July 2025 Grocery Challenge

JingsMyBucket

Morning folks. We’ve had a couple trips to the shops over the past week. We’re at our budget limit for the month but still have a week to go. The point now is to mitigate the damage. We’ve got a lot of veg in the house and meat in the freezer. There are just some daily items to replenish such as fruit or milk to make yoghurt. 

£48.19 at M & S on Sunday for some basics as well as 1L of extra virgin olive oil (£8.50), organic whole milk to make yoghurt (£2.40), and a smoked gammon to cook at home (£6.50).

£23.75 yesterday evening by Mr. Jings at M & S again for 3 containers of coated chicken and coffee beans. Mr. Jings thought the chicken was 3 for £12 but one of the packets actually cost £9! Oy vey. It was still cheaper than ordering KFC so that’s money still saved in a roundabout way. 

£409.71 / £400 spent. £9.71 over spent

Dang it. Just remembered some friends are visiting us from England this weekend so we’ll probably host them for dinner or breakfast at least once. We may have to do a Saturday morning scramble for supplies then but I’ll try to limit the damage. The annoying thing is they’re kind of free wheeling and won’t give specifics to their arrival times or when we’re going to hang out. They’re staying in a different place in town so we’re not fully hosting them, but it’s still unpredictable. 

JingsMyBucket

@C_J, love your hauls. That was a particularly bountiful one this time around! 

Nelliegrace

July Budget for Two £155.

DH bought 2 packs of wonky British apples and 2x 4 pints of milk at Aldi but I haven’t found the receipt.
About £5.20 spent.

I shopped at Aldi yesterday afternoon when it was quiet. 
Quite a few bargains, the grapes and potatoes were on offer, the large butternut squash was £1.09, the kilo of nectarines was £2.35.
34p for a pomegranate! I keep it in the fridge and cut it a bit at a time to add a few fruit seeds to my muesli. 
DH will eat fruit with his breakfast if it is cut up and put in front of him, half of an apple, orange and banana every day, and a variety of fresh, tinned or dried fruit. 

We use British cold pressed rapeseed oil in the bread, £2.99 for 500ml, though there are cheaper alternatives in plastic bottles.

£23.97 spent.

The foragers’ cherry plums are in season, yellow and red in the hedges round the park and on a local housing estate. They make a tasty jam, I use a cherry stoner to prepare the fruit.  
The Czar plums in the garden are beginning to ripen. We have just a few Tomcot apricots. The first few blackberries are ready to pick. 
Yellow cherry plums.

mandco

Various shops totalling £136.60 to add bringing me to £743.50/£800 with 7 days to go so very doubtful I’ll stay under this month - Aim now is to try and stay as close to budget as possible. I’ve noticed Unexpected spends events that were unplanned but require additional purchases are proving to be a significant reason for overspends so need to work on a strategy for those going foward.

Mrs_Cheshire

Hi all, overspent this month as I'm currently on £657.87. I'm trying to make it to the end of the month without spending to much more. Going to do some baking over the weekend to make some cookies and cupcakes for the kids as they are constantly looking for snacks. 

Mrs_Cheshire

CJ what area of the country do you live in? We have community groceries in Manchester which have varying prices for the amount of food you want. You pay a yearly £5 membership fee and then each time you go it's Standard shop (12 points) ……… £5.00

Medium shop (18 points) ……….. £7.50

Large shop (24 points) ………….. £10.00

Extra Large shop (30 points) …. £12.50

Some items are 2 or 3 points depending on their value. 
I've not been for a while but will have a look whilst I'm off work over the summer to help keep the bills down. 

@PipneyJane I've moved about 3 miles up the road, so not far but bills are considerably more so need to be careful with grocery spends. 

K9sandFelines

Spent £1.25 on teabags at the co-@p.

I do need Asevi floor cleaner; but I'll try and find an alternative, until my next month's grocery challenge.

GSDMum

Tesco delivered this morning £113.13, bought quite a lot of store cupboard items. This brings my spending to £416.02, way over my target of £275 for the month - £130.98 over to be exact.

I'd planned to spend £275 for July and August, making £550 combined, for the two months. This means I've now got £134 for the month of August. I've booked a Tesco delivery on 29th August (Friday before August Bank Holiday weekend), which will be included in September's budget. Freezer is still full, and is the fridge... I can only try.

Good luck everyone! 

Mrs_Cheshire

GSDMum said:

Tesco delivered this morning £113.13, bought quite a lot of store cupboard items. This brings my spending to £416.02, way over my target of £275 for the month - £130.98 over to be exact.

I'd planned to spend £275 for July and August, making £550 combined, for the two months. This means I've now got £134 for the month of August. I've booked a Tesco delivery on 29th August (Friday before August Bank Holiday weekend), which will be included in September's budget. Freezer is still full, and is the fridge... I can only try.

Good luck everyone! 

August bank holiday weekend is the weekend before - Bank Holiday Monday is on the 25th. 
Why don't you join us on the reverse meal planning thread. Lots of ideas in there on using up what you already have in. 

PipneyJane

Mrs_Cheshire said:

CJ what area of the country do you live in? We have community groceries in Manchester which have varying prices for the amount of food you want. You pay a yearly £5 membership fee and then each time you go it's Standard shop (12 points) ……… £5.00

Medium shop (18 points) ……….. £7.50

Large shop (24 points) ………….. £10.00

Extra Large shop (30 points) …. £12.50

Some items are 2 or 3 points depending on their value. 
I've not been for a while but will have a look whilst I'm off work over the summer to help keep the bills down. 

@PipneyJane I've moved about 3 miles up the road, so not far but bills are considerably more so need to be careful with grocery spends. 

Manchester is one of my favourite cities @Mrs_Cheshire.  I used to have to go up there a lot for work.  There was always something else to discover.  One of my favourite places to stay was the old hotel at Old Trafford cricket ground.  I’ve not stayed there since it was rebuilt, but 10 years ago, for £40-odd a night, you could get a room with a balcony overlooking the playing area, and just sit and fantasise about what it’d be like on a match day.  

I have some shops to declare from the last week:  £5.14 spent in Sainsbug’s on Sunday (on Satsumas 99p, cookies £2.40, and Robinson’s fruit shots £1.75 Nectar price); followed by two shops on Monday:  £1.69 in Lidl on Maasadam cheese slices, and another £4.45 in Sainsbugs (on a 4-pack peppers £1.24, single mushroom 8p, 1.2kg baking potatoes 97p, 450g Yeo Valley Greek Yoghurt with Honey £2.25).  On Tuesday, DH purchased a pack of Tortilla wraps in L!dl on his way home from work, because I’d forgotten we needed them for Tuesday’s dinner.

The single mushroom was so we could get 40 extra Nectar points.  The Fruit Shots is because we’re doing the MacMillan Mighty Hike tomorrow and, while they give you plenty of water, DH prefers his flavoured.  I only discovered that L!dl do their own version, when I went in on Monday.  We couldn’t buy most of Monday’s Sainsbug’s shop on Sunday, because we were out for the day and only purchased things to share with friends at a board games session. 

Somehow, despite my keeping a paranoid watch on our GC spends, somehow the GC purse is £1.70 lighter than expected.  I don’t know if that’s because there’s a receipt that I’ve missed/lost or if there was yet another £2 coin contributed to the Running Away Fund moneybox, plus someone not taking back all of the money spent when out without the GC purse.

Anyway, the above brings our total spend to £135.40/£162.50, leaving £27.20 for the next week.

It should be doable.  We will need milk - have a L!dl+ 15% off voucher - and some fresh veg.  Thankfully the days have cooled down a bit, so DH will eat hot meals again, instead of complaining.  

Meal Plans

Dinner tonight is pasta with homemade pesto,
Saturday:  possibly Nadiya Hussein’s “Ham & Cheese Crown”.  (I make a half quantity.)  It depends on how I’m feeling after the walk.
Sunday, it’ll be Chole Paneer (a chickpea and paneer curry), which will use up the last lump of paneer from the freezer and some of the chickpeas I soaked earlier this week, froze raw, and will pressure-cook tonight.  
Monday Chicken Risotto, using HM stock, fresh mushrooms and a chicken breast from the freezer.  
Tuesday Bread & Cheese Pudding.  (A savoury bread-and-butter pudding made with cheese, sweetcorn and tinned tuna.)
Wednesday  Carrot & Cashew Nut Roast
Thursday Some sort of stew in the slow cooker.  (I’ll be in the office all day.)
Friday we’re out.

All breakfasts are cereal and all lunches are leftovers.  Most of the above use recipes which feed 4, so I’ll dish up the excess into lunchboxes at the same time as serving our dinners.

- Pip