November 2024 Grocery Challenge

Bluegreen143

Shopping today - grapes at Lidl (as there were none available at Tesco) which I think were £2 and £75 delivery from Tesco (I am rounding to nearest £ to avoid getting bogged down in details and make it easier to stick with tracking). 

Breakdown:

£9 - household/toiletries (first aid supplies, toothpaste, kitchen roll)

£9 - junk/treats/drinks (cola, crisps, tea biscuits, salted nuts, chocolate chips for baking, apple juice)

£57 - normal food:

- blueberries, pears, bananas, lemons 

- leek, spring onions, onions, broccoli, mushrooms, green beans, cherry tomatoes, garlic, ginger

- chicken breast, chicken thighs, steak x2, frozen popcorn chicken, lorne sausage 

- butter & stork (for baking for a vegan visitor at the weekend), cheddar, milk, creme fraiche 

- strong white flour, tin chickpeas, rice, salt, hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, soy sauce, oats, mayonnaise 

Mealplan for the weekend:

F - chicken stir fry & rice 

Sa - steak for the adults, popcorn chicken for the kids (they actually do like steak and would share one but I had my budget head on 🙈

Su - roast chicken thighs, not sure what I’m doing with it yet - depends if there are enough potatoes left after making chips for Saturday).

I have decided to start doing Slimming World, hoping it doesn’t affect the budget too much 🤞🏼. 

weenancyinAmerica

@Nellygrace - I am enjoying seeing the pictures of what you have in your shopping cart. 

joedenise

Are you using the chicken breast for the stirfry?  I don't usually bother buying breasts anymore just thighs - they are cheaper and tastier.  The only time I buy breast is if I'm doing stuffed breast wrapped in bacon but that is very rare!

Good luck with Slimming World.  I went to group for about 12 years and stayed at target for 11 of those years.  I haven't been for the last year and am still around the same weight so I think the principles of it remain although I'm not quite as strict about it as I used to be.  Do you have much to lose?

Bluegreen143

2st 5lb to be within healthy BMI Joedenise so not an insurmountable amount in the scheme of things but enough that it’s not a quick fix. I was over 3st overweight two years ago, lost 10-12lb doing Joe Wicks and have kept it off but I can’t afford to do Joe Wicks again, my grocery spending almost doubled! I think slimming world is far more budget friendly. 

Per kilo, there’s not a huge amount of price difference at Tesco between boneless thighs and chicken breast (£6.50 per kilo for thighs, £6.84 per kilo for breast) and the kids don’t really like thighs in stuff like this (they’re fine with them roasted on the bone or I use thighs to make soup). I mean I do make them eat plenty of things they don’t like but as it’s not a big cost difference here and as they aren’t keen on stir fry either I thought I’d pick my battles. 

joedenise

Absolutely @Bluegreen143 - definitely pick your battles.  You're right about SW being more budget friendly.  I didn't find my grocery shopping really increased as was already lots of vegetables but think we increased the amount of vegetables we were eating.  We're still eating SW friendly meals about 90% of the time even though I don't go to group now.

Doom_and_Gloom

£6 in Waitr*se. OH needed milk and cheese. He made sure to get his 'free' coffee.

£273.54/£240.
£33.54 over.

sarahj1986

sarahj1986 said:

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 

£13.41 spent 

bread, milk, eggs, reduced meat plus some stuff on clearance at my Tesco Express in town. 

£45.21 left 

£9 carried over reminder 

thriftwizard

Not admitting to anything here... but I'm overspent by about £90 now. In my defence it's been an utterly gruelling week, moving DS3 back home. I've had to empty out his room, because he's returning with a 2-bed flat's worth of furniture - this has involved giving away good stuff that I'd rather have kept, but there's nowhere else it could go - and 3 60-mile round trips filling our (large-but-economical) car and a rented van. OH is currently unable to drive because of the device he had implanted after his "incident" and he still tires very easily, so all the removals have fallen on my shoulders & DD2 has kept the home fires burning, quite literally in this weather, as well as cooking. I'm not sure I ever want to drive a new-to-me vehicle - a rented electric van - in thick snow & ice like yesterday ever again; however I have to say it did well, so I wouldn't hesitate to drive electric again, even hauling furniture!

We've somehow managed to absorb a fairly vast amount of equipment, cleaning stuff & ingredients - I'm delighted to see that he now appears to be cooking from scratch & eating properly, and has lost lots of weight & looks so much healthier - but it's taken all day. That said, there'll be a downstream impact in that there's quite a lot of stuff I won't need to buy again for months! Needless to say his twin sister & BF are appearing on Sunday to celebrate & are staying over, so a large roast is called for, which is where a fair amount of the cash went. At least there'll be leftovers - probably!

I was chatting to my friend up the road & mentioned that he'd returned; turns out one of her daughters, in a highly-trained & reasonably well paid medical job, is doing the same thing, as paying the rent plus bills & student loan repayments isn't leaving her enough to live on, let alone save. Last heard, she was living around the corner from DS3; her rent has just been whacked up too. As they already have another offspring complete with partner & 3 children living under their roof, which is smaller than ours, it's going to be a bit of a crowd. What the h*ck is going on? Who can afford rent now, if people who have trained for 10 years and hold people's lives or futures in their hands can't? 

carboot_karaoke

Morning all, just caught up l think on everyone's activities, lots going on always this time of year. 

I've been spending, again £95.86 in total which means I'm already over budget    with a week to go. 

£52.28 was spent at Tesco but out of that £20.05 was on much needed vitamins (feeling so rubbish lately) and l couldn't resist baileys for £10 . 

Another £43.58 was spent at Lidl but over £10 of that was on dishwasher tabs and washing tabs that should last until January, 

New Totals £624.44 /£600

Food £473.44 /£420
Petrol £151 /£180

Thank fully the £100 gift card means we have the cash for the overspend, l also think l brought more non essentials because of it. On the plus side we have all the alcohol brought so that will reduce Decembers spend.

Have a good day x 

JingsMyBucket

Hi folks, I’ve been a bit AWOL lately but still racking up the grocery spending! Since my last update on the 7th, we’ve spent another £267.17 at Tesco (online order) Lidl, M & S, Aldi, Iceland, and a couple different farm shops and butchers. There was also an Amazon order for a bag of steel cut oats, red curry paste, and oat bars. The first two items will last us at least 6 months. 

£392.60 / £375.00 spent. We’re £17.60 overspent. 

It’s freezing cold here in our part of Scotland due to Storm Bert so yesterday I made the first batch of oatmeal of the season and then some lamb and vegetable soup for dinner. Thankfully we have those warm foods to keep us going. I was really craving some nice stick to your ribs food and these hit the spot. Some other meals on my radar for the next couple of days/week: 

• Baked pasta using homemade meat sauce I pulled out of the freezer this week
• Roasted vegetables — we have some that need roasting before they go bad. 
• Quesadillas — using roasted vegetables and some roast beef or ham cold cuts I got from the butcher 
• Vegetable tart — shortcrust pastry and some elderly plum tomatoes that need to be roasted 
• Thai shrimp soup — it’s very adaptable to other vegetables, meats or tofu. I’ve used chicken and beef in there before instead of shrimp. We have bok choy to use up along with red bell peppers. 
• Ground beef and black bean chili 

We need eggs, bananas, and herbs. Depending on the weather tomorrow, I’ll trek over to Lidl for those. While there I may stock up on some more meat for the freezer. We’re already over the goal this month but I’ll try to limit it. There was a lot of restocking basics like laundry goods, olive oil, meat for the freezer, grains, oats, etc. We’re only now just running out of coconut oil after more than a year so that’ll be another item for the list. I hate it when everything runs out at the same time! 😂

I’ll go catch up on the thread now! Stay warm everyone and keep safe in this terrible weather. 🥶