January 2026 Grocery Challenge

PipneyJane

joedenise said:

PipneyJane said:

joedenise said:

As requested @PipneyJane:  Please share your butternut squash curry recipe!  I don't use a recipe as such but roughly as follows:

I use a SC but of course can be done in a pan on the hob if preferred.  Also need to get out a couple of cubes of frozen spinach to defrost.

I add chopped onions, garlic & ginger to a frying pan and then add about 2 Tbs of medium curry powder (I make my own mix) and cook it for a few minutes and then transfer to the SC.

Add chopped butternut squash, 2 tins of tomatoes and a veg stock pot.  I prefer to add a stock pot rather than stock so it's not too liquid.  

Cook for about 6-7 hours on Low.  Taste and add some garam masala if it needs a bit more "kick".  If it's too thick add a bit of of water (or stock) or if too thin add a cornflour slurry and then add a tin of drained chickpeas and the defrosted spinach.  Give a good stir.  Leave to cook for at least another hour. 

Serve with boiled rice, naan bread or whatever sides you prefer.

Thanks @joedenise .  Please also share your HM curry powder recipe. Like you, I make my own, so probably have all the spices you use.

TIA

- Pip

Curry powder recipe:

3 Tbs coriander seeds
2 Tbs cumin seeds
1 Tbs mustard seeds
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1-2 dried chillies (depending on preferences)

Putt all these into a dry frying pan over a medium heat and cook for a few minutes until the mustard seeds start to pop and the seeds smell aromatic, stirring frequently.  Tip into a bowl to cool.

Once cooled  I use an electric spice grinder and grind to a powder alternatively this can be done in a pestle and mortar.

Add ground spices:

1tsp salt
1tsp turmeric
1tsp cinnamn
1tsp paprika 

Mix thoroughly before use or can transfer to a clean jar (I use a small clip sealed kilner type jar)

I suspect it's similar to your own curry powder Pip.

Thanks, @Joedenise.  I have all those spices in stock, so will make up a batch.

While most curry recipes get their own mix, if a recipe just calls for “curry powder”, I’ll use a teaspoonful of  the first blend I ever learned: my ex’s rabbit curry, from the days when frozen rabbit was the cheapest meat in the supermarket.  Combine:

1 teaspoon ground chilli
1 teaspoon ground turmeric
2 teaspoons ground cumin
2 teaspoons ground paprika
With the seeds of 6 Green cardamom pods


These days, I make a similar curry using two large chicken breasts (cubed), chopped onion, 2 cloves crushed garlic, sliced mushrooms, tomato puree and a tin of tomatoes.   Serves 4.  Steps:

1. Fry a large chopped onion with garlic until onions are clear then add the sliced mushrooms and fry until they’ve made water and the water has evaporated.
2. Push the onion, etc, to once side and brown/seal your chicken cubes.
3. Once browned, stir in your spices and fry until the aroma rises.
4. Add a tin of chopped tomatoes, together with a goodly slug of tomato puree, plus a tin’s worth of water, bring to the boil.  You may add sliced carrots, peppers and other veg at this point.  Simmer until the sauce is thick and the chicken cooked, stirring occasionally.
5. Serve on rice

- Pip

carrotstick_2

£20.48 and £10.77 to declare for previous week. So ended under budget at £89.55 / £100.

Done our first big shop of the year today £138.20 in lidl and £18.50 in home bargains.  £156.70 / £100 so already overspent. I've got more meals than we need for the week, so hope we can claw back some next week

PipneyJane

Nelliegrace said:

“I think it helps enormously to know what your personal shopping weaknesses are:”

That was interesting @Suffolk_lass.

I am rather a hoarder, stocking up when things are on offer to last until the next time they are on offer. I am trying to use up the excess, all the 9p tins of unusual pulses.
Red or yellow stickers, only for UPF-free ingredients which I can use without any waste, or have space to freeze. We look for plain fish and meat with no coating or sauces, posh cheeses, fresh fruit and vegetables. 
I check the supermarket offers, and best prices on the Trolley ap.

It has been a challenge to stop adding anything to the supermarket trolley which is not real food, an ingredient to make a meal from scratch. Granny didn’t buy crisps and snacks in her weekly grocery shop. 

Crisps are not real food, a 6 pack is one medium potato with a lot of cheap oil and often some UPF additives. They are highly profitable for the manufacturers, especially if they cut them a bit fancy and call them hand made.

The shaped ones in a tube are UPF. 

Dehydrated Potato, Vegetable Oils (Sunflower, Palm, Corn) Wheat Flour, Corn Flour, Rice Flour, Maltodextrin, Emulsifier (E471), Salt, Colour (Annatto Norbixin)

Flavoured ones are even worse. 

One 6 pack of the cheapest crisps a week doesn’t seem much, but even that is £41 a year wasted. 

So true, @Nelliegrace. On the odd occasion that I eat crisps, I get very disappointed - they’re all crunch with no substance.  Obviously no potatoes were hurt in the making of this product.

jivjules1 said:

Another shop, that’s 2 in one day 😬 £23.33 at Lidl 

total 211.38/600 was hoping for more like £400 but not really on track for that! How you guys manage your budgets so well - hoping I get better over time! 

@jivjules1 in my case, it’s a mixture of planning, lists and cooking from scratch.  I never shop without a shopping list and the next one is started immediately after we get home, with the things we couldn’t find to buy.  (Almost permanent items these days are tinned pilchards, tinned mackerel and dried cannelloni beans.  Can’t find them anywhere.)

If you have time, I’d suggest you read my post from November 2023, which is mentioned in the first post of the Grocery Challenge threads.  For the record, our budget has increased since I wrote that post and now stands as follows:

£ 180 - Grocery Challenge, general grocery shopping.  This has increased twice since 2023, due to food price inflation.
£ 40 - Meat Fund - this is usually spent at the butcher shop but we don’t go every month, so it builds up
£ 40 - Bulk Fund - covers purchases at Costco, Wing Yip and anything bought in bulk (again, not spent every month)
£ 20 - Booze Fund - recent addition.  Wine/spirits/beer used to be purchased from the Bulk Fund
£ 30 - Christmas Fund - for the goose/turkey, tree and other Christmas treats.  Also buys Easter chocolates. Increased this year (was £20)
£ 20 - Gardening Fund - for seeds, compost, etc
———
£330
====

We eat really well and no, we don’t feel deprived. Yes I’ll spend £10-£12 on a large roasting chicken from the butcher, but it’ll make at least 3 dinners plus lunches for the two of us:  one roast leg each, then each breast becomes a 4-portion meal and, if there are sufficient the scraps of meat left on the body, that’ll become a stir-fry or Hot & Sour Soup.  Finally, I’ll make chicken stock with the carcass and any other chicken bones that have accumulated.

HTH

- Pip

Nelliegrace

Having researched crisps today, I saved the potato and parsnip peelings, soaked and dried them thoroughly, moistened them with a little cold pressed rapeseed oil and put them in a small pan in the oven above the pot roast, 10 minutes each side. Rather tasty.

jivjules1

@PipneyJane thank you I’ll have a look at your tips! @Suffolk_lass interesting to think about weaknesses I’m definitely a sucker for a bargain even if I don’t really need it and also ‘save me going later’ it doesn’t help that I buy stuff for a purpose and then my 18 yr old snaffles it at midnight when everyone’s in bed and I have to replace it! Must get better at hiding and labels though she’s off back to uni on Wednesday which will help!

learning lots I think posting this regularly really helps too.
i was working today and succumbed to a coffee from the machine a twic and a big bag of crisps on the way home! £4.39

£215.77/600

PipneyJane

Nelliegrace said:

Having researched crisps today, I saved the potato and parsnip peelings, soaked and dried them thoroughly, moistened them with a little cold pressed rapeseed oil and put them in a small pan in the oven above the pot roast, 10 minutes each side. Rather tasty.

Clever!  @Nelliegrace, when did you salt them?  I will have to try this next time I do a roast.

jivjules1 said:

@PipneyJane thank you I’ll have a look at your tips! @Suffolk_lass interesting to think about weaknesses I’m definitely a sucker for a bargain even if I don’t really need it and also ‘save me going later’ it doesn’t help that I buy stuff for a purpose and then my 18 yr old snaffles it at midnight when everyone’s in bed and I have to replace it! Must get better at hiding and labels though she’s off back to uni on Wednesday which will help!

learning lots I think posting this regularly really helps too.
i was working today and succumbed to a coffee from the machine a twic and a big bag of crisps on the way home! £4.39

£215.77/600

The key to dealing with the 18 year old’s midnight munchies is communication.  Have you spoken to her about the consequences of actions?  Don’t get angry, but is she aware that you have to change plans because she ate the main ingredient?    “If you get the nibbles, eat this.  Please don’t eat xx - it was bought for yy meal.”  Perhaps have a specific place where nibbling foods are kept and everything else is quarantined.

If it’s crisps and snack foods that she’s binging on, that’ll be harder to respond to without sarcasm.  I know that, next time she comments about her weight or size, I’d be tempted to respond with “That’s all the crisps you’re eating…” but that could be rather hurtful.  (There are reasons why the famous strap-line “Once you pop; you can’t stop!” rings true.  They are designed to fill you with calories but leave you unsatisfied.)

HTH

- Pip

whitecatcreamsofaDOH

£173.60/£450

Currently spent more than I thought, which is unexpected as this month I’ve meal planned for the whole month. 

Being more organised has resulted in less shops - I’m going every two days instead of daily, but now I have a reduced step count as I walk to the shops 🤣🤣

Nelliegrace

I didn’t think of adding salt, @PipneyJane. Perhaps when they are cooked? Do you remember the twist of blue paper with salt in the packet before “ready salted” crisps? I make a bit of plain popcorn in a covered Pyrex jug in the microwave if I feel like snacking. A £1.50 packet of kernels lasts all year. A sliced apple does as well and we have ours free from September to April. The last of the Howgate Wonders cooking apples need using soon.

The oven was packed yesterday, the first baking binge since Christmas. A large, wholemeal apple crumble, an apple and sultana bara brith and a dozen rock cakes. I used 4 ounces of the sugar ration, 3 in the cake with a teaspoon of treacle, and ½ an ounce each in the crumble and rock cakes. We had only 2 eggs from the hens this week so that used them well. The whole lot cost around £1.

thriftwizard

jivjules1 said:

Danish rye bread sounds good! Can you make it in a bread machine? Do you have a recipe please?

I'm using this recipe, @jivjules1. Not cheap, but very good! I do the whole loaf and freeze half; one slice with butter & HM 2-quince marmalade, or a fried bantam egg, generally bulks out a handful of nuts and some fruit for breakfast & keeps me from snacking until lunchtime. Slight variations are that I'm using 2 tsps of Dove's Farm dried active yeast, as I can only get hold of fresh yeast occasionally, and I'll use kefir instead of buttermilk - again, not so easy to get hold of regularly here. Hence it tends to rise in about 6 hours, so I'm probably sacrificing some flavour, but it tastes pretty good anyway. Also I'll sprinkle some caraway and/or fennel seeds on the top for extra yum, and maybe add some pumpkin seeds in the mix, too. As the loaf will last me about 2 weeks, including the frozen half, I think it's a justifiable extravagance.

No further spends to report here, but I have had to re-jig my menu plans and raid the freezer as we now have DD1 staying from Weds-Sun and DS3 (her twin) for at least two days of that. Here we go again...!

JingsMyBucket

Ooof, goodness. I just realized I haven’t updated my totals since the 4th of January. We had our party on Saturday and we have definitely overbought during the process of getting ready to host people. Since Jan 4th, we’ve spent an additional £256.16 which includes a big Tesco order, and several trips to Lidl, M & S, and Savers. I know I’m missing something but we’re just going to ignore those for now… 

Total £282.55 / £300 spent. £17.45 remaining. 

The key here is to do damage limitation. We'll need eggs and baked beans at some point this week. Thankfully we have a lot of food left over from the party such as fruit, potato chips, crackers, cheese, etc. so those will help bulk out our menu for the next week, at least. Here’s a cooking plan in no particular order for the next week or so. 

COOKING/MEAL PLAN

• Black bean quesadillas and chicken drumsticks and avocado, sour cream
• Miso braised pork, broccoli and egg fried rice 
• Ham, red onion, and kale quiche
• Guacamole, nachos, sour cream, and homemade mini burgers 
• Chicken soup with, ginger, scallions, and beans
• Grilled cheese sandwiches and leftover chicken soup
• Double batch of Instant Pot oatmeal (uses 2 cups of old milk). Freeze most of it for breakfasts throughout January & February 
• Baking: sour cream and lemon pound cake to use up the load of sour cream we bought 

Another bonus, everyone loved the food I cooked and left fat and happy!