March 2025 Grocery Challenge

remmie

My final tally for March is £326.65. An overspend due to my over enthusiastic purchases of yellow stickers, but it's all food that will be used and may save some money in April.

carboot_karaoke

Afternoon all, 

I forgot to post a small spend of £2.86 on Wednesday. This was for bread, squash, and sweeteners. 

I'm declaring at £418.63 / £500.

See you on the April thread. 

Soontobeoap

Declaring at £192.00/£200 first time that I stayed in budget this year. 😇

thriftwizard

Sigh! "Family Contingencies" have pushed me overbudget again. I'm declaring for March having spent nearly £50 too much. Alarmingly much of that was on one short-notice salad-type lunch for 6 with pudding, which I didn't get a run-up at for one reason & another; hence W8rose benefitted to the tune of £40-something. At least there were some leftovers which contributed a bit of variety to our lunches for a couple more days.

That said, there have been 3 deliberate over-buys this month; there are two big joints of meat in the freezer, picked up on the spur of the moment at good prices, and 2 x 500g packs of our fishmonger's excellent "pie-fish mix" too. So they'll ease April's budget a bit, and altogether they cost about £50 - so it's swings & roundabouts really. Hey ho.

Blackcats

Congratulations to your husband @LotsOfTea.  Enjoy your champagne 🥂

Doom_and_Gloom

Doom_and_Gloom said:

£244.52/£248.
£3.48 left.

£11.42 spent since last post.
£3 on TGTG from a local coffee place.
£1.89 in L!dl
£3 in Mr S on clover for the OH.
£3.53 in Waitr*se on two shops.

£255.94/£248.
£7.94 over budget.

Not going to state this as it total as month hasn't finished yet.


OH has spent £37.26 of whatever I set as April's budget already (with how things are going with inflation I may have to just admit that we need to up the budget a little 😑). He came across 3 large beef joints at Waitr*se yesterday that he turned into 6 joints to cook. One will be roasted on a Sunday and then the what not eaten for the dinner will be for sandwiches through the week for his work lunch. They have been put into his meat freezer draw and won't be cooked until April starts hence why they are going in that budget. It was well worth the early expense to save us money later. If he comes across any more that he likes the look of before the offer I will put them into the budget of May or June. Maybe we should do a meat fund for him like @PipneyJane I believe does but I have doubts it will work for us (editted as got wrong poster originally 😅).

PipneyJane

Good morning All.

I’m declaring at £153/£160 with £12 to roll into April.

This is a bit earlier in the month than usual for me, but DH was paid on Thursday and we’ve got a spend-£40-get-£5-off voucher for L!dl which will expire on Tuesday.  The only way we can take advantage of that is to spend some of DH’s April GC money today.  (I get paid tomorrow, so will contribute my share then.). I’ve been working on a shopping list all morning.  It’s hard!  Only thing to do is to stock up on cheese, tinned tomatoes, etc., but despite doing that,  I still haven’t made it to £40.  Might have to buy some treats (mussels, Camembert to bake, things like that).

There was one last spend for March of £10.48, spent in L!dl last weekend, which I haven’t got around to mentioning.  (Tinned sweetcorn 4x65p, 400 cotton buds 89p, 1 dozen FR large eggs £2.79, 1kg onions 99p, 1kg frozen sweetcorn £1.49, 900g frozen peas £1.09, 0.8kg at 79p/kg loose potatoes 63p )

- Pip

LotsOfTea

The champagne was very much enjoyed last night and accompanied by a roasted beetroot & feta risotto so it felt posh! My head was a bit muzzy this morning though and I needed several cups of tea to feel perky again.

DS & DH went to the supermarket on the way back from sports this morning to get supplies to cook lunch (obvs not checking whether we already had any of the ingredients but I'm not nitpicking, honest!). They spent £17.55 but that did include some flowers for me and some screen wash but since there's no receipt I've no idea how much of that was groceries. I'll just include it all and call it day for the month now.

£204.40/£200

PipneyJane

GSDMum said:

Have a big Tesco delivery tomorrow morning which will be added to April's budget. So I'm calling March closed with £6.75 still to go. 

Thank you for your good wishes re my husband's new knee op. Sadly though the op's been cancelled as his blood platelet count is low. A blood test is set for two weeks, so we're hoping the count will be acceptable then. We know what the problem is, he's on immunotherapy which is causing the problem. Immunotherapy has been suspended for a while until we get this this op over.  I can't feed him up with foods high in iron as he's got too much iron in his body already due to having haemochromatosis. Hey Ho! 

See all you good budgeteers over in April! 

@GSDMum so sorry to hear your news re your husband’s operation.  Fingers crossed for two weeks’ time.

LotsOfTea said:

I spent £34.28 today on some veg, packed lunch bits, cheese and a bottle of champagne as DH has found out he's been given a new job title with an associated pay rise so we'll celebrate at the weekend. 

£186.85/£200 for the month. Hopefully that's it now as we shouldn't need anything else over the next few days.

Congratulations to your husband, @LotsOfTea.  Please share your Roasted Beetroot and Feta Risotto recipe.

PipneyJane said:

Good morning All.

I’m declaring at £153/£160 with £12 to roll into April.

This is a bit earlier in the month than usual for me, but DH was paid on Thursday and we’ve got a spend-£40-get-£5-off voucher for L!dl which will expire on Tuesday.  The only way we can take advantage of that is to spend some of DH’s April GC money today.  (I get paid tomorrow, so will contribute my share then.). I’ve been working on a shopping list all morning.  It’s hard!  Only thing to do is to stock up on cheese, tinned tomatoes, etc., but despite doing that,  I still haven’t made it to £40.  Might have to buy some treats (mussels, Camembert to bake, things like that).

 

Well, we made it!  £35.56 spent in L!dl, once the voucher was used.  Had to use a calculator, while we wandered around.  While I’ll declare it in April as part of that Challenge, for the curious this is what our £35.56 bought:  Cashew Nuts 3x£1.75, 800g Wykes Farm mature cheddar £5.25 - they didn’t have any of their cheaper, 900g Simply Mature Cheddar - Salmon en Croute £4.99, gnocchi 4x£1.19, chopped tomatoes 12x39p, tinned sweetcorn 6x65p, 1kg frozen Four Berry Medley £2.99, 1L lactose-free skimmed milk 3x99p, salted anchovies 3 tins x 69p, garlic & herb cream cheese 2x95p, 4-pack garlic 95p, 300ml 3% crème fraiche 85p.

- Pip

LotsOfTea

@PipneyJane I didn't use a recipe for the risotto but I'm happy to tell you what I did. I peeled and diced some beetroots, tossed them in oil and roasted for 30 mins. I then sauted onion and plenty of garlic and once soft added the risotto rice. Then I added veggie stock , stirring every now and then (I've never bothered with the continual stirring thing) until the grains were tender and stirred in the beetroot and some crumbled feta, the juice of half a lemon and some black pepper. Job done! It was really tasty. 
I think roasting the beetroot makes a difference as it concentrates the flavour, I've done it before cooking the beetroot in with the rice and it's not as good.