$50 Per Week Grocery Challenge: Week #4

How Much Did I Spend For Week #4?

Pizza

I was so busy this week that between 4-H, homeschool, sports, music lessons and getting ready for a church music event I wasn't able to do much shopping.  I had planned on making it to a couple of grocery stores plus Sams Club, but I only had time to hit one store and spent a total of $34.23. Here is the breakdown:

Meat:  5 lbs of frozen chicken breasts for a total of $7.54 (about $1.50/lb)

Fruit and Vegetables:  8 lbs of potatoes at $1.96, 3 packages of frozen vegis at $.88 each

Dairy:  3 gallons of whole milk at $3.46 each

Misc.:  10 jars of spaghetti sauce for $8.80, free box of pasta, free jar of peanut butter

My shopping trip was fairly fruitful.  The 5 lbs of chicken will make 4 meals for our family.  You may be asking yourself how that can be?  Well, I never feed my family just meat, but I always mix it into a main dish.  The potatoes should last us a month and the frozen vegis will be enough for the side dishes for the whole week.  I really didn't need any more spaghetti sauce as I already have close to 40 jars in the pantry, but it was a good deal and we will use it up before it expires.  For some reason this week we drank less milk and so I only purchased the 3 gallons.  I know this week I didn't purchase any fruit, but we still had grapes and oranges from last week and we have frozen fruit for our yogurt.

How did I do for the Month?
For the last 4 weeks I have spent a total of $165.10.  This gives me $34.90 to spend at Azure and Sams for my bulk items.  I really am quite amazed at how little I was able to spend and still feed my family, but I am keeping my meat stocked up in the freezer and replacing items from my pantry when needed.  Also, my family is eating nutritious and delicious meals.  This has been an eye-opening month for me.  Like I said before I always thought I was a fairly thrifty shopper, but I have found out that if I make a list and stick to it I spend so much less.  Those "sale" items that we really don't need sure add up.


Here is a list of the meals we had this week:

Breakfast:  Homemade Granola, Homemade Grape Nuts, Oatmeal, Malt-O-Meal, Waffles or Toast.

Dinner:  Leftovers from supper or Sandwiches from my Freshly Ground Whole Wheat Bread and Yogurt

Supper:  
Sunday - Again, Sunday evening is fend for yourself night.  My husband also made a huge batch of popcorn using the Whirley Pop.  He makes it with white popcorn, coconut oil and sea salt.

Monday - Chili on Baked Potatoes with Cheese (I had frozen chili from a previous meal, but not enough for everyone to have a bowl.  I also had quite a few potatoes that were beginning to sprout so I baked them all up.  I will cut up or shred the baked potatoes for our lunches.)

Tuesday - Pizza and Focaccia Bread

Sweet and Sour Pork

Wednesday - Meat Loaf, Shredded Potatoes (used the baked potatoes from Mon. night) and Corn

Thursday - Sweet and Sour Pork, Rice and Green Beans (For the sweet and sour pork I used the same recipe as sweet and sour chicken.  It was amazing.)

Friday - Spaghetti

Saturday - Left overs of Meatloaf, Chinese Food and Spaghetti.

Dutch Hustle Cake

Desserts:  Apple Enchiladas (Remember all those flour tortillas I bought last week?  Well I opened up a jar of my apple pie filling and made these.  I added in some cream cheese as some reviewers suggested and all I can say is I think I gained over a pound this week.) and Dutch Hustle Cake