More Pantry/Freezer Stock Up

 I did a bit more stocking up because I didn't use all of my $100 weekly budget yesterday at Safeway. I decided to order grocery pickup from Fred Meyer last night. I get loyalty reward coupons from Fred Meyer each month and I really try to utilize them to get the most for my money. I knew that I only had a $20 budget to work with.

Bob and I enjoy having a couple of hot dogs for lunch and Fred Meyer had the Bar S brand 10 for $10. I bought 5 packs. They freeze well and we can simply pull out a pack and that should last us a week. If we get ambitious, we can get our tripod cooking grate and put it out over the fire pit and cook them on there. I don't care how old I get, I still love to have a couple of hot dogs with mustard.
I stocked up on a bottle of chocolate syrup for Bob. He's a chocoholic. He loves chocolate. I have a hard time eating chocolate as it gives me horrid acid reflux, even after taking a antacid. I tend to avoid it.
I bought the mandarin oranges for me. Those are my chocolate.

One of my loyalty coupons was for a free jar of Kraft mayonnaise. I like the stuff made with olive oil. The puddings are for Bob. The chocolate chips are to make chocolate chip cookies with and I actually got 3 green peppers, not 1. I'm going to slice them up and freeze them.

I wanted the red potatoes to make a specific recipe with and I held onto the salsa coupon from last month.

So I was still able to bring this small grocery haul in under my $20 budget and we have several more meals in the freezer for our no spend challenge.

Let me know in the comments if you like seeing these types of posts. If you do, I'll continue to post them.

Stocking Up & A Week's Worth Of Groceries

 We're getting ready to do a no spend challenge coming up starting in March. When I say no spend, I mean that we will eat what we have stocked up in our freezers, in our refrigerators and what we have stored up as far as canned and dry goods. The only things we will buy will be milk products, and those will be limited to milk, half & half and heavy cream. I will not be buying yogurt because I'll simply make my own. We won't be buying cheese because I can make yogurt cheese and farmers cheese from milk. We will be able to buy produce, as well. Some produce I can grow in my Aerogarden or I can start it out in one of my raised beds, like lettuce, chard, peas and spinach.

Anyhow, I've allotted us a $400 grocery budget to get by for February and I'll also use that to stock up stuff that we use regularly, like coffee, flour, etc.
I'm challenging myself to see exactly how far we can go, spending as little as possible. I know we can do this.

Now, onto my grocery haul this morning. I shopped at our local Safeway. I saved 64% off of my total. By carefully planning my trip and allowing for a few impulse purchases, I was able to save $20 off of my total. I will use that $20 at another store to stock up on some other items that are way cheaper there than at Safeway. Whenever I shop, I have 4 tabs open on my laptop. I have Amazon, Safeway, Fred Meyer and Walmart pulled up. I go between those 4 stores. I find that Walmart and Amazon usually have about the prices on many things. Fred Meyer is a bit more than Walmart and Safeway usually has the highest prices of all unless you shop the sales, like I do.

My total, before discounts and coupons, was around $140. Safeway has a deal this week, if you buy 3 or more pounds of 93% lean ground beef, it costs $2.97 per pound. I decided to completely top off our chest freezer with ground beef and I bought 12 pounds. If it wasn't on sale and, if I didn't have a Safeway Just For U account, it would have cost me $101.88. I paid $36.64 for 12 pounds.
In the produce depart, they had fresh sage, in a clamshell, for $1. We decided to roast a chicken this coming week. The juicing carrots are Bob's big expense that he feeds to our wild rabbit population. The deer eat them, too. By feeding them in areas away from the garden, they stay out of it because they know they will get a carrot if they do.

I added coupons on Just For U for $10 off $50, $20 off $100, $5 off $5 or more produce and 10% off the entire purchase if it was over $50. Just with those 4 coupons, I saved over $40. I also got a free yogurt, 50-cents off of Yoplait yogurts, which were on sale for 24-cents each, limit of 12. The Noosa yogurts were $1.49 each, which is a fantastic price. These are delicious and they are usually quite expensive. I bought 8 of those at that price.

Here are my total savings. Saving 64% is nothing to sneeze about. 24 meals of ground beef for just over $36 is a phenomenal price. I also got quadruple the reward points (for gas discounts) for buying over $20 worth of produce.

January 2023 Trader Joe's Grocery Haul

It was absolutely gorgeous out this morning.

Here's a close-up of that bent top tree. The colors this morning were just stunning.

Back in October, I went down to Portland and got an eye exam and ordered some glasses. They told me I needed bifocals. I went down the first part of December to pick them up and they were not anything that I could live with, so I had them redo them all together. I have one eye that is far-sighted. I have one eye that is near-sighted. I simply wanted one pair of reading glasses and one pair of driving glasses and I didn't need all that bifocal junk. Anyhow, having that ice storm, etc., we didn't make it down there until today.

Since we were headed toward Clackamas, we decided that we'd go to Trader Joe's and stock back up on wine.

I do not drink wine. I cook with it. Trader Joe's has that 2-buck chuck that I like. It tastes pretty decent and it works for whatever I want to cook it in.

There was a beautiful view of Mt. Hood going over the bridge from Vancouver into Portland.

After picking up my glasses, we headed down the freeway to Trader Joe's.

Trader Joe's has super cheap bottles of wine. They run $2.99 each. I picked up 5 different types: Pinot Grigio, Merlot, Shiraz, Chardonnay, and Cabernet Sauvignon. Bob found his favorite ginger cookies. I can't believe how affordable the grape tomatoes were!

Of course, we couldn't forget the doggos!

I see tons of people talking about this seasoning blend. I thought I would give it a whirl. I'm not exactly sure as to what I will put it on, but I now have it.

This is another item that was incredibly affordable. These were $2.49 cents for a pound of these little Persian cucumbers. The ones I get at Safeway are very poor quality and start rotting within just a few days. These were very fresh.

I love those pea crisps that you find in the snack aisle. I thought I would give these a whirl. They are delicious!

Bob is the one that spied my very favorite tea blend. I'm enjoying it over ice right now.

Yuzu is one of those things that I've been wanting to try. Now I get to see what it tastes like.
In Oregon, you have to pay a 10-cent can deposit. Because I'm a Washingtonian, I don't get to turn these in. No matter. We'll just recycle them like we do with the other aluminum cans.

I planned out a month's worth of meals. I only planned out the dinners and it was only the main dish. I'm going to be making teriyaki chicken bowls. These will make a great side course with them.

Bob loves tamales. He picked these out for a hot quick lunch sometime.

I've been slowly amassing the ingredients to make Budae Jiggae, or Korean Army Base Stew. These rice cakes are one of the ingredients.

I also wound up buying some reusable produce bags. I'm so sick of bringing home produce in those plastic produce bags and they wind up in the trash. All the produce bags at Trader Joe's are compostable. I saved the one from my green bell peppers to reuse, as well.

So, there's my grand total of $61.48.

We really enjoyed going through Trader Joe's this morning.

My Weekly Grocery Haul

 I thought I would switch up a bit and share one of my grocery hauls with you all. I do not like to pay full price for anything. If there's a coupon to use, I'm going to use it. I like to get the most bang for my buck, especially now, with how grocery prices are running.

In today's haul, I bought 3 different brands of yogurt.

I've also been cooking for the crew at Cloud 9 Nine farms. The consensus is that they like it. I bought 3 cake mixes and 3 frostings that will work perfectly for desserts when I make lunch.

I bought a lot of zucchini. I plan on making zucchini relish to can up in the next few days. My plant is not producing yet and I'm not sure if it actually will or not.

This watermelon weighs in at over 15-1/2 pounds. This goes to Cloud 9 tomorrow for everyone to enjoy.

This is a 10 pound bag of juicing carrots. We're not going to juice them, however. These get set out for the deer and the rabbits.

Here are the cake mixes that coincide with the frostings.
I will take a bit of help from a boxed mix from time to time.

We eat a lot of chicken. I find that getting boneless skinless chicken breasts from the meat counter and having them package them up in pairs works out great for a quick dinner.

Sorry for the blur. Bob wanted some chocolate chip cookies, so he grabbed Chips Ahoy.

These are a new flavor of Chobani that I'm curious to try. They are raspberry-lemonade. We picked up some deli potato salad to go with our burgers tonight and I got my weekly ration of bananas. I eat one a day. The potassium helps with leg cramps. I don't like bananas at all. I love the flavor, but the texture is not my favorite.

Here's the run down of what I bought:

3 boxes Betty Crocker cake mix. These were 99 cents each if you bought 5 or more.

3 containers Betty Crocker frosting. These were part of the 99 cents deal along with the cake mixes. We're not sure if we could only get 5 at this price or if we got one of the frostings that wasn't part of the deal, but one of them cost $1.99.

Chips Ahoy cookies. These were 2/$7. It's overpriced junk, but Bob likes them, so whatever.

8 Yoplait yogurts. I downloaded a digital coupon onto my loyalty card. These were 27 cents each, with a limit of 8. I limited out on them.

2 Chobani yogurts. These were $1.49 each. If I would have bought a few more, I could have gotten for like 79 cents each, but I don't want that many yogurts hanging around. They have a tendency to get overlooked and go bad.

2 Icelandic skyr yogurts. These were on sale for $1.29 each. I had a coupon for $1 off of 2. That made these 79 cents each.

4 boneless skinless chicken breasts. These were $3.99 per pound at the meat counter. I prefer to buy them there because I've been stung too many times by that woody chicken breast stuff when I buy them in the value sized packages.

1.63 pounds of bananas. These are 65 cents per pound.

3.57 pounds of zucchini. These are 1.49 per pound.

10 pound bag of juicing carrots. The tag on the shelf said that these were $7.99. They rang up for $5.99.

15.69 pound watermelon. I downloaded a digital coupon onto my loyalty card. Any watermelon but the personal sized ones were 19 cents per pound. There was a limit of 1.

Deli deviled egg potato salad. I think this was like $3.69 per pound. We paid $4.65 for it.

I had a $1 off 2 Icelandic skyr yogurt coupon
I had a $3 off a purchase of $3 or more coupon
I had a $10 off $10 worth of produce coupon

My grand total walking out the door was $31.46. This is enough groceries to get the 2 of us through the week and I was able to stock up on some frivolous sweet items for future use.

That is how I shop for my household.
What about you? Do you have a budget? Do you shop weekly, every 2 weeks or monthly? Let me know in the comments below.