Frugal shopping day!

Today is my most favorite day: grocery shopping day! I budget about a $300 grocery budget for the five of us. I like to shop every 10 days, so I make about 3 grocery trips every 10 days, meaning I spend about $100 each time. With the Holidays everything was thrown out of our loop, so we are a pretty empty nest when it comes to food.  So today I will get back on track.  Because our budget was a little off over the holidays and because we went through so much of our stocked food, I have budgeted about $170 for today's trip. So I will be buying 7 days worth of home-cooked meals, 2 nights are planned out to be left over nights --They are not my favorite, but I dislike, I mean HIGHLY dislike wasting food-- and also a "whatever" night where we might just make sandwiches or use up random ingredients in the house, or even better, breakfast for dinner on those lazy nights I don't feel like cooking.

I was actually kind of shocked talking to a different recruiter at our local recruiting station because he feeds a family of 3 spending almost $700 a month! He was just as shocked when I told him I feed a family of 5 at $300 a month!  He asked me how I do it.  To me it's simple: 1. home cooked meals generally cost less then boxed meals; 2. we do not spend an abundant amount of money on pre-packaged snacks (They will bring your grocery bill up REAL fast!!) and 3. I enjoy the challenge of finding the best deals and figuring out ways to lower our grocery bill every month.  I always--usually-- grocery shop on Thursday because our ads come in the mail on Wednesdays.  Sometimes I have to wait until Friday or Saturday depending on when our 10 days are up, but I ALWAYS like to go through the ads first. 

I also make out a 7 day menu.  Normally I go through our food stock to see what I have available already and what needs stocking.  I then plan my meals around that.  I should add right away that right now we are spoiled when it comes to beef and pork.  My mom and her boyfriend bought part of a cow and have a lot of ground beef, roasts, etc. in stock to share with their kids.  My brother also decided he'd raise a pig and gave my mom and I each a quarter for mothers day last year (although we didn't get it until like September ;) ) but it has lifted a lot off of our grocery bill as for buying meats.  This has allowed me to spoil the duckling a little more with pre-packaged snacks for school.  They get upset with me because I have snacks for them that are strictly for school and snacks that are for at home, which usually consists of fruit ;)

Anyways, here is our 7 day menu for this week:
-Cheesy potato casserole with ham
-Tacos/Chimichangas
-Roast - with mashed potatoes and corn
-chicken enchiladas
-Chicken Alfredo --homemade sauce--
-ranch chicken lasagna
-sloppy joes --homemade sauce--

So that is what our menu looks like.  Many of those will provide an abundance of leftovers!! I also only buy enough to feed our family.  This took some getting used to for me because I was so used to buying sooo much food, that we would have enough left overs from one meal to last us another 4-5 days!  At one point we were throwing away a lot of food and it made me sick! I hate throwing away food! --maybe a little bit of a Christian Grey thing going on here ;) -- But I have learned to proportion our meals to feed us, and maybe give us one day of left overs! I will cook the meals that require food that goes bad quicker than others.  This weeks menu doesn't have a lot of vegetables in it, but I usually add them as sides anyways.

I enjoy doing this, and I used to grocery shop every month, just once a month.  I found we were wasting a lot of food that way and that I could bring our bill down more and not waste as much food by shopping every 10 days.  I stick to my list as best as possible, and I try to never go shopping hungry! That is the worst!  And that plays a lot into the B.E.D. too.  Anyways, I hope you enjoyed this and I feel like I am forgetting something, so if I remember, I will come back and edit it.  Look for the update later today to see how my shopping excursion went!