Grocery Budget for the Week - How’d we do?
Following up on last week’s theme of Food Shopping & Menu Planning, here’s how we shook out.
Total supermarket spend last week: $128.98
There were a number of sale items last week on frozen foods, mainly for the kids that will tide us over for the next week.
This morning I did the supermarket shopping for the coming week. Because a number of the items purchased last week are still stocked in the freezer, my spend was only $79.21. I’m not 100% confident it will get us through the entire week - but I’m going to try!
Unfortunately I didn’t have any coupons and had to rely completely on my store club-card …which is better than nothing but not fantastic.
Deals & Tips in the cart:
- 10lb bag of potatoes for $4.99 (v. the 5lb bag for $2.99)
- Whole chicken for roasting $.99/lb. so less than $5.00
- Grapes $2.99 for 2lbs. v. $2.49/lb. sitting one display over
- Hebrew National Hot Dogs 3/$8.00 (only brand my kids will eat… normally these are $5/pack) Sadly, the sale price on these used to be 2/$5
Yesterday was the monthly Costco run totaling $202.49. That will add another $50 to the weekly average. If it wasn’t on the essential list, it wasn’t purchased. Mostly this was cereal, juice, pasta, crackers, frozen foods. This may stretch a little further, but we’ll see.
I have quite a bit of chicken so I’ll be looking for chicken recipes. I’ll roast a chicken this evening and make another dish for later in the week. I’m not sure I can four meals for four from one chicken like Almost Frugal does, but I can try!
Any tips or advice on how we could save more on our grocery bill? Specifically, I’d love to save on fruits and veggies without having to drive an extreme distance. I don’t think the local supermarket has the best deals, but I’m not convinced the farmer’s markets or other places will do much better.
Comment by ManicMom on 20 July 2008:
Re: discount fruits and veggies - Does your market have a discount rack in the produce area? This is where you’ll find the fruits and veggies that are blemished or need to be used immediately. I got a bunch of bananas for 19 cents a pound today. They look okay to me. A few brown spots, but still edible.
Great kid snack: Peel banana, cut in half, and skewer on to popsicle sticks. Wrap in plastic and freeze. Banana pops! For chocolate banana pops, after freezing for a couple of hours, dip bananas in melted chocolate chips, wrap in foil and return to freezer.
Also, frozen grapes are a great kid treat.
Comment by Sylvia on 20 July 2008:
I wish our supermarket had a discontinued rack in produce. I’d use it! Unfortunately they do not. Boo! $.19/lb. for bananas is a great deal.
Comment by canoer on 21 July 2008:
My super trashes the blemished produce and my friend who works in the department there says that some of the workers aren’t well trained and if they think a customer won’t buy something, they’ll trash it. Sad.
I’m doing the whole roasted chicken thing this week too.
They cook up great in my convection oven and I save a little on the electric bill over normal roasting too.
Baby bok choy was on sale yesterday, so I’m going to thin slice it almost as you would if you were making cole slaw and wok it for a minute to accompany the chicken.
Comment by ManicMom on 21 July 2008:
canoer - I think I either read or saw a report about that. How much food stores toss because it’s considered not good enough. Terrible waste! Time to do some dumpster-diving!