July 2025 Grocery Challenge

Naturelover22

Hi all, hope everyone is keeping cool.

Husband popped to aldi for cat food £5.18
Also got pepsi max, chicken, ham, cheese, yogurt, bread, painkiller, reduced raspberries total £26.65.

So we are on £134/ £215 so far.

thriftwizard

Right - I've added a combined spend of £76.60, which covers yesterday's small spend plus this morning's raid on the butchers & supermarket. There'll be more spent on fresh fruit & veg at the market tomorrow, but I'll try to keep that under £30, and maybe a bit of fish too.

I'm having to be a bit careful what I feed OH just now; his internal workings are playing up mightily, which may be to do with his medications. (Investigations are due at the end of the month.) It's a bit of a tightrope, trying to balance all our assorted dietary needs just now whilst keeping the spend under control!

Soontobeoap

We have just broken the golden rule of don't shop when you are hungry. We were going to have beans on toast but DH suggested picking up a quick snack in Aldi on the way home as he was so hungry after bowls. I got a wrap and he picked up a pasty that he didn't realise needed to be oven cooked not microwaved! It would have been quicker to stick with beans on toast. Whilst there DH threw kit kats, choc ice lollies, crisps and biscuits into the basket! I added lettuce and mayonnaise that we needed. £11.50 spent!

PipneyJane

PipneyJane said:

Good afternoon All

….

This brings our total spend to £94.73/£162.50, leaving £67.77 for the rest of the month.

It looks tighter than it feels.  There are a very few things on the shopping list: almost permanent entries for spring onions, baby new potatoes, sweet peppers and some sort of salad greens. I plan to go to L!dl tomorrow for those.  If I spend £10, I’ll be surprised.

In the end, I spent £14.63 in L!dl on my way home from work.  No YS items purchased - I didn’t see any - but I did pick up my “free” fruit: a 1.03kg hand of bananas, which exceeded their 1kg free-fruit limit, so cost me 3p.

Also purchased were spring onions 69p, 600g mushrooms £1.69, puff pastry £1.15, 200g mixed nuts 2x£1.75, 200g spinach £1.29, lemon juice 45p, 200g Gold instant coffee £2.69, 500g bran flakes 73p, 1kg baby potatoes 98p, and mixed peppers £1.43.   I probably could have got away with only one packet of mixed nuts, and not purchasing the coffee, but that would just be putting off the inevitable, since I’ll need both in August.

The warm weather is actually making it harder to meal plan, since my DH doesn’t want to eat hot food.   I really only have 3 salad recipes in my repertoire:  potato salad, a warm French lentil salad, and a tomato-less tabouleh.  I seem to be rotating our way through those, adding tinned fish to make them into lunches.

Once the England match finishes tonight, I’m going to attempt to make Chorizo, Cheese & Onion Pasties.  On Sunday, I cooked up half a kilo or so of potatoes that had started to sprout and mashed them.  We had some of the mash to accompany the YS steak pie on Monday (mentioned above).  There was quite a lot of mash left over.  Normally, I’d use it to either make gnocchi or to top a pie, but both have been vetoed by DH.

- Pip

The pasties weren’t bad.  Possibly could have done with halving the volume of potato to get a better blend but, given that I was making it all up as I went along, not bad for a first attempt.  I made 4 large pasties - ran out of pastry - and still have half the mixture left.  Hmmm… I see a frittata in its future…. That should work.

You may have gathered that I really don’t like wasting food.  I am still horrified by the TV ad that tells us the average family wastes £80 of food a month, however I had to admit defeat last night with three carrots.  They were beyond wizened, blackened at both ends,  and very bendy.  If they’d only been wizened, I’d have soaked them in a bowl of water for a couple of hours, to see what happened.  (I’ve accidentally had success previously with this, when I soaked some wizened carrots prior to scrubbing, got distracted and came back to find them all plumped up again.) 

- Pip

Pennypincin

£2.59 spent in Aldi yesterday on a bag of mixed nuts and a bag of budget fruit and nut mix.
I'm going to need more salad and possibly pick up some stir-fry ingredients for dinner Sunday.
Also a soft drink to take to a bbq I've been invited to.

mandco

Forgot to add the monthly £35 for the cats specialist food. Spent £19.88 at the pet shop on stuff for the rabbits did click & collect so oh could pick up on his way home options were limited vs what I’d pick up instore but got enough to tide them over and £11.75 in sains express this morning after the dentist on some snacky bits, bread,milk, mixed berries,bananas & a meal deal as ds wanted a bottle of drink and as they were £2.20+ on their own - even a standard small bottle of water was over £2  this brings me to £300 exactly
hoping to finally get out and do a proper 9big shop tomorrow which will probably make a significant dent in the budget 

GSDMum

It's been one week and one day since I last shopped. 

Today Tesco delivered – cost £91.74. Mainly it was veg, fruit and salad which could last me well over a week, plus cereal, dairy, roast ham and beef slices (for salads, I don't feel like cooking atm in this hot weather). There were several items over the £5 mark: 2 large cod fillets £5.35, 500g Aberdeen Angus mince £6.20 (maybe making 2 or 3 meals depending how I cook it), light olive oil for cooking £6.50, and 2 tubes of Sensodyne toothpaste for £8 (should have been £6.50 each, clubcard price £4 each) – things just seem so expensive now.

Shouldn't need to go shopping again until 22nd when I go to be measured for a crown.... I bit into a raw carrot and snapped a front tooth .... now I'm saddled with a £850 bill (oh for a NHS dentist)! So I must try a lot harder to economise.

Still trying to aim for an average of £350 a month by the end of 2025. Presently my average monthly shop is £359.32 over 7 months.

Was aiming to spend under £275 this month, so far I've spent £249.27. Hoping on the 22nd when I next go shopping I can stretch £26.25 worth of food for a week . Freezer and fridge stuffed atm.

Nelliegrace

Amazon Prime Day, I have ordered the Ecover washing up liquid refill, 3x5 litres at £9.79 each. The chamomile and clementine scented was 90p cheaper than the lemon and aloe vera, and we got a 2% discount for a slower delivery, so the cost was £28.78, £1.92 a litre.
Waitrose has it on offer at £12.50 for 5L.

The cheapest 950ml bottle in stores is £3.20 a litre. rrp £4.05 a litre. 
There are cheaper washing up liquids but this doesn’t give DH sore hands. The last order was 2 years ago, and there is a bit left. 

Blackcats

@GSDMum I was initially very impressed that you were being measured for a crown - thought you might be a minor royal or a carrival queen.  Sorry about your tooth - that was an expensive carrot! 

We did an inexpensive shop (by our standards) which was based on plenty of fresh fruit and veg and using up freezer bits and bobs.  We will need to re-stock on meats and fish soon but it's nice to be able to open the freezer and see what's in there.

£251 remaining 

Soontobeoap

Tonight was the beefburgers made from meatballs. They were a bit spicy for us so won't do that again. Also I used 8 meatballs to make one burger. We only needed 6 meatballs for a burger! Never mind
 You learn something new every day and we did eat well.