November 2018 Grocery Challenge

£30.19 spent yesterday mostly on food for this weekend :eek::eek:

Partly just lots of big meals, partly my fault for not planning ahead - I made chilli for 10 people, and we just have no meat in the freezer now as me and OH are mainly veggie, and I should have been keeping an eye out for reduced mince, but had to pay full whack yesterday :eek:

Also a chicken for today (I did get a reduced one but still not that cheap as I wouldn't compromise on it being free range), meaty and veggie sausages and all the trimmings for a roast, 2 bottles of wine, etc...

So I've already spent £72.67 of my £200 budget with 24 days to go :eek: - but we do have quite a lot of basics in and the only 'extra' coming up is a birthday cake for my mum, so time to budget hard!!

The Good morning all and welcome to the Newbies

I have one spend to report: we went to MrT’s on Thursday and were determined to spend enough to get over the £60 threshold for the 10p-off-a-litre of petrol/diesel* since a certain “Lucky Car” was complaining he was thirsty. We stocked up on a few things: bulgar wheat, tins of tomatoes (they’re doing 4-for-£1 again, so we bought 24 for £6), etc, but the only way we could get over the threshold was for me to add 4 hair dyes - on 2-for-£10 - to the trolley. The hair dye comes out of my personal money, so once that is removed from the bill, we spent £41.85/£120, leaving £78.16 for the rest of the month.

While we found most things we wanted, one of the things we didn’t buy were their Grocer’s Choice Rolled Oats. At 79p per kilo, they’re MrT’s cheapest but every single packet I picked up was not properly sealed. I went through most of a box. In the end, I went and found an employee and showed him the problem. He wasn’t impressed with them either. We don’t desperately need oats - I was stocking up - so I’ll add them to the list for later in the month.

For the Newbies, a few things I’ve found that help me are to meal plan around what is already in the cupboard/fridge/freezer, and to shop to stock up the store cupboard.

Also, we all complain about being time poor and many use that as an excuse to spend loads on ready meals or take aways. What I’ve found is that being frugal is the result of snatching a minute here or there from the day to think ahead to do something which will be money saving. For instance, although I won’t cook them today, this morning I’ve put 750g of dried kidney beans out to soak. They’ll be drained and go into the freezer tonight - freezing helps break down the cell walls so they soften faster - and I’ll pressure cook them from frozen in a few days, when I’m home in the evening. Once cooked and drained, they’ll go back into the freezer in 2-can increments (about 500g).

The other thing I’ve done today is to take out meat to defrost, which I’ll cook in the slow cooker for tomorrow night’s dinner**. I’ll prepare the veg, etc, tonight, so that all I have to do in the morning is fling it all in the crockpot and switch it on to low. We’ll be having Giggly Pig*** faggots in red wine sauce. That means, all I’ll have to do when I get home is (possibly) make some couscous to mop up any excess liquid.

- Pip



*. I’m doing about 500 miles a week at the moment and my car (aka “Lucky”) has taken to screaming “Thirsty” at about 425 miles, even though I know he can do over 520 before we get close to the bottom of his 44L tank. We filled up immediately after the shop and he only needed 36 litres. (Yes, he’s reached the Age of Personality.)

**. I have choir practice on Monday nights, so timings are tight. Often, I only have half-an-hour between arriving home and leaving again. We bought a new slow cooker recently - a proper Crock Pot - because the old one did not seal and was terrible for cooking in. All the liquid would evaporate.

***. I bought the faggots from their market stall at Rochester’s Sweeps’ Festival last May. I usually buy a cool-bag’s worth of their meat/sausages/faggots when we go to Sweeps.

£131 spent in aldeee. This is more than normal for 2 week shop but we were short on lots of store cupboard stuff and we are doing the food bank reserve advent calender all month so a few bits picked up there.

£29 spent in Mr s. I needed rice milk and a few lactofree bits. Plus hubs coffee was on offer so bought 2 jars.

Hope to not spend anything else now until a fruit n veg top up shop next weekend. Plus midweek milk purchase.

Total to date: 160/320.

Just £2.30 spent today.

I'm having vegetable bean curry (again that vegan mince in this) and a jacket potato for dinner later.
OH is having pasta with cheese sauce.

£38.95/£200.
£161.05 left.

Getting a Morrison's delivery tomorrow, which should be around £50, will update then