainbows, the other karate) so we either make the sauce in advance to reheat, or it's something quick like mac & cheese or carbonara.

Fri/Sat - fakeaway type meals and/or new recipes - pizza in our pizza oven, curries, Asian stir-fry type meals, burgers/hot dogs, BBQs in the summer, trying new recipes/cuisines or just anything which isn't on our regular rotation and that we fancy.

Sun - roast meat, pie or beef stew 

We get two smaller groceries deliveries a week on Thursdays and Sundays as I struggle to make one big shop work without lots of top ups of fresh stuff. Today I need to mealplan and complete the order for delivery tomorrow. I'll report back when done!