July 2025 Grocery Challenge

Soontobeoap

£23.40 spent at Aldi on essentials plus ice lollies today.DH does love his coffee so £8.00 of that was nescafe

Edit - have just done a meal plan and I can get another week at least from the freezer

Sunday - Lasagne
Monday - Lamb hot pot ( limited lamb leftovers but will bulk up with veg)
Tuesday - fish cakes ( made with tinned tuna from stores
Wednesday - sausage pasta
Thursday - Beans on toast
Friday - Beefburgers ( reformed meatballs)
saturday- a joint that the label has come off of! 🤣 I have narrowed it down to Gammon or pork!🤦

Fingers crossed it gammon as I can get so many more meals from that. If it's pork has anyone got any food recipes for leftovers?

mandco

Changeyourlife25 said:

£373.54 /£450 

😩 
I shouldn’t have posted last night , I didn’t realise I couldn’t edit my posts. 

The Morrisons order ended up being £202.09
although I’m not sure why…. I don’t know if some offer expired or it’s a hidden charge. 

Then ended up needing stuff in the corner shop £12.85

Only £76.46 left for the month….. and we are 2 days in.

maybe the budget needs to go up? 

My farm shop and Morrisons order were big ones and that’s a freezer full of meat and a lot of dairy! So I’m hoping that’ll do us well.
i just need to stay away from popping to the corner shop for little bits and actually plan properly and be ahead. 

Just waiting for Morrisons to arrive now! Will be sitting the kids down and having a long discussion about portion control and not swarming the fridge like a bunch of locusts. 

So I can actually make what we’ve got last
 
Thanks for the creamy tarragon chicken pasta recipe! Sounds lovely, I was looking for it online but couldn’t find it. I’ll try that this month.

Anyone feeding 5 adults? (1 adult and 4 big children 17,12,11,9) what would your budget be? 

When starting out go through your previous months average spends and start there with the aim of reducing gradually - if your spending £600 cutting that to £400 in a month is going to be incredibly difficult to achieve and you’ll get discouraged. 
my monthly target at £800 is significantly higher than most on here but I included everything food, household, toiletry’s petfood ect I’m feeding 5 adult sized eaters though we do have food some allergies/ intolerances Which bump up the costs a fair bit. I haven't come in on target yet but my target is lower than I was spending before I started and I’m definitely more conscious of what I’m buying so it’s still a win. 

Really must stop leaving oh in charge of the shopping - ended up in hospital having my gallbladder out - £33.80 in Sainsbury’s & £92.40 in Costco  I did ask if he’d pick me up a cooked chicken for when I came home so he decided to go to Costco on the way to pick me up as they had bumbu on offer £24 - its normally around £36. Granted he did pick up some of our usual buys like bacon,butter,wraps but pretty sure the approx £30 worth of Krispy kreme donuts, cupcakes & cookies from the bakery section really weren’t needed 

Changeyourlife25

Thanks so much everyone for all the love!

Yes thankfully I have a lot of food in the house and have been making a meal plan, just need to keep motivated everyday. I’ll do some fake aways too  
I’m trying to go completely cold turkey on the take aways, it’s hard but once I start then I just give in because I’ve already failed. Tbh no one even wants the take aways! I think we are all sick of it and half the time when it arrives it’s never good or there’s some other problem anyways 


for big bags of onions, I usually just chop and freeze everything. However with a sack that could take a while (I use a blender) if you have a big enough space dark and cool that should be fine, keep the bag shut and give them a rinse before you use them.

£358.17 / £600 

Just another £2.38 spend. Spring onions and a blue sports drink
I probably could’ve done without the sports drink but 🤷‍♀️ I was thirsty making dinner lol 

C_J

I made a trip up to a nearby town this morning, mainly to drop off some charity shop donations. I called into the small Saturday morning community fridge and picked up some shallots, a red onion, a green pepper, a tiny cauliflower, a large bag of French beans, a large courgette, a couple of leeks, two all butter croissants and a Lidl doughnut filled and covered with chocolate. They had loads of pastries to give away but I resisted 🤣

There are enough shallots to fill a Sarsons jar so they will get pickled tomorrow, the other veg will be frozen for later use, the French beans are going to my daughter (they’ll be excellent finger food for my 10 month old grandson), the croissants will be my breakfasts on Sunday and Monday, and I am just eating the naughty chocolate doughnut with a lovely and much needed cup of tea.

This community fridge doesn’t ask for donations, so my total for July remains at £8.67/£150

K9sandFelines

themsthebreaks said:

How do you all store onions?

I buy bags with around seven or eight onions in them, and store them in a dark bag, but as the house is warm, they can start to sprout if I don’t use them quick enough. We do use a lot of onion - with a bag often lasting less than a week - so, that isn’t usually a problem. Cost wise though, I would like to get a big sack of onions, but I already know they wouldn’t keep in the house.

If I was to store them in the shed, would they need to be off the floor? Would they stay in their original packaging? How long would they last in there? It is a spider haven in the shed, would that matter?

Sorry for all the questions. I would like to buy a big sack of onions, but don’t want to end up throwing half of them away, so would appreciate your thoughts 😊

I bought mine in September last year, and I ran out about April. I also use onions all the time. I stored mine outside in the yard in a spare recycling box. Albeit the weather was much colder then 

JingsMyBucket

Good news, everybody! I misread my M & S receipt yesterday and accidentally listed the pre-discount total of £90.11. The actual final amount was £81.20, a whole £8.91 less. So my revised numbers are actually: 

£135.03 / £400 spent. £264.97 total remaining.

That extra bit will come in handy when I buy drinks for the birthday dinner this week. 

Pennypincin

I've gone over the budget this week and have lost track of the spending.

I've also had to use the bulk fund for other things.

I'm going to start again tomorrow, but budget £20 per month for the bulk fund as a separate amount, but also add what is hopefully left from the shopping budget.

I think writing a list may help, also not picking up bits daily or impulsive buys.

goldfinches

I've now tried the Giving Garage that you told me about @C_J and picked up two large loaves of nice M&S bread but sadly all the veg and fruit was gone by the time I got there 20 minutes after they opened so I'm not sure if I'll go back. It was also difficult to get to from here because of the road layout so maybe not, we'll see. But thankyou for telling me about it as I'd never otherwise have known it was there.

I've three spends to declare with the first being at Waitflower where I stocked up on Bold Beans jars which are on offer there for £2.60 per jar at the moment which is a great improvement over the £4 M*rks want so I bought 2x queen chickpeas, 1x butter beans and 1x white beans. I also bought 3x the Vadasz jalapeno relish I like because the dates were long enough for it to last me to the end of the month and that was on offer too. Then I also got a jar of preserved lemons, some reduced St Agur and a packet of bourbon biscuits because the weather had turned cold so ice pops weren't suitable for the Wednesday walking group outing.
Then the following day I did a stock up at Sains and bought white cabbage, loo rolls, 2x Fairy antibac and 3x tomatoes for a total of £12.39. And across the road at M*rks I spent £9.45 on milk, yoghurt, carrots, red onions, cheddar and 2x peppers.

That brings my main GC total to £25.13/£150, the Baking Budget to £2.10/£25 and the Bulk Buy Fund is now down to £45.60.

I've also made a couple of new recipes this week and can highly recommend this flatbreads one which was so delicious I scoffed the lot before I remembered to photograph them. I'm about to make them again because they were so delicious so will snap them then.

TravelCrystal

Just a quickie on the onion question. I buy both red onions and frozen onions. Tend to use the fresh for salads this time of the year and keep them in a wicker basket under the sink with the potatoes. I used the frozen for any cooked item and put in less than I would normally do. On a different tack, I have been making a batch of roast potatoes and generally reheat in the oven. Today I decided it was cheaper to reheat them in a bit of butter and olive oil in a pan with garlic and rosemary, cheaper than putting on the electric. 

They were delicious 

T.C

Soontobeoap

Thanks for the tip on the potatoes @TravelCrystal they sound delicious. I will definitely give them a try.

The problem with eating from stores and not much else I am finding is that I shop more often to get the little bits I need to complete the meal. We are still spending much less but it is easier to add things that you don't really need to your basket. Anyway I have just nipped to Aldi for some salad bits to have with lasagne. Did get a couple of reductions . Lettuce 60% off and cherry toms 30% off. Added 3 chicken breasts to give a bit of variety, A pack of custard for DH to have with the last half tin of cherrys. ( I was lazy not making it with the custard powder I have so that's 59p I could have saved) I will make cake tomorrow to stop him craving a shopping trip for sweet things.He asked me to buy a mixed pack of biscuits today so I spent £1.59 that I wish I hadn't!  £12.96 spent all together.