Well, it was another major snoozefest in the grocery department this week. All I purchased was 2 gallons of milk, some bananas for some Spinach Power Smoothies and 2 containers of organic baby spinach and baby kale that was on sale for $1 each at my local produce market.
Thanks to a major stock up trip I made at Winco, Costco and the Oroweat Bakery Outlet 2 weeks ago and some freebie snacks last week, I didn’t have to buy much.
I’ve been photographing the meals I’ve been feeding my family over the past week and and will be showing you those soon.
Do you do a super stock up trip on every few months too? I’m beginning to think it might be the way to go.
How did you do this past week? Did you come across any rockin’ grocery deals?
~Mavis
Total Spent This Week $8.35
Total Spent This Year $926.4
Total Spent This Year on Garden Seeds/Supplies $862.57 {I bought a Meyer Lemon Tree, Rhubarb crowns, 6 Fruit Trees , 16 yards of soil}, Walla Walla Onions and 90 pounds of seed potatoes. Plus, supplies to make my own potting soil. I also picked up a boatload of heirloom tomato plants at the Seattle Tilth sale.
Donna Brown says
I’ve seriously been working on organizing my (home)canned goods. I’ve also started buying a few things online. Not seriously going crazy, just working to develop some new habits.
Carol says
Donna, it sounds as if you and I are on the same game plan. I’m trying out some things on Vitacost.com Mostly because you can sort for cruelty-free products…very important to me.
I receive my pension check monthly, so keeping track of what I need for a whole month at a time has been a challenge, but it helps out in the end. I can’t buy everything at once, but have been rearranging my shelves so I can store more things and then I have gotten into the habit of writing down everything as I use it so I don’t forget to replace it when I find it on sale.
Thanks to Mavis’s inspiration, I put my freezer compartment to much better use these days. Wish I had done all this while I was still working, but better late than never!
Shirley Kelly says
Carol, I am learning to buy and store differently, too, now that I am retired
(78 next month) and get my SS$ once a month. I agree, better late than
never. I continue to learn from these young women!
Carol says
Way to go, Shirley! I’m proud of us for taking some control over our food costs!
April Myers says
Hey Mavis, my friend Dianne of Olalla just had her publisher reduce the price of her book to 99 cents . . . it’s now #12 on the Amazon list for Children’s Action and Adventure books! Any chance you can add it to your deal of the day?? It’s a great read, and the first of a trilogy, which I know kids love. It’s got dragons, too. I’ll send you two signed posters of oil painting illustrations she did for the book, and a gnome, of course! You can view the listing here:
http://www.amazon.com/Deception-Peak-ebook/dp/B0090888WU/ref=sr_1_1_bnp_1_kin?ie=UTF8&qid=1367865502&sr=8-1&keywords=deception+peak
Maia says
I’ve been doing one big shopping trip the last couple months too. Our lives have just gotten so busy, it’s easier to spend an entire afternoon on grocery shopping instead of 2-ish trips a week.
Susan says
The only rockin grocery deal I found this week was 2 lb. boxes of Driscoll’s strawberries at Winco for $1.48.
Bought bread, milk and bananas. Lived off the freezer and pantry.
I’m finding the sales ads pretty lackluster lately!!!
Amanda says
I grew up a second generation Air Force Brat, as such, once a month shopping is sort of programmed into me. As a kid, we NEVER went to the store for more than milk and/or eggs more than once a month. It does make for some interesting and disjointed meals at the end of the month, as well as some serious melt downs if you forgot to tell mom that you need to bring…say….100 cupcakes to school by Thursday.
Now, as an adult, I try to go every two months. We live off of our garden for most of the year. What we don’t grow we barter for. We also go in to split a cow and a pig twice a year from a local farmer (as needed) for meat, and we get eggs from our 17 chickens (we barter with those a good bit). I actually prefer to not go to the store to often. I get a little wigged out by all the choices!
My kids call the meals right before we go to the store “Pantry/Freezer Whatever Meals”…in other words, mom opens the pantry/freezer and just throws together whatever is there.
Lynne says
Stock-up trips seem like the smarter version of the stock-piles so beloved by extreme couponers. Instead of 100 bottles of sugary juice drinks and 75 boxes of some iffy processed “food” in your pantry, you’ll find the fixings for healthy meals that your family will actually want to eat, or that you want to feed them. And it’s gotten at a lower price, since you bought in bulk. I’m trying to move in that direction. At least, I try to stock up on staples when I spot sales or the opportunity to buy big, so I’m not stuck shelling out big bucks when I run out of something and am desperate.
One thing I’ve noticed here in New York: sometimes, the best prices for some food items are not in food stores or places like Costco, but in the big drug store chains. Not the first place I’d think to look, but when they have specials, they are a great option.
Irene says
I stock up too. I agree that bulk quality foods are the way to go. Part of my unwillingness to go to stores frequently for sales is that I’m not usually going to the stores anyway. I buy milk straight from the dairy and meat and fish from the growers/catchers (in bulk.) There is a fair amount of running around for those things. I also buy organic fruits by the lug when they are in season and spend a weekend processing 200 lbs of tomatoes or making a few gallons of strawberry jam or Meyer lemon curd. It’s a lot of work but I’m so tired to hearing about bad things in our food – antibiotics, arsenic, BPA lined cans, GMOs, growth hormones, herbicides, pesticides, and who know what is next that we don’t even know about. :/