September 2025 Grocery Challenge

JingsMyBucket

@TheCheerleader @PipneyJane and others, you're very welcome!

I'm finally back from vacation. We were supposed to return home on Saturday evening but all the trains out of London were cancelled due to Storm Amy knocking out power lines across England and Scotland. We had to get an emergency hotel room at the Premier Inn near Euston station on Saturday afternoon. We finally made it home Sunday afternoon after scrambling for the first train out of the city around 8:30am. 

@Soontobeoap I hope your husband is feeling a bit better now. @Suffolk_lass and @PipneyJane thanks for reminding me about vaccinations. I need to book mine for this year. The Scottish NHS normally would've called me up to get a vaccination since I'm immunocompromised but they haven't so far. I'll look into it this week. 

Anyway, onward to the October thread. 🎃

carboot_karaoke

@Soontobeoap
@TheCheerleader

Apologies for my late response.

In truth September's grocery total looked better than it was due to a lot of freezer and pantry stock accrued from previous months. 

That said, l have implemented a lot of tips from various MS on this thread which help to keep my spending in check for example.

Always do a food inventory and food plan before going food shopping. l cook everything from scratch and any leftovers are taken to work as lunches, or frozen. Then once we have a fair amount of freezer bags we have a random leftovers night 🤣

I try to plan to make the most of ingredients especially fresh to avoid waste for example a bag of potatoes will do a roast and then ill have a cottage pie, or sausage and mash later in the week to use up.

Meat is probably the biggest expense, l have reduced the amount we use in each meal and stick with the cheaper cuts of meat.

l buy 750g mincemeat and spilt into two. Then bulk with cheaper items i.e. lasagne has peppers, mushrooms, tomatoes or cottage pie has lentils, or a keema has chick peas and spinach. You get the idea 😉

I deskin and debone chicken thighs myself, tedious but does save a lot of cost. 

Snacks, can also be expensive so l bulk buy when there on offer but ration the amount l put in the cupboard  🤫otherwise they'd be eaten in a few days.

Wishing you a frugal October x