Grocery Shopping 3/31/10

Today I spent $51.00 of my April food and supply money in March. Is that illegal?

It was convenient for me to shop today so I spent about 30 minutes at Walmart. I only go to Walmart once a month now and it works out really well for me. Prices seem to be on the rise again!

I stopped in at Safeway while my daughter was at her orthodontist appointment. How on Earth did this little bit of food cost $40.39? I usually write down all of my prices as I go so I was completely shocked. I keep looking at my receipt to see where the mistake is.

Ahhhh no mess up - cheese was $5, 2 pineapples $4, chocolate chips $6 (shhhh...I hid these from my husband so I can actually make him cookies), pineapple slicer $9 (doesn't come out of grocery $ thankfully! Hopefully it works!) Had I been writing the prices down as I went along through the store I would have been much better off! In this case I wouldn't have put anything back, but some times I have put items back if I felt like I was spending too much money. At Safeway I actually spent $30.00 from my food money.

The best deal of the day? Fish! On the clearance shelf - $2.00/lb!

I have $209 left from my April food money and $14 left from my "stock the freezer fund." Considering that it's March 31st, I better hope that my OAMC plan works out!

Check out the Grocery Cart Challenge for more shopping trips!

OAMC - planning

I think I mentioned a million times or two that I loved OAMC last month. It saved me so much time. I prefer the term dedicated cooking to OAMC though. I have visions of what OAMC looks like and that is not what I did. Basically I did a lot of meal prep but had very few completed meals in the freezer.

This month I wanted to buy a bunch of salad stuff at Sam's Club to start off the month. It always seems to go bad before I use it though so I knew I needed to have a plan in place. I'm also trying to focus more on meats and veggies rather than breads and pasta. We still have a few dinners left in the freezer that we didn't eat in March and I'm a little tired of beans and rice. After ten years of discovering them I'm finally tired of them; we won't be eating that meal more than one time this month (if that).

When I make my OAMC schedule I try to wash all the veggies and chop them at the same time. That is the biggest time saver for me!

Following are my updated OAMC master sheets (please let me know if they don't work for you):

OAMC Dinners

OAMC Schedule

I'm also going to add in the following recipes. I haven't tried freezing these items before so I'm excited to see how they turn out:

1. egg rolls (no cabbage in the recipe) when I chop up all of my other vegies I'll do this as well. A food processor is your friend! I haven't made egg rolls in over 20 years. Gravy, am I really that old? Anyway, I'm going to try to brush them with an egg wash, bake and then freeze them.
2. refried beans
3. biscuit cups (I think I'll add ham and a bit of bacon)
4. quiche (I add more eggs because we don't like it runny - probably make it with broccoli and ham)
5. spaghetti pie (instead of lasagna - this isn't my recipe, but the concept is the same. I have some lasagna innards leftover from last month that I need to use up)

With the items I've added I'll be cracking a lot of eggs! That's the beauty of OAMC cooking though - do it once, make a mess, clean it up, you are done!

For other recipes you'll have to look at my other OAMC post. Some day I should put all this stuff in one spot!

I'm planning to shop and cook for this OAMC session the week of April 5th. I don't know that it has saved me money, but it has saved a ton of time and energy!

Check out other OAMC plans over at Money Saving Mom!

Grocery Shopping 3/23/10

After creating and posting my menu plan for the week I promptly changed my mind. That is why I stopped menu planning for a bit....I got tired of it not being perfect. Then someone mentioned that it's a tool to use to HELP you! It's okay if you don't use it. So last night we had chili and peas. What a strange combo, but I really wanted to make homemade salsa and guacamole for our burritos and I knew I needed things from the store to make that happen. I'm so glad I waited!

My budget for this month was $100 higher than my usual amount ($260) so I could get some meat in my freezer. I've spent $322 total for the month so far. I have $8 left for groceries and $10 left from my "stock the freezer" fund. If there are any sales in the Safeway ad, I may pick up some more loss leaders. We aren't going to be here for Easter, but I would love to pick up some hams if they are on sale. I take more grocery money on April 1st so I might wait to shop until then.

I needed a LOT of fruits and veggies this time. I bought bagged spinach and romaine because it looked so much better than the other stuff. I'm hoping to get to Sam's and check out their produce when we get back. The grapefruit I bought from there was a little bit more money that I usually spend, but it was worth it! It was AMAZING!

You can't see everything I bought in the picture, but here are a few of the items I bought today:

• 10 pounds hamburger. I can't wait for 90% lean to go on sale!
• 2 big roasts
• 1 big pack of chicken
• 5 packs cream cheese
• 5 bags frozen veggies
• lots and lots of fresh veggies and fruit ($30 worth)
• for a grand total of $86.00

This post is linked to Grocery Cart Challenge and Money Saving Mom.

Frugal Tip - Check Your Receipt!

This seems so obvious to me now, but years ago, I couldn't be bothered to spend a couple of minutes checking my receipt. Actually, that's not true. It wouldn't have done any good because I didn't know any of my prices. I used to walk up and down every aisle putting stuff in my cart that looked good. No wonder I was spending $600-$800 on food a month! That was 10 years ago so imagine what those same groceries would cost me today!

This morning I had to take my son to school a little early so my daughter and I had some time together. We had our special time at McDonald's, got gas for my bug and still had some time to kill. We decided to go to Safeway to grab another bag of lettuce for our salad tonight. This bag of lettuce was supposed to be $1.00. It was in the sales ad and it was in the section of salads marked $1.00.

When we went up to pay, it rang up at $3.49. The cashier fixed the "problem" for us. As we were walking off she was trying to get the price fixed. She found out that this salad wasn't on sale for $1.00; rather that bag of lettuce had been placed in the wrong spot. I don't know what the difference was between this bag of lettuce and the other bags that were out. Maybe because it said "New"?

Had I bought this with a bunch of other items it might not have been so noticeable. I had my $1.06 out so it was very obvious!

Your frugal tip of the day - Know your prices and watch your receipt!

This post is linked to:
 We Are THAT Family - WFMW
Life as Mom

Grocery Shopping & Menu Plan

Last Tuesday I went through the grocery store ad to see if I needed anything that was on sale. Then on Thursday, I stopped at the grocery store after I picked up the kids from school.

I saved $2.70 at the store because I bought the items on sale instead of at full price. It took me an extra 10 minutes out of my day to save $2.70. That is like earning $16.20/hour ($2.70 savings * (60 minutes/10minutes)). Tax Free. I could shop when I wanted to and when it was convenient for me.

I hesitated to post that I spent 10 minutes to save $2.70. That in itself is the biggest problem with our attitudes today. As homemakers, without any "paycheck", our job is to save money. Yes, sometimes we work for the "low" wage of $16.20/hour. Obviously I cannot spend my entire day "saving" $2.70 at the grocery store, but if I find little things like that to do during the day, I can earn a good hourly wage. This concept is discussed in detail in the Complete Tightwad Gazette. I couldn't find the page number this morning - Can anyone help me out with the page number?

Back to my shopping trip:

• sausage $2.00
• flour $1.50
• frozen veggies $1.00
• ketchup $2.00
• $6.50 spent

On Tuesday the 23rd after I volunteer at the school, I plan to stop by the store to buy a few more loss leaders to fill my pantry and buy some milk.

Onto the menu plan...we'll be eating a lot from my OAMC session. Good thing too because "the taxi mom" will be on duty again every day during dinner time.

Monday: Smothered Burritos (OAMC) with mixed veggies
Tuesday: Chili (OAMC) with salad
Wednesday: Lasagna (OAMC) with roasted carrots, broccoli and cauliflower
Thursday: Taco Salad (meat is in the freezer from OAMC)
Friday: plan aheads (AKA leftovers) or scrambled eggs with veggies
Saturday: fish or marinated pork chops (OAMC) with peas
Sunday: My hubs cooks! Yeah!

Stay tuned for my April OAMC plan where I am planning fewer pasta meals and including more veggies and fruit.  I plan to do my OAMC session the week after Easter.

This post is linked to Orgjunkie and Grocery Cart Challenge.

Pantry Principle

My order from Alice came today!

It was almost like Christmas. Almost.

I didn't NEED NEED NEED any of these items. When you run out of items, you run to the store and waste time, money and energy. Plan ahead using the pantry principle to make your life much easier.

Does anyone else shop like this? I'd love to hear your input.

Pantry Principle: The planning begins

I stopped by the store on my way to drop my daughter off at basketball practice. I thought I'd share how I start planning my purchases using the pantry principle.

Whenever I notice that I'm running low on something I add it to a list. The list MUST be kept in the same spot...throwing stickie notes around the house doesn't work. Seriously. I've tried it and it doesn't work.

I look through the sales flyer and look at my list to see what I need to buy. This next piece of advice is very important. Only do this ONE time! If you are a geek like me, you'll do it a lot. It's a big waste of time. Look through one time carefully, make a list, then you need to be done with it. I think this takes me 5 minutes. Last year when I was fairly new to this idea it would take me an hour (because I'd go through the ad over and over and over and over).

Here are the items I will probably buy:

• Flour (white) $1.50 each (I'm trying to get away from using white flour, but when making brownies it just doesn't make sense to me to use whole wheat - any thoughts on this?)
• Ketchup $2 (I don't have any in the pantry...not a great price, but a need)
• California frozen veggies...I think this is cauliflower and broccoli mixed...I hope so! It's only $1.00/pound and I'm seriously low on veggies!
• Miller Genuine Draft - yep, even beer goes on sale some times! This doesn't come from my grocery money budget
• Total for groceries will be about $9.00 

I am hoping to make it to this store on Thursday when I pick up my kids from school.

Alice.com Part 2

I think I like this website more and more!

Last week I ordered a gift card from Alice.com at 15% off. I was charged $42.50 and received a $50 gift card in the mail.

Today I placed my order:

• Aquaphor Healing Ointment, Advanced Therapy $5.24
• Suave Shampoo, Ocean Breeze (2) $1.98
• Scott 1-Ply, Unscented 12 rolls $9.85
• L.A. Looks Defining & Frizz Control Gel, Mega Hold 8 $2.33
• Suave Conditioner, Humectant $2.29 - $0.50 Off $1.79
• Hefty Sandwich & Storage Bags with Ties $1.79  (note: I'm SO very excited...I can't find these little cheapie baggies anywhere here in town!)
• Hefty Storage Bags with Ties, 2 Gallon $2.44
• Bounty Paper Towels, Prints, 1-Ply $0.99 - $0.25 Off $0.74

Sub-Total $26.91
Coupons - $0.75 (coupons from Alice)
Tax $1.57
Other Discounts -$27.73 (This is the gift card I used.)
Shipping Always Free


My Notes:
I don't know how often Alice offers that "sale" on gift cards. When you look at my prices you can basically take another 15% off because I used the "sale" gift card.

There are a few things I need, but won't buy there (zip lock bags and bath bar soap for example). Overall though, I am impressed. If I were short on time I would definitely buy other things there even if they were just a little bit more money. I like shopping at Alice.com because of the convenience and the fact that I didn't make any impulse purchases!

Alice.com Works for Me!!!

Pantry Principle - Grocery Shopping and Menu Plan

So far for the month of March I have spent $231.43 on groceries. I normally take $260 for groceries, but this month I took an extra $100 so I could stock up on some meat. Remember, this number doesn't include all of the food consumed by my family. My kids get hot lunch once a week and lunch is usually provided for my husband.

I may or may not shop again this week for loss leaders - it's beginning to look like a busy week. I bought the following:

• milk - we actually have a gallon and half, but if we run out it's a bad thing in our home. We usually go through 2-3 gallons per week so I figured I buy one just in case I don't make it back to the store. Planning ahead like this is one way to save money and time
• Bananas - we have plenty of apples and canned fruit on hand, but it's nice to have a variety available
• 10 boxes of pasta $.88 each. Usually when they are $1.00 per box I'll buy 5 of them. Grocery store sales are cyclical so I can usually tell when they are going to have a pasta sale again because I'll only have a box in our pantry. If you get to know your families eating habits, it's much easier to know how many of each item you need to put in your pantry. This pasta is made from white flour. We don't care for the whole wheat pasta, but we like the multi grain pasta that wasn't on sale. If you look at the fiber content of the white versus multi grain, you get 4 more grams of fiber if you eat the multi grain. Better for you, but should we be eating much pasta in the first place? In a perfect, non-busy world, I'd make all of our pasta out of 100% white whole wheat flour. I make our own noodles for chicken noodle soup, maybe I'll venture out to make homemade noodles for turkey ala king. When I'm not busy. When I have time. Yeah right. Maybe I'll just eat more fruits and vegies.

What will we be eating this week?

1. Money Wise Mom's Pineapple Chicken
2. Black Beans and Rice w/ guac from my OAMC session. Let me just say that OAMC rocks! It's so nice to know that I have food in my freezer! I haven't used that much of the food yet, but the night I had to make rice and beans I think it took only 5 minutes to put it in a pan and stir it! I'm starting to plan my next OAMC session now. Last night my husband BBQ'd pork chops that I poured a marinade over and then froze. Absolutely DELICIOUS! So easy for him too!
3. Olive Garden's mock Toscana soup - recipe from years ago
4. Sandwiches made for our trip to Rapid. My daughter and I are having a special time and my son and husband get to go to a hockey game together with the free ticket my son earned for his grades.
5. Friday-Sunday we'll be on the road traveling. Normally I would make sandwiches to eat on the way... a little healthier and cheaper, but since I'll be gone all day on Friday at a science fair we're just going to eat fast food on our drive.

This post has been linked to orgjunkie.com and Grocery Cart Challenge.

Shopping on a Budget

All I can say is...thank goodness I use cash when I shop for groceries! I'm not so good at shopping at Walmart. I always. ALWAYS. buy something that is not on my list.

Today it was pretzels. It's "only" $1.50. They will be nice to have this weekend during a basketball tournament, but had I stayed home, I wouldn't have spent the money.

I've been looking into buying more items from Alice.com. Some items are a bit more money (the blistex was $.25 more and the shaving cream $.20 more). Obviously I spent $1.50 that I wouldn't have if I would have stayed home and ordered from Alice. Maybe other people have more control than I do...online I have a lot of control. In the store with the products right in front of my face...not so much.

You people really should have more control than me!

Pantry Principle Shopping

This is all of the shopping I'm going to do this week. Well, I guess I am going to Walmart tomorrow and will pick up some ice cream for the apple pie I'm going to make my husband for his birthday. Wish me luck - the last time I made a pie it was....well....weird. It was soup. My sister thinks it's because I didn't use the top crust because I was trying to save calories. She made one with me when she was here and it turned out so I'm hoping for the best!

I went to Sam's last week for my OAMC trial so I have quite a bit of food in my house. Here's the break down of the items I bought:

1. Toilet Paper - wanted to test it out the store brand to compare it to Scott's brand. 
2. onions - need
3. 1 bag green apples for the pie
4. apples and an avocado were okay prices, not amazing, but low enough to buy
5. The mushrooms were 2/$1.00. This is a stock up price for me. They often go down to $.50 so I buy enough to last us until the next sale. I'm sure that for a lot of people this wouldn't be a pantry staple. I swear my husband could eat mushrooms in his cold cereal. Okay not really, but he LOVES mushrooms so they go in most of our meals.
6. The mac & cheese. Disgusting food! My kids love it so I usually buy a few boxes when they go to $.50 per box. I only like this store brand - not crazy about Kraft. They were down to $.33 so I bought a LOT. Now I have to hide them somewhere so the kids can't find them.
7. The sausage was a great price (well, for sausage) $2.25/lb. My husband likes to make brats on Sundays sometimes and I love Kielbasa in our red beans and rice. I was planning on stocking up on these at this price. However, considering my husband and I have both gained a few pounds over the winter I think I need to cut back on sausage. In my red beans I'm going to cut back on the amount of sausage I use and add chicken as well. The other issue is the nitrates and other gunk in them. Not the healthiest food around. I think I'd be better off in the long run serving more fish. But goodness fish sure does stink up the house! Next time I make it I need to use the BBQ!

Total for the month of March $215. My goal usually is $260. This month I gave myself an extra $100 so I could stock up on some meat when I find it at a low price.

Notice how weird pantry principle shopping is....what on Earth will I make? With few exceptions, I buy everything that is on sale. By the way, I just remembered I bought 1 pack of oriental ramen because I had a recipe that called for it and I haven't seen them on sale for a year.

There is another recipe that I'm dying to make, but cream cheese is not on sale. I know it will go on sale soon so why waste the $.50. Big deal you say...it's only $.50. If I can save $.50 on 10 items every week that saves me $5.00 for that week. Over the year, that will save me $260.00. For doing NOTHING other than being patient. It doesn't take me more time to be patient and it doesn't make me feel deprived! It makes me grateful that I can save money at the store because I took the time to read the grocery ad and write down a few prices.

The pantry principle works for me!!!

This post is linked to the Grocery Cart Challenge and WFMW.

Grocery Store List

Here is my grocery store list along with some of the prices. When I'm on the ball, I print this out at the beginning of the month and highlight the things I need.

When I'm not on the ball I have little scratch pieces everywhere, which I lose. When I need to go to the store I have NO idea what to buy. FYI - plan A works much better.

P.S. I'm not sure that the link will work (it works for me!) - let me know if you have problems with it.

OAMC - the cooking!

I must admit I really enjoyed this. I didn't plan to do anything other than cook and it was great to be able to focus on just one thing. I can't imagine doing this with little kids around though. I had to concentrate way too much! I admire those that can do this with little ones!

I am so grateful that I took the time to plan this out. I don't know that I'll do this plan every month, but I learned so much this month I hope I can incorporate some of this knowledge into my cooking strategies which will save time and money!

My new favorite part of my house - the island!

 Thursday:

What on Earth is in the bowl? It looks like oatmeal. Actually it's 8 cups of rice, but it looks nasty! In the crock pot I have my spaghetti sauce cooking (the sauteed vegies and seasonings are on top).

I can't imagine doing this without a food processor! You can find them at a thrift store for a few bucks.

It's very important to take breaks. I had to force myself to stop and sit for a few minutes:

On Wednesday I put two whole chickens in a pan so I would be ready to cook them early Thursday morning. Good thing I started early, they were huge and took forever. I'll have to post my sticky chicken recipe - it's YUMMY (I added the recipe link 3/12/10)

On Thursday at 6:30AM I put the chicken in the oven and made taco meat. The burger was already cooked so I had to add a little water and the taco seasoning. Some went with my son in his lunch box, some went into the freezer for a meal and some went into individual servings for more lunches.

I made 8 cups of rice (well, the rice cooker actually made it)

From this can of crushed tomatoes I made chili, saved some to mix in with my enchilada sauce, and kept some out so I could try making BBQ sauce.

I cut up all of my vegies (celery, carrots, onion, garlic) for chicken stock, spaghetti sauce, chili, chicken ala king, chicken salad and my marinade. That was a spectacular sight (and smell as well). 

Made marinade for pork chops, soaked beans, par boiled Italian sausage, froze some, chopped some, cut chicken off the bones, threw the bones and veggies in a pot to make soup. PHEW!

Friday (see pic above) I divided up my ginormous bag of cheese from Sam's club into 2 cup portions, made lasagna (recipe on the box), cooked enchilada sauce, made two batches of chicken ala king. I made 4 different meals of beans and rice. Two black beans and rice w/ taco seasoning and two red beans and rice with burger and cajun seasoning.

Then for some reason I decided I needed to make peanut butter cookies.

I had a breakfast coffee cake that I finished as well. Then I decided since I had all of my baking stuff on my island that I would make two pancake mixes and one waffle mix (dry ingredients only).

I'm really happy with what I got accomplished. I found out that I can go go go until about 12:00 and then I'm just done!!! I forced myself to keep going so I'll have to see this month if it was worth the effort. Definitely a learning experience.

Following is the result of my cooking days:

•  2 meals red beans and rice
• 1 pan lasagna
• 1 pan burritos
• taco meat
• 2 meals black beans and rice
• 2 meals chicken ala king
• 2 pizza sauces
• 1 meal spaghetti (plus some lunches)
• 2 meals pork chops (marinated)
• 1 meal chili (plus some lunches)
• 4 cups chicken broth & 4 cups chicken
• par boiled Italian sausage
• BBQ sauce
• 2 pancake mixes
• 1 waffle mix

Ironically, I took my son to get a free kids meal at Culver's last night and tonight we're having friends over for Nick and Willy's take out pizza. Breakfast, lunch and dinner are already made for Saturday. Then, my husband cooks on Sunday so I get a few days off from the kitchen. Yee Haa!!!! I think I might like this.

Maybe next month I'll do more Once a Month Cooking. Or not.

Check out Money Saving Mom for more OAMC ideas.

P.S. I'm not re-reading this extremely long post so forgive me if there are ton of errors!

OAMC - planning

I'm always trying to make things easier on myself by complicating every thing I do. Makes a lot of sense doesn't it?

However, this time I do believe I'm onto something! All around bloggy land people are having Once A Month Cooking (OAMC) sessions. Back in November I decided to try this. I took all of "THEIR" recipes and tried to figure out if we'd like them, everything I'd need to buy, where I'd need to buy the stuff, etc. I ended up wasting a ton of time because it just seemed so complicated and expensive (the items weren't in my pantry). I was completely overwhelmed and I knew I'd never be able to do it. So all of the time I spent was wasted.

Kind of.

I was inspired again after reading more OAMC success stories. About 6 months ago I wrote up this list:

These are all of the meals I want to make in a month. Either because they are easy, cheap or a family favorite. One of the drawbacks I see to OAMC is that I wouldn't be able to try new recipes. Although I have changed some of the meals on this list, I figured out if I did OAMC for these things, then my life would be a LOT easier! Especially with baseball & softball coming up where we aren't home in the evening. Ever.

So, I've been planning and planning...oh how I love to plan! I don't always like to carry out my plan, but I'm okay with that.

I wrote down the meals I plan to make, everything needed to buy to make the meals and what stores I'd need to shop at to get these things. Wednesday is the big shopping at Sam's day, Thursday I'll cook 1/2 and Friday I'll cook the other half.

Stay tuned for the results!