Grocery Spending and Menu-June 20th
First, the pictures and spending report.
Here's my produce.
And here's everything else.
I shopped at Aldi first, as I always do, and I spent $57.81 there. Yikes.
At Weis, I forked over another $33.43, which puts my total at $91.24. Had I not bought the PA chicken (which is all natural and fairly local) and the ice cream (which I'm going to use in a future blog post), I would have been ok. Oh well.
I've decided that from now on, I'm going to give the old calculator a go again. As I go through the store, I'll add up my purchases to give me a running total. This will help to give me clarity when I'm trying to figure out whether I should buy something that's not necessary. You know, like ice cream.
I've done this a few times before, but I've not really stuck with it. If I mention it on my blog, though, I'm much more like to be consistent, so I'm hopeful that this is the start of a new habit.
Here's what we'll be eating at Chez Frugal Girl this week.
Since it's summer, we'll be eating melons, strawberries, yogurt, and granola for breakfast, along with some cold cereal.
Lunches will be the usual: leftovers, bread, yogurt smoothies, raw fruit and veggies, and granola bars.
Dinners will be as follows:
Saturday
- Tortellini Chicken Salad. This was on the menu last week, but we didn't have it because I forgot to buy lettuce. Lettuce is, um, a very important ingredient in a salad (!), so I didn't feel I could make do without it. Anyways, that's why we're having it this week instead of last week. I did buy lettuce this week!
- Cheese Bagels
Sunday(Since it's Father's Day, we're deviating from our usual Breakfast For Dinner routine)
- Crab Cakes
- Garlic Breadsticks
- Fruit Salad
Monday
- Teriyaki Grilled Chicken Pieces
- Grilled Veggies
- English Muffin Bread
Tuesday
- Italian Garden Pasta Salad
- Garlic Bread
Wednesday
- My husband is going to be at an IT security meeting, so the kids and I will eat up leftovers(if there are any), or have something easy like eggs and toast and fruit.
Thursday
- Chicken and Bacon Quesadillas
- Applesauce
Friday
- Deep Dish Pizza
- Green Salad
I'm loving the pompom worm (?) relaxing on the bananas! And all that fruit looks so yummy!
I wouldn't worry too much about overspending a little on groceries. You can feel good knowing that your kids are getting lots of healthy, good meals every day. No crappy ramen and white bread in your family! I would never feed that junk to my kids either...Not even if we were really poor. I mean you have a family of 6! I can't believe you're able to keep it under $100 per week!
Mmmm Chicken & Bacon Quesadillas.....that I must try. Chicken and bacon are 2 staples at our house and we do like quesadillas. What else besides cheese do you add?
Hi Kristen~
Your produce looks so yummy! Have you ever seen those green bags on T.V. that say they can keep produce fresh for many many weeks?? I also saw them at Wal-Mart last week. Do you think they work? I feel weird thinking about serving produce that is weeks and weeks old...gross! It must lose some vitamins or something.
One more idea...when I am trying to keep track of my grocery spending, instead of bringing a calculator I keep a pad with tick marks with my shopping list. I just put one tick mark per dollar...it ends up to be surprisingly accurate. I know I'm blabbering, but I'd like to see how you organize your shopping list. I have a clipboard with one market on the left, one on the right, coupon items marked with a *, and so forth. I'm sure you have a great system down and you could give me some tips.
Thanks for continuing to inspire me,
Dana
I have used those "Debby Meyers green bags" because my husband got them as a sample at work. (This is a benefit to having a husband who works in retail, as I commented in the Goodwill shorts thread!) They work pretty well, but I don't know that I've ever left anything for weeks. I think a week to 10 days is as long as I've gone. Nothing has spoiled while being in one of the bags. It says you can wash them and reuse them, I think the maximum is supposed to be 10 times or so---but of course, being frugal, I have washed and reused them many more times than that. Um, I've stopped using them only when they developed holes. And actually my son took 2 clean ones with holes into the bath tub and played with them there, so we really got our "free" money's worth out of those! When the free ones all eventually died, I bought another box.
I have a treasured collection of "green bags." They really work. The following numbers are for cut, washed produce, which goes bad faster than uncut and unwashed: they keep my broccoli for 2-3 weeks, romaine for 10-12 days, carrots forever, celery 1+ month, chard leaves 2.5 weeks, and so on.
Mine were made by Glad. This particular type is no longer on the market but when I heard I could order them from Glad directly, I bought a case - 16 boxes - and do everything I can to make them last. I have washed and reused them more times than I can count (by hand) and they still work. My bags are 10+ years old, I'd bet a week's worth of groceries that the more recent technology is even better.
Julia, why not used bags with holes? The only reason I can think of is that the holes cause the food to deteriorate more quickly. Did you run a side-by-side comparison to check?
Any thoughts on what happens if you wash the bags more than 10 times? Other than you use what you have and don't buy more from the maker.
It really took me a while to find the spider. 🙂
Our local Stop & Shop has a scanner thingy you can use while you're shopping that adds up all your purchases (aside from produce by the lb). Not only does it give you a rough running total, but it speeds up the checkout process - they just download the contents of the scanner. You scan in your "value" card beforehand so you get all the sales. Here's a link: http://www.physorg.com/news139225121.html.