May 2025 Grocery Challenge

LotsOfTea

I spent £31.26 in the supermarket today on fruit, salad veg, olive oil, sausages, breaded fish and two dinky canned cocktails for a Friday evening treat for DH & me. 

£189.00/£200 so there's wiggle-room if I suddenly need something before the end of the month.

goldfinches

Evening all, hope you're all doing well and haven't been blown away by the gusts of wind.

I've got two more spends to add to my shameful total and then it's on to June and giving it my best go to stay out of the supermarket by having home deliveries instead. Hopefully this tactic will work but if it doesn't there are still other tactics to try so all is not lost yet.

Anyway, I went to Waitflower on Tuesday when it was raining so I couldn't go to my allotment and spent £10.29 on milk, yoghurt (although they only had 500g in the fat free version), plastic zipper bags for the freezer and larder, a celeriac and some tomatoes and then today I  spent £3.40 at M*rks on yoghurt, baked beans and a seeded roll.
I also bought some dark chocolate for this week's bake as it transpired that the chocolate that I had in wasn't the right percentage for the recipe I'd planned so that cost the Baking Budget an extra £5.20 although I didn't use it all and may have enough for a different recipe next month so think I'll add the cost to June's spend instead. I know it's a fudge but I'll take it.

That should be it for this month so I'm going to declare at £164.90/£150 for the main GC and £11.35/£10 for the Baking Budget and the Bulk Buy Fund remains untouched due to the dearth of offers on things I buy regularly which is annoying.

Then this Triple Chocolate Buckwheat Cookies recipe from Nigella was what I baked this week and I veganised it by using Naturli and Orgran egg replacer powder which worked brilliantly. I also made two batches one with ordinary cocoa and one with Dr Oetker's Fine Dark Cocoa powder which most people preferred because they thought it had more depth of flavour. There's only 25g of cocoa included in the recipe so I thought it was a good vehicle for trying the different cocoa and I kept everything else exactly the same; here they are on the cooling racks side by side and you, hopefully, can see that the right hand batch are darker.



See you all over on the June thread.

diminua

Declaring at a little over £30 over. Looking back over my spends I've been out a few times but I don't think I've been too extravagant, so the budget may need to go up. I'll see how June goes. 

PipneyJane

Good afternoon All

How did we get to month-end so fast?  I have 4 shops to share:

1. £7.54 spent in Sainsbug's on Sunday, on oose broccoli 944g £2.07, YS 150g sliced roast gammon £2.10, Humous 77p, Fox’s chocolate biscuits £1.25 (Yum!), and a 200g bag of spinach for £1.35.
2. £4.52 spent in L!dl on Tuesday, when I went to collect my free nectarines (saved £1.89) and free granola 1kg (saved £1.89) - both from offers on their app -  plus 2 packets of Wraps (reduced to 84p via another offer), a large bottle of ketchup (£1.05) and a large box mushrooms (£1.79).
3. £1.64 in L!dl today - free bananas (was 78p), spring onions (69p) and a bag of salad (95p).
4. £1.20 in Sainsbug's today on potted parsley (Nectar price, was £1.50 without it).

Throw in £2.30 of shrapnel going to the money boxes, which includes a £2 coin, and…

I’m declaring at £155/£160 with £5 to roll over to June.

See you on the other side…

- Pip

Doom_and_Gloom

Doom_and_Gloom said:

£281.18/£310.
£28.81 left.

£46.24 spent since the last post.

£327.42/£310.
£17.42 over.

I'm not going to declare yet as we still have tomorrow. I hope no more is spent though as we are already over .

Nelliegrace

Grocery Budget for May £155.

DD spent £3.10 on milk at Asda on Tuesday.
We went for our free pot of tea at the garden centre. They hadn’t got any of the 2 for 1 cream scones, so I said I would make some drop scones when we got home. We did get 300ml of double cream reduced to 71p from the small Waitrose there. I have made 155g of lightly salted butter, frozen in portions, and have about 100 ml of buttermilk for baking tomorrow. 
Aldi shop on the way home. The medium chicken was £4.25; I chose the largest one at that price. 
£23.18 spent.

I made the drop scones, they take just a few minutes, and we were ready for another pot of tea. 

Total £157.13p. Over budget for the first time this year, by £2.13p.

Milk and cream have increased in price, and I have bought more summer salad vegetables. I could have left the flour and coffee beans until next week!

LiveSimply

So my final amount this month was £255, very slightly over what I wanted to spend. 

There are some differences to shopping for June, I will be on my own for a week, plus not going past shops for extras so frequently so we’ll see if that makes an actual difference to the budget. 

Going for £230. 

K9sandFelines

£12.74 today in @ldi, and 4.63 at HomeB@rgains.
And £8.77  spend from a few days ago that I estimated at £9.

SausageDogSandwich

Declaring at £414.49/400. Definitely got carried away going out the shops this month, need to refrain from going there and find a different hobby  . This will mean clawing the money back next month. 

K9sandFelines

I've made a spend of £32.25 on some vegan protein bars and also £31.49 on toilet rolls.
Instead of splitting these between a few months, I'm going to sell them back to myself at price per bar/toilet roll.

I wouldn't normally touch these bars;  but I figured as a weekend treat or when I'm craving something, they are hopefully going to fill me up more, so stop me carrying on eating more chocolate etc
They're working out at 86p a bar.

The toilet rolls obviously are essential, they'll work out at 65p a roll. These last me so long (especially this month now my daughter has done her own order, and not staying over as much). There is just me the majority of the time, so it will last longer.

I've refrained from The Bread and Butter thing tomorrow, and possibly next week, as I'm not using all the stuff in the fridge quick enough;  which indicates I've too much food in.
Had to bin half a pack of melon (which I love) and a practically untouched vegan cream cheese. 

Let's hope I can waddle through til my end date, which is the 12th.
I've plenty in, and it's only another 12 days to go.
I've still got loads of tofu, two packs of Beyond Burgers, a fish fillet, vegan sausages and copious amounts of components.
Aswell as two or three freezer meals, i'm also in the middle of making a Dahl and Jamaican Rundown. So pretty sure I will be ok.