April 2026 Grocery Challenge

cowboymum

Ran out of oat milk so back to tescos this morning. Also got normal milk, some reduced mince for OHs lunches and some mixed herbs (as have also run out). Total £11.03.

Used everup gift cards so will get some cash back on that - only realized today that you can get a gift card for the specific amount you have spent. I thought it had to be in £10 multiples only but no!

Total so far (it's only the 6th!) of £267.01 / £620.

Sallyp2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81951705#Comment_81951705

co-op price match aldi on a lot of basics nowadays - my OH works there and shops with his eyes the food on the store delivery. plus they ys quite early in the day so as to clear it

i'm trying for a fourth no spend/shopping day. Making panettone bread pudding with the remaining half panettone sat in cake tin since new year. Its not looking & smelling half bad! an indulgent treat for later today

remmie

First few shops of the month totalling £154.08!

Really, we have so much food in, including plenty of dog food. OH keeps stocking up incase, he reads too many scaremongering blogs. I like to keep some extra in but it's getting silly now, not to mention the cost.

Will need to get through this month using up some stores, will need to get chicken though for some variety, as well as fresh fruit and veg.

goldfinches

Just popping my head round the door to say a couple of things.

@remmie - your other half might be interested in this article from the Guardian about what you really need to stockpile versus what's useless. It gives some interesting links to Swiss and other national government pages where you can use your specific dietary needs to get a tailored list of items to have in store.

@Sallyp2 - thanks for the info about the Co-op price matching with Aldi. Our Aldi is along a road where there have been major building works for the last three years to replace a railway bridge so being able to go to a Co-op which is much easier to get to and still get the same prices is a boon.

I had to buy milk and frozen fruit for breakfast the other day and went to Sainsbury's to get the three for two offer on the fruit so spent £8.65 altogether.

That makes my new GC main total £55.06/£180 which is ahead of where I wanted to be so early in the month so I'm off to work out a meal plan for the next few days.

TravelCrystal

@goldfinches, just read that article, very interesting. We have quite a few of the items mentioned, sadly we have freezers full of meat so would share with the neighbours if no electricity. We are on LPG gas so I was thinking we could cook at least. Obviously depends if the emergency was long. We have no means of storing water,

Hey ho, one day at a time

T.C

Elizabeth49

A few spends for the Easter weekend, £81.24 for my Sainsbugs delivery on Saturday, including a couple of Easter extras, 2 chocolate eggs, 2 Taste the Difference pizzas for four of us on Saturday evening with garlic bread and salad. Not something I usually buy but cheaper than a meal out or a takeaway. I also got a large chicken for yesterday, second half to be eaten tonight. We're not great ones for red meat so I didn't bother with the half price lamb and beef joints, but I stocked up on the 15p veg.

£23.63 at M&S for pork steaks, mince, sausages, greek yogurt, bananas, ham, crisps and hot cross buns. Plus another £4.77 for household bits at Savers.

£109.64 spent out of £425.00 household budget

£0.00 out of £40.00 bulk buy

Sallyp2

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81951997#Comment_81951997

article was an Interesting read - i'm cooking up a chickpea / lentil / homegrown squash / sweet potato / spinach & coconut milk curry tonight - so very on point

the comment 'UK growers warn of cucumber and tomato shortages as gas prices surge' is very believable

i potted on my tomato seedlings yesterday and started some cucumber & various squash seeds. I think food inflation is going to be double digit shortly

remmie

Thanks goldfinches.

To be fair he has purchased a lot of the tins in the article, quite a lot! It's storage that's proving difficult. Maybe I can slow him down a bit.

PipneyJane

Good evening All

Hope you’ve had a Happy Easter and a lovely break. I’m still recovering from my latest cold, so mine was very quiet.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/81951539#Comment_81951539

That’s my primary oven @Suffolk_lass. 26 years old and still working well. For 7 years, it was my only working oven, because while we could plumb in the gas hob on my stove, there wasn’t a suitable plug for its electric ovens. Largest thing I ever cooked in it was roast duck with all the trimmings. Mine is a Matsui combi oven, what’s yours?

Ironically, I had to use the big oven in the stove today. Roasted the back-up goose from Christmas 2024, which had been lurking in the freezer since November 2024. It cost £26.99 and weighed 4kg. (While we always order one from the butcher, bird flu meant our 2023 goose order got cancelled, so I was taking no chances in 2024 and bought one in L!dl.). It’ll last us at least another two meals. Plus, I made a double quantity of flapjack and rendered the contents of the “fat bag” (a mixture of chicken skins and cooked fatty bits from the goose I did at Christmas).

I have several shops to declare from this weekend. Saturday, I dragged myself to L!dl to pick up our free sweet treat (a pistachio filled croissant) and free family pack of mushrooms, buying crème brûlée as a dessert treat for £1.49. Completely forgot that I’d need 2 bulbs of garlic and an orange for the goose stuffing, so DH collected those from a local shop on Sunday for 80p.

Today, we went to L!dl and to Sainsbugs, on the speculative chance that we might pick up some heavily discounted meat. Sadly, no such luck, although in L!dl we did manage to buy some 50%-off YS sausages for £1.24, plus some much needed butter 2x£1.99, spending £5.22 in total.

In Sainsbugs, we got lucky with some YS chicken livers for £1.40, and two packets of YS lamb’s liver (£2.10 & £2.18 respectively). Also picked up 1L skimmed milk for DH’s work (£1.20), 1kg broccoli (£2.16), 6-pack hot cross buns (2x95p), 8 bananas (£1.39) and a 3-pack sweet peppers (£2.10). £14.43 spent, but we played the “points game” and got an extra 190 Nect4r points on our purchases, the equivalent of 85p.

This brings our total spend to £61.80/£180 leaving £118.20 for the rest of the month.

• Pip

diminua

£97.79 spent - including some Easter treats in that, and a couple of pints (non alcoholic cider for me as it was still Lent at the time). Also brazil nuts and hazelnuts and lemon pasta from the zero waste shop. I also stocked up on tinned fish and pestos and stock cubes, and got two sorts of cheese and some pan fish to go with potatoes. Plus the usual things - coffee, milk and bread and fruit and salad veg.