Ok so back to my regularly scheduled post with my results on planning my meals and finding great deals. As I said last week I've been previewing a book called "Cut Your Grocery Bill in Half with America's Cheapest Family". (This post will also serve as my official review for this book so there may be more info about the book itself than you want to know). I finished it last weekend and was really excited to put some of their ideas and suggestions to use. This book allows you to start at whatever level you feel comfortable. There are suggestions for someone who is just starting out and has never planned meals all the way to someone who is very savvy in the kitchen. I love the fact that you can skip around in the book to whatever ideas are of interest to you. The whole book is filled with great suggestions but if I tried to do them all at once I would be totally overwhelmed. As the author suggests I picked one or two ideas and now I'm working on getting familiar with those before moving on to something else. There is a lot of humor and real life stories throughout that really make the book so enjoyable. This was one of the easiest books to read even though it was an "instructional" type book.
When I first started reading this, as I said yesterday, I was under the misconception that I was spending $400 - $500 per month on groceries. Check out yesterday's post to see what I REALLY was spending. I couldn't imagine cutting my grocery bill so low and still being able to eat good meals. So these are some of the suggestions that I took and made work for me.
I reviewed my sale ads to see if there was anything that I use and then made note of each item. I took out my list of all the dinners I know how to make (Using this for about a year or so) and wrote down a few recipes that I new Adam really liked. I cook dinner from Sunday to Thursday so I charted my meals for the next two weeks by each day (chicken / beef / chicken / beef or some varitiy of that). After I put in meals he really liked I took some that were just OK and filled in around the ones he really liked. Some of his "OK" meals are some that I really like so this works out good for us.
After I had a list of 10 meals that I knew I was making for the next two weeks I wrote down each ingredient I needed for each meal wether I had it or not. Then I went back through it to see what I had and what I needed and made my shopping list. The way I plan my shopping list isn't in the book but if I don't do it this way then I'll some how forget I need grated cheese for three meals and not one and then not have enough. As suggested in the book my plan is to not go back to the grocery store no matter what so I want to make sure I have it all the first time.
I then took my list of things I needed and checked them against the sale ads. I divided my list into two. One for Wal-Mart where I usually shop and the other for Brookshires which I don't usually shop at but they have things that Wal-Mart doesn't. The majority of my list went on the Wal-Mart side with 3 things that I had to price match against Super 1 and Walgreens. The remaining items went on the Brookshires list because they had a really great sale on canned veggies and cream of chicken soup plus I was going to be there anyways to get meat.
With lists in hand we hit Wal-Mart Saturday evening and found out that is not optimal shopping time. It took us 45 minutes to check out because the lines were so long. On Monday before work I finished up my shopping at Brookshires. We could have done it all in one day but after the 45 minute line wait Adam wasn't to keen on doing it all over again. This worked out pretty well though.
In total I spent $126.27 on food items and $58.43 on household items. That's a total of $184.70.
With the use of a couple of coupons and looking at the sale ads I saved $11.32.
I know that $11 is not much to celebrate but look at my total spent versus what I have been spending! Just by planning ahead! This weekend I will need to pickup more milk as we don't have room to freeze it and cereal since the store only had 1 dang box in stock last week. I'm sure there may be one or two things to pickup until I get the real hang of this pre-planning thing but I feel very great about what I've accomplished.
Already without much effort my grocery bill has gone from around $1000 per month to $370 or so not counting odds and ends that I've forgotten. I think that is something to jump for joy about!! I still think it's way too high and needs to be cut in half from the $370 so that is what I'm going to be working on now as well as sticking with the menu planning.
So what are we having for dinner the next two weeks? This is my menu starting this past Sunday:
Sunday ~ Sub sandwiches
Monday ~ Sourcream Chicken Enchiladas, refried beans, and mexican rice
Tuesday ~ Beefy Chili Beans and Rice casserole
Wednesday ~ Honey BBQ Chicken Breast, Green Beans, Boiled New Potatos
Thursday ~ Roast, White Rice, Black Eyed Peas
Sunday ~ Chicken Pot Pie (actually making two of these.. one to give to a relative)
Monday ~ Sirloin Steak with Wine Sauce, Mashed potatos, and some veggie (just realized forgot to plan a vegetable here)
Tuesday ~ Chicken Tortilla Soup
Wednesday ~ Left over Roast - BBQ Sandwiches
Thursday ~ Teriyaki Chicken, Stir-Fry veggies, Rice
All of our meals are made with at least 4 servings because both of us always have leftovers for dinner. So really this is 20 meals instead of 10. I now realize that I need more variety. I'm going to start looking for a couple of new things to try for the next two weeks.
I HIGHLY reccomend this book "Cutting Your Grocery Bill in Half With America's Cheapest Family" to anyone who wants to cut down their grocery bill or just wants a new perspective on how to save time. It's not all about saving a buck but also how to maximize your time and spend more of it with your family doing the things that are really important in life.
