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The Great Grocery Experiment

Tuesday, December 9th, 2008

Have you been wondering what I learned in my month of tracking my grocery purchases? I have! I am finally taking a moment to review the information and my shopping habits for the month past. November was a fairly typical month for our family even with Thanksgiving. We had a small gathering of just Great-Grandma plus everyone in this crazy house* for Thanksgiving and we didn’t really go overboard with the food.

What I thought: We buy more pre-packaged food than I think.

What I found: Interestingly enough we don’t buy that much pre-packaged food. But when we do it gets eaten twice as fast as the made from scratch equivalent. Even in review I’m not certain why that happens? I also noticed that if I am shopping shortly after a meal or after giving the boys a snack we are much less likely to come away with impulse purchases. The old “don’t shop when hungry” adage.

What I thought: Our grocery bill hasn’t changed much in the last six months because it’s perpetually a crazy number to feed this family.

What I found: That’s not quite true. In fact many of my regular purchases have crept up a few cents there and a few cents here. I knew food prices had gone up for much of what I don’t buy but I hadn’t really internalized how much they’ve got up for what I DO buy. Additionally we’ve moved to much more brand specific purchasing than in previous years (read:poor college graduates). The brand specific purchases eat away at our budget quickly because we usually don’t look at the price.

Some other random things I made note of:

Coupon clippers I don’t get it. I read through the coupons every week and can only come up with maybe 3 that are actually for food. Most of my cart is raw or unprocessed items which don’t seem to have coupons available. I can however watch for the good coupons for some of our household items and our pet supplies. But even then I am not really clear on how to save any significant amount especially since there is no double coupon day around here.

Our main store for groceries is the best on average price. There is no point to shopping at the other options because their prices are higher on the whole. So cherry-picking the ads is the way to go. I snagged unbleached flour for $1.48 for 5 pounds but did my main shopping at the other store.

The local stores don’t carry enough for you to really “stock up” on a good sale. For instance the above good price on flour I was only able to buy 50 pounds which given that it’s baking season will only really last a month or possibly two. (I average about 5 to 7 pounds of flour a week at the moment – it’s the biscuits and the cinnamon rolls :D ) I’m looking at finding a co-op for bulk orders.

*This crazy house includes: a Grandpa, a Grandma, a Daddy, a Mama, Jr., Lil’B and at the moment an Auntie too. (The boys say we need to also count the 3 dogs, 2 cats, 3 toads and our lovely lady praying mantis who is still with us.)

09.12.2008 musings 4 Comments

Menu Plan Monday:An out of house edition

Monday, November 10th, 2008

This week we’re out of the house a bit more with normal lessons, a makeup lesson and our usual collection of library/post office runs. So I’m digging into the freezer for a few meals, picking some quick favorites and saying hello crock pot again. Last week we actually were able to make our meals last us all the way into this week. Super bonus since we didn’t get much cooking done for our working people’s lunches!

Breakfasts: Metaphor Muffins, Eggs & English Muffin Toast, Oatmeal

Lunches: It’s refrigerator round up this week as we eat up many of the small leftovers we’ve got stored in there! Also as options are pb&j/cheese sandwiches or friend egg sandwiches.

Suppers:

Meal 1: Spaghetti & Meatballs with Homemade Sauce.
This one should be interesting as I’ve not really perfected a good red sauce yet.

Meal 2: Black Bean Chowder (freezer)

Meal 3: Pasta Fagiole (freezer)

Meal 4: Chicken Fingers, Corn Cornbread and Baked Sweet Potato

Meal 5: BBQ Beef Sandwiches and oven roasted potatoes

Meal 6: Popcorn Shrimp
Heavy prep here so this one will be on the weekend when I have more hands home.

Meal 7: Pot Roast

Find more menu planners here!

Mama P asked a good question last week that I’ve not answered yet. “How do you budget/account for meat when you buy it in bulk?”

We don’t have a good way of doing this yet but here is how I generally think about it. We buy half a beef in the fall. We know approximately the cost of this so we can plan for the mass purchase. For beef we have a monthly “allotment” for the beef we use. It works out to be around $50 a month for beef. If we put our $50 aside per month then we have the payment for our beef. If we’re just trying to take an accounting for a month we’ll add in $50 for beef.

For all other meats we try to buy on sale again in bulk. So if you see thighs and legs on sale 59cents a pound, you can probably bet we’ve bought 40 pounds. Whole pork loins on sale? Yep we’re there too. Here we attempt to have a “meat budget” for the sales. I’ll typically try to keep a $100 or so on hand for those purchases since they come up on the whims of the stores.

Eventually we hope to change our the majority of our meat purchases to be annual or produced here at home. We’re making slow progress on that and may yet this year find a half a hog in our freezers too!

10.11.2008 musings 2 Comments

Menu Plan Monday

Monday, November 3rd, 2008

Well it’s now officially November so I better get hopping on my big grocery plan. Thus far we’ve (Mr. Numbers and I) have spent $125 at the stores. We’re still crunching the numbers on what it was exactly that we bought especially since Mr. Numbers managed to squeeze everything into just five bags!

First up though is sketching out our menu for this week. My goal is that we will not hit the store again this week and possibly next week except for our perishables that we need. We have a couple things that the store just never has enough so we almost always have to head back to get the amount we needed. Milk is the primary one.

I always flop my days so I’m copying Not Jenny with just listing my meals!

Breakfast (choose any one): Muffins, Oatmeal, Eggs & Toast, Yogurt & Fruit

Lunch (choose any one): Leftovers, Fried Egg Sandwich, PB&J/Cheese Sandwich.

Suppers often roll into lunches as leftovers. I’m keeping that in mind when I cook anymore to try to make that happen more often than not.

Meal 1 roasted potatoes, carrots and roast beef side of applesauce

Meal 2 chicken curry with lentils and flat breads

Meal 3 BBQ Pork Sandwiches, cottage cheese, oranges, sweet potato baked

Meal 4 Beef Tacos, fresh veggies and fruits

Meal 5 Homemade Pizza,

Meal 6 Beans and Ham Stew, Cornbread

Meal 7 Vegetable Beef Stew

03.11.2008 musings 4 Comments