January 2025 Grocery Challenge

Sausageroll14

Thanks everyone. Just nipped on to catch up and all your combined messages have strengthened my resolve. It's absolutely, definitely mushroom pasta for tea. No excuses!! 😁😁😁

Just having a tired day. I think this time of year doesn't help.

How's everyone's first week in 2025 treating them? 

LadyWithAPlan

Quantaqa said:

Sausageroll14 said:

Just had to come on and say... We dodged a takeaway. Both really tired after a hectic day and nearly....so nearly ordered via just eat. Freezer food came to the rescue! 

May sound obvious to other people but takeaways are a big blindspot for us. 

Decided to take steps and organise a fakeaway for the weekend. Wish me luck! 😁😁😁

Good luck   Takeaways are an issue for me too.  I so often get in form work exhausted and just opt for a takeaway.  Unfortunately (or fortunately for my waistline and purse) my favourite takeaway was bought over a few months ago and the new owners have changed everything so it's not an option now, so fewer takeaways all round!

That is lucky - not liking the new owners takeaway

My DS has a chip shop that is GF for all on Tuesdays only as they change the oils etc  - so of course the temptation is always Chip shop Tuesday but it gets expensive. Luckily 100s miles away for me!
The only GF fish n chips I have tried out were amazingly tasty and amazingly expensive...

joedenise said:

@LadyWithAPlan - do you have a microwave?  Can cook veg in one with just a little water and covered with a bit of cling film which has been stabbed a couple of times with a fork to let the steam out.

My old microwave I threw away a couple months ago as it was getting manky. I also gave away a slow cooker - (as i have one in my 6 in 1 Pressure cooker multi cook clever chef) - this decluttering is fantastic when everything works...

However great news is I figured out it is the  ovens front right ring that is causing the fusing.. I managed to get the left back ring to turn on without making the fuse click off so boiled an egg fine.
Yet to test the other 2 rings and the oven... However even one ring is fantastic as it will do for now.

Planning to buy a home this year so don't want to replace items etc, trying super hard to have minimum spends.

Grocery spend £14.82/£200 + £0/£20 bulk
£5.34  in Morries on way back from first session in gym - largely as I needed toilet paper which is not calculated in grocery pot
£1.75 toilet paper
£3.59 - 6 eggs, sparkling water - my 'treat' as cutting down on all the junk this month, organic mushrooms (extra Morries points)

Coffee I love proper great coffee and bulk order it in 10 packs, however the cost has gone from £2.20 per pack to £3.80..) Its what I use the bulk fund for . Just finished last 250g pack and now on a competition win coffee. Not planning to order more though  I have a 1kg bag coffee beans from a  xmas gift  so I will open that and  batch freeze into  3 plus another 250g ILLY coffee beans  - I like the ground coffee for speed but need to keep focusing on keeping supplies down.
It took me 6 weeks to eat down the freezer before xmas.

Food
Just soaking mung and urad dal  beans to make a dal - feel some spicy food to help this cold weekend.
I also have dragged some chicken breast out the freezer so a chicken curry as well  (no rice as on slow carb plan again 6 days a week)

Mamaofmanybudgets

Mamaofmanybudgets said:

Good morning everyone! 

Glad to see I'm not the only one avoiding the take aways, the amount of money I had spend in the past years were unacceptable..... and i keep wondering why I can't lose weight 🙄🤣 So that is definitely a habit that needs to go in 2025!

I also downloaded olio again, you guys reminded me. I downloaded it when it first came about but never much on there. I've redownloaded it and will see what it's got in store for us. 

£44.14 / £400 

Since my last post ,
£1.75 in the shop yesterday, just a lil pack of cheese for our cottage pie

Today £30.90 on shipton mill and will be visiting the local food share group later which is £4 

The shipton mill is a 25kg flour and a couple bags of 1kg just to get it to the free delivery at £30.  This will last us a good while though so probably won't have to get any next month. 

Have a great day, it's a nippy one ❄️

£59.76

Had to get some cat food £2.50, and couldn't resist the lure of a red bull £1.55 ...  went into another shop with the kids that had the Buldak spicy noodles on sale so £7.99 for that. They'll have that for dinner and I'll have something from the freezer. Since I forgot to put the slowcooker on 🙈

Edit, again 🙄
Another 3.58  on some American cheese and a Nigerian coke from the local shop.

I NEED TO STAY OUT OF THE LOCAL SHOP!!! 😬🙈

Frivolousbutfrugal

First shop of the year and I spent £63 of my £500 budget for January. I will need to do a little top up shop at the weekend for my husbands pack lunches but the food plan for the rest of the week is all things from the freezer/ cupboard so I'm hoping for a relatively small shop next week as well. I'm also digging out my breadmaker over the weekend to have nice crusty bread with all the soups I made with the cheap veg! 

AnotherNewDay

I would like to join for January please. £100 for the month for groceries, household and toiletries for 1 woman & 2 cats.
Big focus on eating out of stores, fridge and freezer as currently well stocked!

cheerfulness4

£59.06 spent today

Had to nip to Morrisons as my online shop was mistakenly sent up a mountain in Wales to our holiday cottage rental for September. A techy blip and not our mistake BTW!

Included a 2G2G bag which was full of really fresh fruit and veg and a couple of good bakery items. Very useful items, too. 

Black_Saturn

First shop of the year, and I have spent £113.02 out of our £600 budget, leaving me with £386.98. I have some parsnips left over from last year, so will do a parsnip soup for today’s lunch, with mung bean curry for later.

Cartmay

Morning all. Checking in to keep myself accountable- looking forward to reading all the new posts in a min 😊
sooo, spent £5 yesterday on a parking ticket to visit my mum in hospital. Spent £8 in Tescos last night, bought some milk but also 2 Belgium buns, a packet of custard creams and a large bar of wholenut Cadbury’s. Was feeling sad/upset so binged on those last night and now feel sad and fat 🙄. BUT that’s it!!! No more crappy food now until my little holiday in Morocco in 2 weeks time. 

So food budget is now at £220 for next 4 weeks.
off to Tesco’s again in a min to get some mince to make a lasagne 😋

thriftwizard

Just added £30 to my total, for eggs, fresh fruit & veg bought at yesterday's market. That's both more & less than I'd hoped; the fruit bowl, fridge & veg rack are now groaning under the load of lovely fresh stuff, but I'd also hoped to visit the oriental grocers down in the city whilst minding DGS yesterday afternoon, and for one reason & another, that wasn't possible, so has been deferred for another day and a separate trip. We'd survive without, but I have to pop down to a different part of the city later on & might find some of the things I would have been looking for - ghee (at a sensible price!) brown lentils, various spices & flours that our local shops just don't carry or charge exorbitant amounts for.

PipneyJane

Good morning All and welcome to the newcomers

I have 3 shops to declare from Thursday, when we made an unscheduled tour of local supermarkets:  £29.26 in our local MrT’s, £12.10 in L!dl and £4.76 in Sainsbugs.  We struck a silver-mine in MrT’s:  lots of YS fresh meat but too late for post-Christmas specials, so stocked up on YS lamb steaks (2 trays for £3.50 each), a YS pate in a Le Parfait style jar (£3.50), YS shelled mussels (£1.50), a ham joint (£9.15), YS fish cakes and YS meatballs.

In L!dl, we bought two 200g YS packets of smoked salmon and a kilo of YS gammon, while in Sainsbugs we took advantage of a Nectar offer and purchased 2 packets of recycled toilet paper.

The above brings our total spend to £46.12/£160 leaving £113.88 for the rest of the month.

Need to head out shortly to buy some more cream cheese and bagels for brunch.  

- Pip