Tag Archives: groceries

Grocery round-up a day late & Menu Plan Monday a day early

Here’s our menu for the week:

Sunday: Vegetarian chili (a new recipe with lots of veggies and beans)
Monday: Chicken quesadillas
Tuesday: Leftovers/sandwiches (Tony is in class late on Tuesdays, so this will be our new standard)
Wednesday: Pesto pasta
Thursday: Chicken wraps with roasted potatoes
Friday: Homemade pizza

Be sure to visit orgjunkie.com for more inspiration for your own weekly menu plan!

As you may recall from last week, we’ve been working hard to make some serious cuts to our $90/week grocery bills. After reading the great advice of the people who left comments, I took an honest look at our grocery spending. I realized we’d been throwing a lot of unnecessary stuff into the cart that was really adding up.

Things like fruit, yogurt, and juice may not be packaged snack foods, but they were still driving up our grocery total without contributing to actual meals. The worst part is, we usually end up throwing away at least some of the fruit because we don’t eat it all before it goes bad. Dumb.

Because those things are healthy and I’d like to keep them in our diets, I’m going to gradually work some of them back into the budget once we get our spending under control. In order to find a happy balance, I think it’s necessary to restrict ourselves to only the necessities for a while. Once we get into the range where we’d like to be, we can add some fruit or juice if it’s on sale. We were buying too many of those items regularly, though, and paying too much for them most of the time.

This week we made a serious effort to avoid buying anything that wasn’t an actual ingredient in a meal. It worked! Well, at least we got as close to success as we’ve even been.

I was amazed at how empty our cart was with only meal ingredients in it! I had no idea we were buying so much extra stuff, but we must have been because our cart is usually stuffed to the brim. This week it was practically bare.

The grand total was $67.66. Still $7.66 above my absolute maximum goal, but I’m cutting myself some slack because we had to buy olive oil this week (a staple that we use in most meals). One bottle should last a couple months, and we bought the store brand at only $6 for a huge bottle.

We stuck to our list except for one item. We weren’t due to buy chicken breasts for another couple weeks, but I saw a single 3.5 pound package of boneless, skinless breasts on special for $1.99 a pound. That’s the cheapest I’ve ever seen them, so I went ahead and bought the package to freeze.

Without the olive oil and chicken breasts, my total would have been $53, which is right where I’d like our average to be. Tony, ever the rain cloud over my parade [kidding, kind of :)], was quick to remind me that it’s not wise to think of the olive oil and chicken breasts as “extra” purchases outside of the budget since we typically need to pick up at least one high-priced staple each week, whether it’s bulk meat, olive oil, mozzarella cheese, or coffee. I agree with him; our weekly budget should have room for these items.

The good news is we learned a few things this week that should help us get closer to our goal in the future.

For starters, one of my strategies was to cut down on meat dishes. We tried to do that this week by adding vegetarian chili and pesto to the menu. Now I’m looking at my receipt and really looking at the costs of those meals. Expensive items like red pepper, jalapenos and three separate cans of beans drove the cost of the chili up despite the fact that it’s vegetarian. For the pesto, our recipe calls for fresh basil, fresh parsley and pine nuts. All three of those items are pricier than a cheap cut of meat.

My new strategy is to limit ourselves to only one fancy vegetarian meal with gourmet ingredients per week, if any. Homemade pizza is always cheap and meatless, so that will remain a staple. For the third vegetarian meal, we’ll find some cheaper recipe ideas in the future.

After reading some of the great advice on last week’s post (thanks to everyone who chipped in!), I also decided to include a leftovers/sandwiches night to our weekly menu. It works perfectly for us. Now that school is back in session, Tony is teaching and taking classes again. Tuesday is his late night with classes until 9 p.m. and no time in between to come home for dinner, so he’ll either bring something to campus with him or eat when he gets home. That leaves me home alone to rummage around for something to eat. :)

Despite the fact that we still didn’t reach our goal this week, I’m feeling optimistic. At least we’re moving in the right direction, and I can see a few minor tweaks that we can make to get even closer in the future. This is a slow process, and I’m just happy to be on the right track!

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Help! My grocery bills are ridiculous!

On the advice of Kacie at Sense to Save, I’m participating in Menu Plan Monday this week by posting my meal plan for this week. I’m hoping I might get some tips on how to lower our ridiculous $75-$90 a week grocery bills. Any advice is welcome and appreciated!

Blackened catfish fillets with rice pilaf (We bought 1/2 pound of fish on sale for $4.99/pound. The rice pilaf is just rice cooked in homemade chicken stock with onion, garlic, and seasonings added.)

Balsamic pork roast tenderloin (We had a tenderloin leftover from last week. We bought it on sale for $2.99/lb. and used it for two meals last week, too.)

Tacos with refried beans (Ground beef on sale $2.99/lb.)

Taco salad (We only use 1/2 pound of ground beef for tacos, so we’ll use the leftover taco meat for this.)

Roasted chicken with potatoes (The whole chicken we bought cost $6, and we’ll use it for two meals this week and a gallon of chicken stock.)

Chicken Alfredo (Made with homemade Alfredo and leftover roasted chicken.)

Homemade cheese pizza (Homemade pizza sauce and crust. The most expensive part of this meal is the cheese, which we buy in bulk at $5 for 2 lbs. because we make pizza once a week.)

I painstakingly plan these meals out based on the sales at two separate stores, and I try to use everything up and stretch things out. I’m really frustrated by our continually high bills. We don’t buy extra snack foods, and we eat leftovers for lunch.

We do buy whatever fruit is on sale (this week strawberries, blueberries, and two peaches). The grand total for fruit was $5.25.

I realize my meal plan is meat heavy, which is why I want to try to plan more vegetarian meals to cut down the cost. Our goal is to cut costs on groceries to $60 or less per week while still eating healthy, tasty meals. Any tips?

Note: We spent about $75 on this week’s meals, which is our average grocery bill. The other $15 of our grand total went toward bulk purchases that will last us a month.

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Saturday Grocery Round up

We had quite a day. It started with our research at the farmers market and the co-op. We didn’t make any purchases at either, because we were waiting to see what our best best would be. Ultimately, we decided to stick with trips to multiple stores to get the best deals.

Today was particularly intense, because we were out of a number of staples that we buy in bulk (coffee, mozzarella cheese for homemade pizza, and black peppercorns). Those are all pretty pricey because we buy enough to last us a little over a month. We also bought a whole chicken that we’ll roast for dinner tomorrow night, then use the leftovers for chicken Alfredo later in the week. We use the carcass to make a gallon of chicken stock.

We went to two grocery stores and Costco for the coffee and cheese.

Our grand total? Still a depressing $91. Sigh. I feel like I’m failing miserably at bringing our grocery bill down to $60 a week.

I know it’s time to make some drastic changes, but I’m just unsure of what my next step should be. Unfortunately, grocery store coupons don’t help us much because the only processed foods we buy are cereals (I do use coupons for that when I have them) and pasta. The rest is produce and fresh meat.

I know that cooking without meat is a big money saver, but we don’t have many vegetarian meals in our repertoire, and the ones we do have require expensive produce like grape tomatoes. Next week we’ll try to come up with some menus that don’t require us to purchase additional meat. We have some chicken breasts on hand in the freezer, but we usually buy some kind of meat each week. I think cutting out the extra meat will help, but I’m just afraid that our meal plans will begin to lack variety.

Anybody have any delicious vegetarian meal ideas to share?!

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We can’t afford exclusively organic produce after all

Earlier this week I wrote about how we were considering buying a share in a co-op. This morning we woke up bright and early to do some research. OK, so it was actually more like 8:30, but that’s early for us on a Saturday.

First, we headed to the local farmers market. This wasn’t our first time there, but this is the first time I paid close attention to the prices for produce. I was pleasantly surprised … on some of the items.

The prices were pretty close to what we pay at the grocery store. Some of the specialty items, like jalapeno peppers, were a little more expensive (they average $1.99/pound at the grocery store, and we saw them for $2.99 at the farmers market), but for the most part the farmers market prices were the same or only slightly higher per pound than the grocery store.

We had a lovely time. The farmers market in Wilmington is set up right on the Cape Fear Riverwalk. Dogs are even welcome, which is a definite plus for us. While it was fun today, I still don’t think the farmers market is practical for us as a weekly alternative to the grocery store.

Both of our primary grocery stores are within a mile from our apartment. The farmers market is a bit of a drive to the other side of town, which means additional fuel consumption.

Not only that, but I don’t want to be limited to shopping between 8:30 and noon on Saturday mornings. It’s crowded and hectic and a little too much of an ordeal for weekly shopping. We enjoy going there occasionally and will definitely buy produce when we go, but some weeks I just don’t want grocery shopping to be a big production, you know?

I forgot my camera today, but here’s a picture of the Riverwalk. It’s pretty, but not really practical for weekly shopping trips, especially when it’s packed with people and produce stands.

Although the prices seemed similar at the farmers market, I was basing my comparison on the average prices per item at the grocery store. We can’t expect to see deeply discounted sales at the farmers market like we do at the grocery store each week. We plan our shopping lists around the sales, so overall I do think we’d pay more.

Next we headed over to the co-op to get some questions answered. I expected the co-op prices to be higher, but I wasn’t expecting them to be twice as much across the board. I got some information about ownership, and I wasn’t impressed by the list of discounted items. It’s a static list that they only update once every six months. Members receive a discount on about five items for each department. The only produce on the list was carrots, onions, apples, bananas, and pears. Even with the discount, they were still more expensive than grocery store prices.

The member appreciation days when they offer a 10% discount are only held twice a year, and the patronage refund is only issued if the co-op has a particularly profitable year. In this economy, my guess is that our chances at a patronage refund are slim to none.

It was a lovely store, and we might go back occasionally to treat ourselves to specialty items that we can’t find in the grocery store, but buying produce there just isn’t realistic for us at this point. I’m pretty disappointed because I was excited at the prospect of buying organic produce, but at this point in time an exclusively organic grocery list is a luxury we can’t afford.

We’ve got to focus on saving and paying down our debt. If we can get our finances in order now, then someday we’ll have more money to commit to the causes that we care about.

We’ve decided to make a compromise. We’ll continue to do our part for the environment in ways that won’t double our produce costs: driving as little as possible, recycling, reducing our plastic bag consumption, and buying organic produce at the grocery store when the price is right. Someday I hope we’ll be in the financial position to go completely green, but it looks like we’ll have to wait a little longer.

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The best methods for freezing foods

One of the tactics we’ve been using to reduce our food budget is buying certain items in bulk, which is often cheaper per pound than smaller portions. But what’s the best way to freeze the excess so it won’t go bad before you eat it?

Good Eats, one of my favorite Food Network shows, covered the topic of freezing last night. Full of scientific facts about what happens to foods when you freeze them, the show gave some helpful hints for the best ways to freeze meats, vegetables, and fruits to ensure they’ll taste as good when you thaw them as they did fresh.

According to the host, Alton Brown, commercially frozen food is flash frozen. This is the best way because when food is frozen slowly, like it is in the freezer in your kitchen, big jagged ice crystals form inside the food. These jagged ice crystals perforate the cell walls and damage the food as it thaws. With meat, the perforated cell walls cause the flavor-filled juices to drip out as it thaws. For delicate fruits and vegetables, the result it a mushy gross mess.

Freezing food as quickly as possible to as low a temperature as possible leads to smaller ice crystals, less damage to the cell walls of the food when it thaws, and better flavor.

Obviously most of us don’t have access to commercial flash freezing equipment. However, one logical way to freeze your foods more quickly at home is to freeze in smaller portions.

Meats

For instance, if you buy a large cut of beef, butcher it and cut it into small, equally sized portions before freezing it. The smaller the portion, the less time it takes to freeze, and the better the food will taste when you thaw it. Once you’ve cut the food into smaller pieces, refrigerate it for an hour to chill it down before freezing.

If you buy a whole chicken or turkey, the best way to freeze it is to first cut it into smaller pieces. If I planned to roast it whole, I would probably just freeze it whole anyway, even if it’s not the best way. Sometimes simplicity is more important. But you get the point.

Vegetables

Vegetables are a little more complicated. Have you ever frozen a vegetable and discovered that it was a brown mushy mess after it thawed? According to Alton Brown, this is because the water is the only part of the vegetable that actually freezes. Everything else turns into a syrupy super-concentrated goo that never completely freezes. Chemical enzymes that aren’t affected by cold spring into action and begin decomposing the food while the large ice crystals from slow freezing break down the cell walls. The result is a brown, mushy mess.

To prevent this, Alton suggests blanching your vegetables, like peas, in boiling water for one minute and immediately shocking them in an ice bath for another minute to neutralize the enzymes. Dry them thoroughly, then lay them out in a single layer on a sheet pan and and refrigerate them for an hour before transferring the sheet pan to the freezer.

Freezing them on a flat surface allows each pea to freeze individually and much faster than if you lump them all into a mass. Once they’re completely frozen, you can store them in a Ziploc bag or Tupperware. (This method also works for blueberries, just don’t boil them first.)

Fruits

These enzymes are also responsible for the gooey mess that results from slow-freezing fruits. However, fruits are too delicate for the boiling method.

For fruits, like peaches, Alton suggests grinding vitamin C tablets with paprika and sugar, cutting the fruit into smaller pieces, then coating them in the powder. Put the powder-covered fruit into a Ziploc bag, remove as much air as possible, and freeze it flat. The vitamin C effectively neutralizes the enzymes and prevents the gooey mess without compromising the flavor of the fruit.

The episode also offers a ton on helpful advice on freezer organization and tips for proper storage of frozen foods. If you want to catch a rerun, it will air on The Food Network Saturday, August 16 at 10 p.m.

What freezing methods work for you?

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Will joining a grocery co-op bust my food budget?

I love the idea of a grocery store co-op. Cooperatively owned by community members, these stores sell local produce that is organic and free of pesticides. Not only does shopping there support local growers, but it reduces your carbon footprint by reducing the emissions created by the huge semis that transport produce to grocery stores from distant locations.

I used to shop at the local co-op occasionally when I was in college, but I never became a member. The produce was fresher, tastier, and better quality overall. But it was quite a bit more expensive.

While they do sell packaged organic and specialty foods, those items are way overpriced, so we only plan to shop at the co-op for produce. But we’re trying to reduce our grocery costs, and even with the discounts, I’m afraid that we’ll pay a lot more for our produce.

I think this is a really important cause, healthy produce is important to me, and I understand that local farmers can’t compete with the prices of larger distributors. So I’m willing to pay a slightly higher price for the quality and the cause, but we can’t afford to completely bust our food budget to shop there.

The membership dues are $30 a year. That fee entitles us to the member discounts, including select items at 25% off every day. They also send additional discount coupons in the monthly newletter and periodically offer member appreciation days for a 10% discount.

We’d also have the opportunity to volunteer a few hours per month to receive additional 12% discount days, and we’d receive an annual patronage refund dependent upon how much we spend. I can’t find any hard numbers on the co-op’s website or through my research on what kind of refund we could expect, so I’m assuming it’s not much.

We’ve decided to go there this weekend, check out the prices, and ask some questions about the discounts and the patronage refund. This is something we’d like to do, but not if it’s going to drastically increase our grocery bill.

We’ve shopped at the local farmer’s market before, and I’ve considered that as an alternative. I like the produce, and I think the experience is fun overall, but I don’t think it’s practical for us on a weekly basis. It’s kind of far out of our way, so I feel like our additional fuel consumption is offsetting some of the benefits of shopping there. It also forces us to get up and dressed on Saturday mornings earlier than we’d like, and the vendors there only take cash (which I find inconvenient because I generally don’t carry cash).

In addition to the costs, I’m also concerned that we might be joining a little late in the season. We live in a warm climate with a long growing season, so we can probably expect to see local summer fruits and vegetables at the co-op for at least another month or two. But what about the fall and winter? I would hate to pay our dues now and then have to wait through the fall and winter to start buying produce there.

Do any of you shop at a co-op or belong to one? What are your thoughts?

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Luxury on Less Tip: Porterhouse steaks for two

When we see Porterhouse steaks on sale for under $10, we usually buy at least two and freeze them.

One Porterhouse steak easily feeds two people. We cut the NY strip steak away from the filet mignon and cook them separately. I usually eat the filet, and my husband eats the larger strip steak.

They make wonderful, elegant at-home meals for date nights at a fraction of the cost of eating out at an expensive steakhouse. And they’re just as delicious.

Today we bought two Porterhouse steaks for $5.60 a pound. Both filets and New York strip steaks typically cost at least $12 to $15 each at a steakhouse … sometimes a lot more depending on how fancy the place is. At $5.60 a pound, we’re getting two steaks for under $3 each! You can’t beat that price, and it’s such a nice treat to have a fancy steakhouse meal at home.

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Saturday Grocery Round Up

Another week of shopping the sales at two different grocery stores, and the results are still inconclusive. We spent $88 this week, which is about what we’ve spent per week in the past at just one store. Yikes.

However, we did stock up on some meat (a pork tenderloin at $2.84/pound that will serve as three meals and two Porterhouse steaks at an amazing $5.60/pound that will serve as two separate meals). In the past, we’ve spent closer to $100 on weeks when we purchased meat, so this could be a slight improvement.

I’m disappointed that we’re not doing better, but I’ve decided to put in more effort to find manufacturer’s coupons. This is a learning process, and I’m trying not to beat myself up too much this early in the game.

I did discover another great use for the price book today, though. When I ordered 3/4 a pound of turkey at the deli today, the guy told me about a crazy deal. When you buy 1 pound of turkey, you get a half-pound of deli American cheese, a bag of tortilla chips, 4 deli-style sub rolls, and a 2-liter bottle of soda.

So you’re telling me if I add an extra quarter-pound of turkey to my order, all of that is free? OK, I’m sold.

Since I wouldn’t have bought any of that stuff if it wasn’t free, I asked the cashier to double check the receipt before I paid to make sure it came off. He assured me that it did. But when I got home and started adding entries to my price book, I realized that the cheese had not been discounted. It was only $3.25, but that’s not the point. I only took it because I was told it would be free with the turkey, so I wasn’t about to pay for it.

When I went back to the store, they were happy to give me a refund … but not without telling me that it “wasn’t really their fault.” The deal was for yellow American cheese and the nice guy at the deli had sliced white American for me. The fact remains that I didn’t order either. He was kind enough to inform me of the deal, and he gave me what he believed was free. Just because he was mistaken doesn’t mean I should have to pay for it. Whatever, I’m happy to grin and bear their excuses as long as I get my refund. :)

Before I started studying my receipts for my price book, I might not have looked that intently and probably would have missed something like that. Just one more reason I’m glad I started a price book!

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Cutting down on food costs

Thanks to some great advice from other personal finance bloggers, I’ve decided that a good place to start cutting back is on the grocery bill. It makes sense; with so many options, it’s easy to take control of what you spend on food.

Grocery spending has always been a financial Achilles heel for us. We have no problem giving up meals out. I tend to think of them as a waste of money unless it’s a special occasion. It’s fun to celebrate with a meal out, but when you’re eating out three times a week it’s no longer a fun novelty; it becomes a burden on your finances and your waistline. Besides, we love to cook healthy meals.

Unfortunately, when it comes to meals at home, we have somewhat extravagant tastes. We’re environmentally and health-conscious, so we often choose to buy organic products despite higher prices. We’re currently spending about $85 a week on groceries. For just the two of us. Obviously, we need to start cutting back.

Because this is the one realm of our finances where my husband has shown a little stubbornness, I want to see how much we can save by putting in a little extra work rather than drastically changing our shopping habits. (The drastic changes will come next.)

We’ve always shopped the sales, tried to plan our meals around them, and avoided excessive amounts of packaged foods and unnecessary snack foods. Avoiding those foods allows us to eat healthier anyway.

However, we have been shopping exclusively at a high-end grocer. I’ve always known we were overpaying, but since my husband is the household chef and he had strong feelings about his grocer of choice, I convinced myself that we were still spending less by eating at home. As long as we were making an effort by planning meals and buying sale items, I considered that a fair compromise.

This weekend, we decided to try shopping at two stores. We did the bulk of our shopping at a lower-priced chain, and bought only sale items at the high-end chain.

I’m using a price book to track prices. My “price book” is a 3×5 card file with a separate card for each item. I’m using dividers to keep the cards in alphabetical order. I considered using a notebook, but ultimately I wanted control over how it’s organized, and I want to easily add additional items and keep them alphabetized. I’ve only used it one week, but it seems pretty easy so far.


My husband actually liked the cheaper store. He liked the way it was organized, and he agreed that the prices were lower. Even though he gets a 5% student discount at the high-end grocery store, I still think we spent less without the discount. It’ll take a few weeks of price book entries before we can be sure, though. To account for the discount at the high-end store, I’m entering items that we buy there at the discounted rate.

We only spent about $12 under our average ($73) by splitting our shopping into two trips, but I expect to lower that gradually as we get the hang of using our price book and planning our meals around two sales instead of one. I’m hoping to get the bill down to $50-$60 a week eventually. I think that should allow us to continue eating some of the organic foods we enjoy without overspending excessively.