Low Spend June Week One Review

Today, I am finally able to write about the first week of our Low Spend June Challenge. I know it's already the end of week two, but this month has been kind of crazy so far. I will try to do a review of the second week tomorrow, so that I am back on track.

The task for day one was to take inventory of your freezer and pantry. If you're interested, you can see my inventory list here. In addition to that, there was also a "Use It Up Meal Challenge" on day one. These happen on every Friday of the month and each of them has a specific "theme". The first one was "meat", but since we don't eat a lot of meat we didn't have any in stock, so I decided to use up something else.

We had had some rhubarb in the freezer for a few weeks which I wanted to use finally. So I just made some jam: quick and easy to make and always welcome at the breakfast table.

For day two the tasks were to mark special events on your calender and to ask everyone in the household what they would like to eat during the month. This was to prepare for day three when you were asked to meal plan for the month.

I cannot make monthly meal plans, because we get fresh vegetables and fruit delivered to our home every week and to make sure that we use up all the fresh produce before it goes bad, I have to meal plan weekly. However, I did create the meal plan for the first week and also jotted down a few ideas for frugal meals we could have throughout the month.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to do the task for day four "Cook something from scratch that you normally buy", but this is also a recurring task for every Monday of the month, so I am hoping to do better for the rest of June.

Day five was Double Batch Cooking Day, which again is the recurring theme for Tuesdays of the month. I decided to make a huge pot of Chilli sin Carne which we had for dinner twice. From the leftovers I was able to fill three jars for storage and I also had to more servings for lunch.

Wednesdays during the challenge are "Plan your Shopping" days with different focuses. I couldn't really do this weeks "Coupon Focus" because we don't have a lot of coupons here in Germany, but I looked for sales on the flyers of our local supermarket.

The next day was shopping day with the goal for week one being to only spend 80% of your usual grocery budget.

Our normal grocery budget is 50 Euro for the week for my fiancée and me. This does not include the subscription for fresh produce I mentioned earlier. We get this (almost) every week and it is about 15 Euro per delivery. So actually our usual budget for groceries would be around 65 Euro per week, which might seem a lot for only two people. However, we buy mostly organic food which is of course more expensive and we spend very little in other areas (such as clothinig, entertainment etc.). Since I didn't want to change the subscription for produce, I used the 50 Euro we usually spend in cash as my starting number. 80% of that would be 40 Euro and I managed to only spend 40.92 Euro for the week, so I am pretty happy with that.

Day eight was the second "Use It Up Meal Challenge" with the theme being side dish. We had had boiled potatoes as a side the day before, that I fried in the skillet to make fried potatoes.

After frying them for some time I added tomato paste for flavour and then sprinkled some Gouda cheese on top. Then I just put the skillet in the oven for about 15 minutes for an easy, delicious dinner.

The task for day nine was to plant something. I haven't gotten around to do that as of today, but I want to grow a few herbs on our balcony during the summer months.

The last task for week one was to "Makeover a Leftover" which was really fun. I used one of the jars of chilli I had made a few days earlier to make "Chilli-Lasagne". This tasted better than I had thought and it was also a great way to use up the rest of the shredded Gouda.

So this is the wrap up of week one of the Low Spend June Challenge. I think so far it is going pretty well.

Please leave me a comment below if you are also doing the challenge and share some of your tips and ideas :)

For the resources for this challenge visit frugalfamilyfood.com from Tangi and Amanda who created the challenge.