May 2025 Grocery Challenge

sams247

Sticking to my £180 budget for May please

I also visit two different (and quite smashing) Community Fridges
@C_J Can I ask which Community Foods you use?  I know about one locally but the other??

JingsMyBucket

Morning all. Yesterday’s Morrisons order came to £57.12 after handing back one undesired substitution. I’m honestly surprised I was able to get an inexpensive £1.50 same day delivery slot and only have one sub! 

The delivery covered a 1kg tub of peanut butter, paper towels, multiple packs of sausages, salads, canned tomatoes, yoghurts, 2 bulk bags of black peppercorns, a block of coconut milk, canned coconut milk, various rices, vanilla extract (only £5 for a good brand!!) and a few other items. 

BONUS: I earned an extra 4,000 Morrisons More points by shopping according to their boosters this month. Thankfully, they aligned with what I wanted/needed anyway. When those are added to my More account, I can translate those into a £5 off voucher. I think I’ll hold them though until later in the year. Let’s see what points boosters they have for May. 

£57.12 / £325 spent. £267.88 total remaining.  

This weekend I’ll pick up some essentials at Tesco such as toilet paper, yoghurt, and fruit. My original budget divides out to roughly £72/week for 4.5 weeks this month. I’ll aim to spend less than £15 at Tesco this weekend. 

C_J

sams247 said:

Sticking to my £180 budget for May please

I also visit two different (and quite smashing) Community Fridges
@C_J Can I ask which Community Foods you use?  I know about one locally but the other??

I’ve messaged you

goldfinches

Broiling hot day here with lots of people enjoying outdoor swimming at the pool this afternoon, hope it's as nice where you are too.

I'm staying with £150 for this month, £2.50 per week for the Baking Fund and £86.02 in the Bulk Buy fund after declaring April's totals, so could you update my entry on the first page please @elsiepac, thankyou.

Best of luck to everyone on this thread and a warm welcome to all newcomers, goldfinches.

GSDMum

Had a Tesco delivery booked for 2nd May, but as DH ran out of his cereal and we needed more milk, I decided to bring the delivery forward to yesterday as I knew I'd probably spend more that I'd planned if I popped into Lidl. Plus with this hot weather we were craving a nice crispy salad. 

Tesco came to £152.49 which included expensive olive oil and toilet rolls, 1kg chicken breasts, joint of ham, plus lots of salad ingredients and fruit.  Also bought a 500g bag of walnuts online for £7.99 = that's £160.48 out of my £300 budget. Bit horrendous for the 1st of the month but planning not to go shopping over the next 7 days. Think I can manage till the end of the month buying just veg/fruit and dairy, there's enough in the fridge and freezer to stop us from starving.

Thank you everyone for your posts, reading them has kept me focussed! Good luck for May!

TravelCrystal

Have been to quite a few shops today and spent too much money already. This month is going to be a challenge.

The Range £1.50 marg and YSLoaf was 25p 😊
Asda £3.55 on grapes, biscuits and oats
Morries Treacle and Yoghurt £3.75
Aldi general shopping fruit and veg etc £26.36
Farm Foods £39.99 5 x loo rolls and 1kg cooked prawns

On the plus side it was lovely and cold in the shops

Total today £75.15
Total so far £109.15/£200 Eek

Enjoy the sunshine everyone 

T.C

carboot_karaoke

Thank you @elsiepac for running the thread. Can l have my regular budget of £470 although after a small overspend last month l hope to spend less. This is for 4 adults and 2 growing / hungry children including food, cleaning and toiletries. 

Welcome @karenccs67 and @C_J sorry to hear about your loss.

@TravelCrystal That takeaway sounds very well deserved 

I am popping in with a number of spends to declare £21.62 across two visits to Asda and £5.87 in Aldi

New totals £27.49 / £470

Enjoy the sunshine 🌞 

C_J

Pinch and a punch for the first of the month! And I completely forgot to thank Elsiepac for starting and managing the thread, it’s very much appreciated.

I shall be using my posts on this thread partly to track the items I pick up from the Community Fridge(s) which I visit most weeks, not in any way to brag about how great they (and they really are!) but to try and focus my mind on what to cook with the ingredients so I get the best out of them and nothing gets wasted. Now that I’m cooking just for me (well, sometimes for the dog as well) I need to ensure nothing gets hidden at the back of the veg drawer, because items from the CF do need to be used up quickly.

so ….. May has started with my first CF visit, and for the grand sum of the £1 donation they request, I have:

4 large baking potatoes
Red onions and large brown onions
Garlic
Carrots
Leeks
1 small white cabbage
1 tub of bread and butter pickles
Bag of mixed salad leaves
Tomatoes
1 red pepper
1 cucumber
1 celeriac
Mushrooms
6 free range eggs
Bag of coleslaw mix
2 globe artichokes
1 avocado
Easy peeler satsumas
3 lemons
2 apples
2 bananas
1 pack raspberries
1 pack boneless chicken thighs
1 pack M&S sliced ham
1 box Daylesford organic muesli
1 large loaf Jackson’s seeded sliced bread
1 small sliced fruit loaf

2 packs ready salted crisps
2 cans of Starbucks iced latte

1 small baguette
1 Waitrose sandwich (mozzarella and roasted tomato)
1 tub Rodda’s clotted cream
1 M&S chicken tikka salad bowl
1 bunch of yellow tulips

Breakfasts for the next week will be muesli, toast, scrambled egg on toast, and porridge (from existing stores). I will need some more milk and Nordpak butter, but can probably last until Sunday or Monday before I have to go and buy that.

I’ve already had the mozzarella sandwich, pack of crisps and an iced latte for lunch today. Other lunches will be the chicken tikka salad bowl, home made salads using the above ingredients esp the ham (or tuna, as I have a tin of that in existing stores), also carrot soup, leek and potato soup, a jacket potato, avocado on toast, and the globe artichokes (I’ll make a Hollandaise dipping sauce).

Dinners will be a stir fry using the veg above and two of the chicken thighs, that should do two meals. It will also use up some of the hundredweight of radishes I currently have in the fridge, they’re a lot like water chestnuts when added to a stir fry.

More chicken thighs and mushrooms will turn into either a casserole or a curry. It’s too hot for that right now but the temperature is set to drop early next week. Also maybe a mushroom omelette. Maybe leeks wrapped in ham and baked in a cheese sauce.

Fruit will be for desserts or snacks, but I will peel a couple of the satsumas and lemons, chop them with an apple and freeze so that I have them ready next time I get fresh ginger and turmeric to make into a really tasty tea. I have plenty of this tea frozen into cubes already, but I’m always planning ahead as it is so blummin’ delicious.


Spent so far £1.00/£160

carboot_karaoke

That is a staggering amount of food for £1 @C_J

How can l find out if there are any in my area? Do you need to meet any criteria to join? 

C_J

It is staggering. My daughter just texted to ask how on earth I was going to use all that food, considering I kinda stopped eating when my husband died (and in the weeks leading up to it, tbh). I am trying to make a concerted effort to look after myself a bit better, and eat healthily again now.

I think a good starting place would be for you to search Facebook, as every community fridge I know has a FB page. Maybe do a search for your county + “community fridge” or “community larder” or “community hub” and see if that brings anything up. A google search might work too. There are some which are council-run, so searching your local council’s website should find those, but those ones require a monthly subscription (about £15 I think) to join. No other criteria, they are open to all.

All the CFs I visit ask just for a £1 donation to help with running costs and are open to absolutely everyone. You just turn up! A team of wonderful volunteers collect up donations from local supermarkets and businesses at the end of every day and give them away free to prevent them going to landfill. The stupid thing is that an awful lot of the items have four or five days left on their sell-by dates. I picked up lots of the Hello Fresh chicken stock paste sachets last week, and they were BBE October 2026, yet they were still getting rid of them. Madness. I guess it’s to do with fluctuations in produce levels in the warehouse and not being able to amend the incoming orders quickly enough or summat like that.