$40 Grocery Goal

One of my friends is the inspiration for this goal. She maintains a $40/week budget for groceries and she does it! She is severely pregnant, has a husband that eats constantly and a fourteen month old son (our daughter is exactly one week older). I have decided to implement this in our own lives. This doesn't exactly go along with simple = easy goal, but if we only spent $40/week on groceries this would definitely help our budget!

I decided the first place to start was by making a menu for week, so I invited some girlfriends over this past Friday night to do just that. We sat down, traded some recipes, they helped me cut out my coupons (Harris Teeter had triple coupons) and we got to work on our menus for the following week. My list wasn't as long as normal because hubs and I are flying off to Miami for the following weekend, but I planned what we needed.

I planned the following meals...

Monday - turkey burgers with chips
Tuesday - taco cups with all the fixings and yellow rice
Wednesday - Cheesy Italian Chicken with noodles and peas
Thursday - London Broil, mashed potatoes and salad

I didn't have to buy the fixings for the taco cups, yellow rice, noodles, peas, potatoes or london broil because I had all that on hand, but check out what I did rack up on at Harris Teeter using the sales and coupons as my guide.

Trident gum (had to buy something to add $1 to my total to use a $5 off $40 purchase at HT)
Betty Crocker Warm Delights
Purina Dog Chow (8 lb bag??)
Little Debbie brownies
Ziploc Containers (the "fake" tupperware)
2 cans green beans
1 tub huggies wipes
wish bone italian dressing
wish bone balsamic vinegarette dressing
2 boxes teddy grahams
weber gourmet burger seasoning
skippy peanut butter
2 boxes flavored uncle ben's rice
colgate toothpaste
family pack boneless skinless chicken breasts
family pack chicken leg quarters
8 bananas (discount rack b/c seriously ripe)
bag of romaine salad
hamburger buns
tombstone deep dish personal pizzas
2-5 count biscuits
jimmy dean turkey bacon
gallon of milk

I got all that for a grand total of $37.24!!

Then I went to Aldi's and picked up a pack of ground turkey for $2.54

GRAND TOTAL $39.79

Is that not awesome!

Now, if you didn't notice I only picked up one thing of turkey, but I needed two and didn't realize this until my shopping was complete and I was back home! I needed one for burgers and one for tacos, so I was a little upset that I didn't get it done. Luckily for me though his parents invited us to go to a ball game Monday night so they bought our dinner out there and I was spared from having to come up with something else.

I took all the uber ripe bananas I bought and promptly made some banana bread and muffins Saturday when I got back from the store. It produced about 3 dozen mini muffins, 6 muffins and one loaf. I put all the muffins in ziploc bags and they are in the fridge. I've been taking them to work for breakfast. The loaf I cut into slices and put on a cookie sheet to freeze. Once frozen I promptly used the vacuum seal bags and put the bags in the freezer for a later date.

Also, I got a lot of chicken this trip so that will save money on future trips and menu planning because it's already in the freezer in vacuum bags awaiting their demise in whatever I choose to cook.

So for this week I maintained my $40 budget and was THRILLED with my finds and how little I spent and even bought dog food. My friend did say she bought all paper products with this budget as well, so next week will be a different story as I will need toilet paper, paper towels, dish washer detergent and trash bags!