Grocery Shopping

We made our first grocery run of the week today, spending $27.39 of our $40 weekly budget at Kroger. I was not impressed with the grocery ads for our area this week--no great deals. Edward only used three coupons and that has to be a new low for him! Everything we bought today was directly related to our menu for the week, no snacks or extras. We probably could have found most of the items a little cheaper at WalMart, but if we know we can shop elsewhere and stay under budget, we do it. And when you're using lots of coupons, you can almost always do better at other stores than at WalMart. Spending less time at WalMart has been an unexpected bonus of our $40/week challenge!

Menu Plan Monday

This week I'm making it a priority to use up some of the things in my cabinets and freezer. A couple months ago, we found some great deals on Betty Crocker potatoes so I have several different varieties on hand. While digging in the freezer today I came across some forgotten turkey we froze back around Christmas, so I'll be using that up, too. I also have lots of frozen veggies so I've tried to incorporate those into the menu. Since most of the dinners I have planned this week should make leftovers, I only have three lunches planned.

Breakfasts
Waffles
Scrambled egg on English muffin
Oatmeal
Cold cereal, yogurt
Oatmeal-carrot bread

Lunches
Baked potatoes w/ broccoli & cheese
Cheese quesadillas, Mexican rice, fruit
English muffin pizzas, carrot sticks, pretzels

Dinners
Bbq beef and corn shepherd’s pie, salad
Cheesy broccoli-potato soup
Crockpot vegetable curry over basmati rice
Sausage, apple & cheddar bread pudding, fruit (I'm subbing sausage for bacon in the original recipe since that's what I have on hand)
Ham & bean soup, potato-rosemary bread
Hot open-faced turkey sandwiches, mashed potatoes

Be sure to visit OrgJunkie's site for lots and lots of great menu planning ideas!

Stocking up at Sam's

We spent $15.88 at Sam's today on baking powder, dried minced onion, and cumin. We cook at home a lot, so we really do go through those gigantic jars of spices! Our total spent for the week is $33.98.

Super Couponing at Kroger

On his Kroger run today, Edward got everything in the picture for $4.49! We had some super-duper coupons to make this happen. A couple weeks ago Kraft had an online contest where you could play a game to try and win coupons. I won the first time I played (beginner's luck?) so I put in my address for them to mail me the coupons, figuring maybe I'd get some 50 cent or $1.00 off. Well, we got coupons for FREE Planter's nuts (up to $5), Kraft cheese (up to $3.99), Nabisco crackers (up to $4.99). We also got a coupon in the mail yesterday for a free six-pack of Boost Kid Essentials drinks. I think I saw a link to request it on one of the couponing blogs I read, but I don't remember for sure. It's not something we'd normally buy, but the kids will probably drink it and think it's a treat. The regular price on it was $11.89!!

Here are the prices on the other things we bought:
2 boxes of Multi-Grain Cheerios 1.67/ea - .75 cellfire -.50 coupon (doubled to 1.00). We had two cellfire and 2 print coupons, so we actually made a profit of .08/box on those :)
3 pkgs of Yo-Plus yogurt 6.00 - 1.00 cellfire - 1.00 coupon - 1.50 printable coupon - 1.50 printable coupon
Kroger pretzels 1.50
3 lb pork roast 2.06 (reduced for quick sale--sell by date tomorrow, so we had it tonight and froze the leftovers)

We paid $.09 for the cashews after the coupon, $1 on the yogurt, and the full price for the pretzels and pork roast, for our grand total of $4.49. Edward intended to buy cokes too, but got so caught up in the couponing excitement that he forgot. :-) We also spent $2.87 at Aldi on a 5 lb bag of potatoes, saltines, and broccoli. That brings our weekly total to $18.10.

Visit hip2save's blog for a link to the Yo-Plus $1.50 printable coupon and some other good printables.

Krogering

First shopping trip of the week was to Kroger today. Here's what we bought:

taco shells 1.70
Ronzoni spaghetti 1.64
yoplait yo-plus yogurt (2) 4.00 - 1.00 cellfire coupon - 1.00 coupon -.55 coupon (doubled to 1.00)
hillshire farms ham 3.50 - .55 coupon (doubled to 1.00)
iceberg lettuce .75
hamburger buns 1.19
flour tortillas 1.96

Total spent was $10.74, leaving us with $29.26 in this week's budget. No real steals today, but we did get a really good deal on the yogurt.

Menu Plan Monday

Another week has flown by and it's time again for menu plans. Hopefully I'll be better about sticking to mine this week. Last week we ate a lot of junk, but I also made the brown rice & spinach casserole three times. And I have it on the menu again this week, too. I just can't get enough of that stuff--it's cheap and easy to make, healthy, and it tastes great. I've planned five lunches and five dinners this week, since we'll probably go out to eat once and a couple of the meals should make enough for leftovers.

Breakfasts
scrambled egg on toast
cold cereal
Kashi TLC bars, yogurt
oatmeal
waffles and fruit
cinnamon rolls, sausage, fruit

Lunches
spicy peanut noodles with broccoli
cheese quesadillas, rice, salad
tuna salad sandwiches, carrot sticks, apples, pretzels
hot ham & cheese sandwiches, carrot sticks, apples, pretzels
brown rice & spinach casserole, fruit

Dinners
mixed-grain pancakes, sausage, applesauce
pizza, salad
pulled pork sandwiches, roasted potatoes, green beans
red beans & rice, salad
ham & cheese omelets, biscuits, fruit

Catching Up

Last week the weather was a little crazy around here with lots of snow and ice, and I got off my regular schedule and lazy about posting, cooking, and everything else! The rest of our weekly shopping was another trip to Kroger on Tuesday where we got 2 cans of chili, 2 bottles of salad dressing, 4 pkgs of cheese, 3 pkgs of blueberries, eggs, and flour for a total of $19.30. That made our total for the week $37.19. We didn't stick to our menu plan very well and ate a lot of canned soup, snack foods, etc. We'll be doing our best to get back on track this week!