June 2025 Grocery Challenge

Soontobeoap

Just spent £28.90 in Aldi on a weekks shopping( still using meat etc from freezer. Forgot puff pastry so need to nip back up as still have meat for pasties

JingsMyBucket

Hello, just a quick one to report. Mr. Jings spent £5.40 today at M & S for coffee beans and garlic. Colour me surprised that he bought only what was requested and didn’t tag on an extra £15 of stuff! 

£248.44 / £325 spent. £76.56 remaining.  

K9sandFelines

£17 at Bread and Butter thing.
Great bags again today.
Loads of mushrooms, raspberries, nectarines, mint leaves, chocolate ( luckily vegan as they are vegetarian bags), crisps, Chinese leaf cabbage, potatoes, oat milk, and lots of cream, mozzarella and bits ( listed on Olio)
I shared with my daughter, as I owed her some money back.
Also,  I've had some gf.flour delivered; but not sure I'm keeping it for the price (so not adding that yet).
Also adding £1.20 for a bag of sugar. So I can make jam out of surplus raspberries. I don't normally like raspberry flavoured jam; but I'm hoping if I mix it with some blackberries ( I still have loads in the freezer from last summer that my DD1 and GD picked), that it'll be nice.

goldfinches

Evening all and I hope you've all had a good day. Extra good wishes for @weenancyinAmerica and hope things get better soon.

I've been shopping a horrifying three times since my last post and today I have to confess to having forgotten to harvest various herbs while I was at my allotment and, instead, buying them from Waitflower rather than cycling all the way back again because I was feeling so hot and tired.

Anyway, first I went up the road to Mr T's yesterday because I needed eggs and sour cream for a recipe and, unfortunately for my will power, arrived at exactly the moment they were putting lots of fresh veg and salad bits into the marked down area. So I fell for a ys lettuce, ys broccoli, 2x ys cherry tomatoes, 2x ys smashed avocado, 2x ys panini and a croissant as well as the eggs and sour cream which all came to £9.86.
Then today at the other Mr T's I bought lemons, 2x walnuts (club card price), cucumber, garlic and a pear which came to £7.90.
And this afternoon I bought milk, roquefort, jalapeno relish, parsley, rosemary, chives, dill, chillies and mint at Waitflower which cost £15.50.

That makes my new GC total £127.92/£150    aaaaargh and I forgot to buy the handwash liquid this afternoon!

I shall just have to have a fridge and store cupboard rummage and put my thinking cap on!

Nelliegrace

June budget £150 for the two of us.

We shopped at a different Aldi on the way home from the afternoon film, the new Bridget Jones, (£5 including tea and biscuits in the interval,) at the Memorial Hall. It will save going out again in this hot weather.

A few bargains, the mixed seeds have been out of stock. Frozen blueberries are considerably cheaper than the plastic packs of fresh ones, I defrost enough for a couple of days in the fridge. We have some growing in the garden.

£18.12 spent.

Total Spent £63.01

C_J

A visit to my favourite Community Fridge today costing £1, and which brings my June total to £43.16/£150

There was less food available this week I think, but it's still such an excellent place. 

6 large baking potatoes
Red onions
Shallots
Carrots
Leeks
Pak choi
Chinese cabbage
Cherry tomatoes
Large vine ripened tomatoes
Cucumber
Avocado
1 pack cut herbs, coriander
1 pack cut herbs, flat leaf parsley
White and chestnut mushrooms
1 pack baby spinach
1 pack samphire
1 pack mangetout peas
2 pain au raisins
Bananas
Tub of prepared pomegranate
1 M&S ready meal of sweet and sour crispy prawns
1 pack sliced salami
1 pack paneer
1 loaf thick sliced multigrain Hovis
6 free range eggs
1 Pret egg and cress sandwich
1 Pret romesco, butter bean and feta salad
1 shawarma chicken flatbread
1 tub hummus
1 tub Tesco Finest fresh pomodorini tomato pasta sauce
2 M&S bircher muesli bowls
1 potted coriander plant
1 bunch white roses


So the use-up plan is to make a paneer makhani as I already have the other ingredients for this. I'll probably go rogue and add a handful of the baby spinach to it too then freeze the rest of the spinach (along with the pomegranate and cut herbs) to use another day. There are plenty of ingredients above for a nice mixed veg and mushroom stir fry, and the pasta sauce will go with some spaghetti from my larder and parmesan which needs using up. I'm having the crispy prawns tonight, the sandwiches for lunches on Thursday and Friday and the butter bean and feta salad for dinner tomorrow night. I have plenty of tomatoes, red peppers, cucumber, garlic and onion so will make a nice jug of ice cold gazpacho because the weather is set to top 30 degrees by the weekend and I reckon I will only want soup if it is chilled!

otb666

580/600 @mandco I have a shopping list on kitchen table that we add anything on we want. Then when we are in aldi we stick to the list. if not on list we dont get it. Since hubby been on monjo injection he has got a lot cheaper. Does not eat steaks anymore. Only got veg shop on friday now so on budget.  The 55p chocolate i buy in aldi has disappeared and had to buy the 1.55 one. Gutted as will not now buy every week. We have a whiteboard where we put our spends as we are on a joint income £27000 pa we cannot overspend as we dont work now.  I am quite impressed how we have managed as previously when working has a terrible habit of going over.our income.  @Nelliegrace I have frozen fruits as well.  I like wizzing them from freezer with milk for cooling milkshakes. The mango and the cherries frozen are this weeks selection.

PipneyJane

Good evening All

I have two small shops to declare:  £7.22 in MrT’s and £2.35 in Sainsbugs.  We ran out of yoghurt and, since we like the big tubs of Yeo Valley, I did a comparison of the offers on both supermarkets’ websites.  MrT’s Clubcard offer on 450ml tubs was 25p better than the best Nectar/smartshop price at Sainsbugs, and applied to more flavours, so guess where I headed after work?  Amazingly, it only took me 13 minutes to get to MrT’s and the shop was deserted!  Anyway, 4 tubs picked up for £1.50 each plus 2 YS 400g punnets of mushrooms at 61p each.

On the way home, I stopped at Sainsbugs, parked in the coolest part of their multi-storey car park, and headed in for some loose carrots (40p), loose broccoli (81p) and a bunch of spring onions 54p (offer).  Was surprised to find that they had reusable produce bags in stock, so purchased 2 at 30p each.  I had to use the Smartshop App to get the offer on the spring onions.

The above brings our total spend to £155/£165 leaving £10 for the rest of the month.

Now to figure out what we’re going to eat for the next few days…. Hmmm….  DH doesn’t like hot food on a hot day, so I’m thinking of making some sort of bean salad, since I have cans of 3 bean mix and spring onion, plus another potato salad.  Will need to buy peppers, but I’ll get those at L!dl on my way home from work tomorrow.  (Sainsbug’s were not good.  I didn’t think about it when I was in MrT’s.)

- Pip

K9sandFelines

K9sandFelines said:

Also,  I've had some gf.flour delivered; but not sure I'm keeping it for the price (so not adding that yet).

Flour isn't refundable , as through a third party seller.
So that £7.88 to add to spends. Also, four toilet rolls to add from my own stores, two previous ones and two I'll need to pull out tomorrow.

So £7.88 and £2.60 = £10.48

GSDMum

Keeping to plan I visited Morrisons this morning and spent £55.34 on food. Mainly went to Morrisons for their fresh fish. It was rather early, the fishmonger hadn't finished setting out his wares. Bought a doz fresh sardines for tonight's dinner, couple cod loins, 2 haddock filets, and from the chilled cabinet prepared scampi and some prawns for a 'prawn korma' later in the week. When I got home I popped the scampi and the prawns in the freezer for a few days. That's almost a week's worth of dinners sorted. Other things I bought were milk, cream, couple french sticks, salad ingredients, rolls, water for the steam iron, slices of ham, dog treats, easy peel oranges, couple packs of crumpets... 

I'm trying to keep to a monthly average of £350 for groceries over the year. So far the average is running at £363.48. If I hit my target of £250 for July, I might be slap bang on track by the end of July. Hoping I can hold out shopping till next Friday, I'll be needing to pick up a few bits and pieces then.