November 2025 Grocery Challenge

Working_Mum

Hello everyone,
I have been reading along and keeping focussed despite being super busy I have kept the faith and am declaring £217.37/ £250 for the month and a slight overspend to £68.95/ £65 on household budget. I am very pleased with this result!!

Have a fab weekend everyone and see you on the December thread!

Thanks Jings for managing this thread - it really has made such a difference to my food spend.

((WM))

Pennypincin

I've lost track of what I've bought.
Although I have bought 4 jars of coffee substitute from the bulk fund and have an online delivery at the weekend, which is coming out of the bulk fund.

moginstein

Oh, @leftatthetrafficlights a kaffir lime tree - how lovely. I brought some pips back from the USA, but managed to kill off the remaining poor one. Is yours inside, did you start it off or was it got as a plant?
Nice that you are making your own Thai paste with it. Maybe you could grow your own lemongrass (sometimes they will root if there is enough life at the stubby end).

JingsMyBucket

Hi all, sorry about the November thread being unpinned. I emailed asking someone to pin the December thread and they seem to have taken that as removing the November thread! I’ve emailed them requesting to put the November thread back at the top. Hopefully that’s done in the next day or so. 

JingsMyBucket

As for me, I finally went grocery shopping yesterday and I realized it was the first time I’d left the house since Sunday. 

£4.30 at Iceland for Laughing Cow triangles and Philly cream cheese. (Mr. Jings used one of the previous tubs while cooking this week.)

£36.91 at Lidl for asparagus tips, flat mushrooms, avocado, 2kg potatoes, a couple fancy yoghurts, microwave rice packets, canned mackerel, an 850g smoked ham hock,  haggis pizza, 24 eggs, 2 pts milk, oat cakes, 2 logs of gingerbread dough, 2 boxes of coated/breaded brie, facial tissues, and some turmeric and ginger tea. 

ETA: I also got some free fancy tomatoes as the Lidl Plus free vegetable  

£17.24 at M & S for bananas, clementines, 2 bags of salad, YS plate of Italian meats/cold cuts, a block of butter, and a couple boxes of fruit teas.  

£386.89 / £350 spent so far. £36.89 overspent  

Phooey. We were doing so well at the beginning of the month too. We’ve got a lot of stuff in the house and would only just need some more fruit and onions come Sunday. I was planning to make a ground beef chili too so I need black beans. Let’s see how this goes. 

weenancyinAmerica

I love seeing what the prices are and what everyone is buying. Gives me a lot of food for thought as what to make for meals. Meat has gone up a lot here as has almost everything else. I was amazed that some products had gone up by more than 10% in the last month, including my oatmeal and peanut butter which are staples here. We get a little help from my roommate's church, but it is usually very strange items and too much of the wrong thing. It is coming from a senior citizen's food bank and why the powers that be think a senior citizen will eat dried kelp is beyond me (36 packages anyone?). Young people I think may eat it in a smoothie, but most seniors here will bypass it. Most of the clients at this food bank are Vietnamese and don't like things like canned green beans even. We used to get a lot of staples like lentils, beans, and rice, but not any more. Now it is mainly just fruits and vegetables about to go bad and occasionally eggs and snack foods. I need to get over to my school for their food bank but it is usually only Tuesday morning and hard for me to get to with my walker. 

leftatthetrafficlights

moginstein said:

Oh, @leftatthetrafficlights a kaffir lime tree - how lovely. I brought some pips back from the USA, but managed to kill off the remaining poor one. Is yours inside, did you start it off or was it got as a plant?
Nice that you are making your own Thai paste with it. Maybe you could grow your own lemongrass (sometimes they will root if there is enough life at the stubby end).

It is lovely @moginstein 😁 my sister bought it for me as a birthday gift and its indoors on the windowsill of my bay window - unfortunately, my windows are shot so it's had massive temperature changes over the past couple of weeks hence the shedding! 🙄🤦‍♀️ It will recover - I'm going to move it to one of the bedrooms this weekend where the temperature is more stable so it should be fine 🤞 I've used it quite a bit for thai curry paste making - I'm definitely going to try to cultivate the lemongrass from the ends this time as it's rarely available in our local shops and it's something that I like to use quite frequently 😁 

Sorry to hear you're lime tree didn't make it - you can get reasonably small ones at a decent price so it may be worth putting it on your list for santa! 😉😁

diminua

£245.72 spent. I'm pretty sure I'm going to shoot past the £250 target though as I'm meeting my dad and brother for drinks on Sunday. 

whitecatcreamsofaDOH

After doing so well this month I might have been tempted by some very spendy advent calendars in Liddell. I did resist the human sized dog bed tho (only £60 and it looked very cosy, I know the cat would love it 🤣).

Got a few bulk things to buy this weekend but also have a couple of Clubcard vouchers to hopefully balance that out. 

oceandreamer

Ending the month today as I won't be going in any shops tomorrow.  Have spent 24.04 at the supermarket - big block of cheese, milk, veg, a couple of offers which were very good value and I will definitely eat next month and some washing liquid.  Also popped into the farm shop and bought a sack of potatoes which will last probably until the end of January.  They are so much cheaper than the supermarket and last so well as they are unwashed and in the sack.  Will have to try very hard next month to come anywhere near this as the freezer is very much depleated.  I have done a freezer inventory today though and meal planned around it for next week so at least I'm starting off on the right foot.

Ending November on 242.63/300