The Grocery Store Post
Alternatively titled, “For Sabrina.”
This is my super sweet reusable grocery bag she sent me last year. I love this thing!
You guys all read my friend Sabrina’s blog, right? RhodeyGirlTests? She’s fabulous, and if you’re not reading her, you need to, stat. My girl Sabrina is down to earth, kind, funny, and always has great recipes and tips and tricks. Plus she and her husband just recently announced they are having a baby! I’m so excited for them.
Here’s the logo up close. Awesome, right? This bag is great, not just for groceries, but for heading to yoga, grabbing books at the library…
Sabrina and I “met” a few years ago on the weight loss website Calorie King. Since then, we have become really great friends—we email, Gchat, text, etc…she and her husband were even invited to our wedding. We are so much more than just blog friends and I am so lucky to have her in my life, seriously.
ANYways…she has recently embarked on an adventure to get her grocery bills down. She was spending upwards of $186 a week on groceries for just herself and her husband! So, she decided to take action, and the Grocery Budget Challenge was born.
The Pharmacist and I spend maybe $40 a week on groceries. Yep, that’s it. Granted, we have a few tips and tricks that help us get there, but still I am pretty proud of that number. Sabrina asked me to do a post on it, and so, here it is!
First, the tips and tricks:
1) I hate grocery shopping. This is my biggest tip, and it’s not even really a tip. I hate going to the market so much that we only do one big stock up shop a month, usually. Seriously, I hate grocery shopping so to spend more than an hour there? YUCK. So: do only ONE big stock-up per month.
2) Eat like you’re going out of town all the time. Seriously. We try to use up everything in our kitchen before I head back to the market again. Canned goods, etc…eat ‘em all up before you re-stock!
3) Obviously, that doesn’t work for things like dairy and produce. So that’s what our weekly shops consist of: dairy, produce, a few miscellaneous things for a recipe I want to try, and maybe a treat or two. And that’s it. Everything else is considered “pantry” stuff and should be stocked up on during your big monthly stock-up.
4) Stop shopping at Whole Paycheck Foods. Yep, I said it. Listen, I love Whole Foods just as much as the rest of you, but damn, that store ain’t cheap. And there are perfectly nice markets around town (at least where we live) that are half the price. I look at Whole Foods as a “treat.” I only go there when we have a guest in town (say, like my sister) who has never been or wants to go check it out for fun. It’s rare that I go there. And that helps keep our food bills down! I do most of our shopping at Trader Joe’s and Metro Market, which is a nice Pick ‘N Save in our area. Great prices, nice atmosphere, doesn’t cost an arm and a leg. Winner, winner, chicken dinner!
5) Speaking of chicken, don’t eat a lot of meat. I am not a big meat eater anyway, so usually I am buying it for a specific recipe. We don’t buy it that often, to be honest, and we get along just fine. Try it sometime!
6) Plan ahead. I keep two lists on my fridge: one for Meal Ideas and one for Groceries Needed.
Both of these go shopping with me. On the Meal Ideas list, I jot down things I see on blogs, in magazines, etc. that seem like nice healthy options for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
And on the Groceries Needed list, I add whatever we might run out of our need during the course of the week. At the grocery store, I cross things off as I go, and if I didn’t get something, it gets circled so it can go back on the list for the next week or the next stop.
So, after one of my last shopping excursions, I whipped out the camera and got a few pictures of what I purchased. Now let me say this: this shop is 1) a bit more expensive than usual because I actually got a bit more stuff than normal and 2) doesn’t have a lot of produce in it because we still had a full thing of blueberries + spinach + pineapple at home, so I didn’t really need anything (we also eat a lot of frozen veggies, another great money saver!). Here’s what I got:
Pasta, Gnocchi, Arborio Rice, Black Beans, Chicken Broth
Shredded Parm, Shredded Mexican Blend, Turkey Bacon, Smoked Gouda, Tofu, Eggs
Some fun stuff! French Vanilla ice cream, the best caramel sauce EVER, mini PB cups
Brown rice cakes, pita chips, bagels
Hummus, fruit leathers, an avocado
Grand total for this bill? $54.32.
And this was HIGH for us. I just checked last week’s shop, which included fruit, veggies, eggs, etc: $36.72. That’s the norm!
So, those are my best tips and tricks for making the most of your groceries. In a nutshell, do only one big shop a month, eat less meat, stay away from expensive stores, and eat like you’re going out of town.
What are your best tips and tricks for keeping your grocery bills low?
Would you be interested in seeing more posts like this? Let me know in the comments!
Great post! My husband and I are on a strict budget because we’re saving up to buy a house/condo in a few years. Our current budget for groceries is $100 a week (for the two of us) but lately, we’ve found ways to spend even less. We now buy groceries from an online grocery store called Fresh Direct and it’s amazing. Their food is fresh and much cheaper than what you get from overpriced NYC supermarkets. The best part is the groceries are delivered right to your door!
Meal planning is a great way to save because you don’t end up buying random crap you don’t need once you’re at the store. Trader Joes is awesome because they’re so affordable. Whenever we go there, we end up with bags of groceries for way under our budget. And you can feel good about it because their food is pretty healthy.
We’ve also started to eat less meat, though our attempts to cook tofu have been major FAILS. I’d love it if you could share some easy vegetarian dinner recipes. My issue is that I’m lactose intolerant so I can only eat dairy in moderation. (Thank goodness for lactose-free milk and ice cream!)
I love learning about money saving tips so if you have others, I’d love to hear them.
Iowa City (the town we now live in) does not have a Trader Joe’s. It’s so disappointing
BUT whenever we are in Madison (like after our wedding) or visiting my parents (they live near Milwaukee) we make HUGE Trader Joe’s trip because we can get over a month’s worth of meals for around $125. We’ve talked about doing a monthly trip to Des Moines (the closest TJ’s) to stock up on frozen things like potstickers, ravioli and other things from there.
The clip boards are a great idea! I’ve tried to plan out meals, but I forget or don’t write them down. Having a central location like that would be perfect!
Hey Amy! Love the tips! Did your breakfast idea list include bacon and cheese oatmeal? If so, I am very curious as to exactly WHAT that entails. Is is seriously just bacon and cheese mixed in oatmeal? Also, I recall WAY back in the day, either in Florida or Cancun, you made the most amazing avocado dip on the planet. Any chance you’d be willing to share that recipe?! Love your blog. Keep it up!
Great post! I also hate to go grocery shopping. It just overwhelms me and there are so many other things I’d rather be doing, lol!
We do eat a lot of chicken, but a trick that we learned is to stock up when the grocery store is having a buy one, get one sale on chicken breasts; we keep maybe one pack in the fridge to use in the next few days, but use our Food Saver and store the rest in the freezer! Same goes for any other meats.. that Food Saver is one of the best purchases/investments that we’ve ever made!
I am SO impressed, and I can’t believe you bought that much for that little. And look at how neat your lists are! We keep a running list now on the fridge of items we need to buy and I keep another on my desk for meal ideas, but they are not NEARLY as neat!
This is a great post! I admit that we spend way more than I’d like (upwards of $100 for the two of us) each week at the grocery store. I try to stick to a list, but I think we just get caught up in buying stuff “for the pantry” — i.e., lots of boxes of cereal, snacky stuff — and we’re bad at using stuff up before we buy another. I think we need to start living like we’re going on vacation!
I HATE grocery shopping as well. I’ve been going to the commisary and it’s to the point now where I’d just rather eat mac and cheese everyday than go back there. It takes too long, there are too many folks, and I overwhelm easily. Your tips are great!
I love grocery shopping, but I stay away from the impulse buys. If I see something that intrigues me when I’m at the store, I write it down and think about it for the next week.
For money saving, I trying to use a lot of the same foods in different ways throughout the week. When I first starting living on my own, I found that I would get all sorts of different stuff. Now I try to cook for the week with a few main ingredients and switch them up the next week.
Also, I LOVE leftovers. Huge money saver.
Such a helpful post! For one person, my average weekly grocery bill is $30 but during CSA season, it drops to $10 ($25 if you include the cost of CSA). Not bad!
I LOVE grocery shopping but I also love your tips
I love the idea of having a “meal idea” list, we eat the same ol’ boring stuff! We need to change things up.
Wow Amy, All that for $53.00! You are amazing. I hate grocery shopping too. I used to over stock everything and it drove your Dad nuts. So he started coming along and we rarely buy on impulse. He is the lets get in and out as quick as possible guy
That is how we save $$
I wonder if Jamie is talking about Hiliana’s guac recipe? To this day I still have never had better guac. It is the only recipe I will use. Its also great on sandwiches or wraps.
Hugs
Amy, found the link to this based on your FB April Fools’ Joke. Have you tried the smartphone app OurGroceries? You can get it for free, enter your list on http://www.ourgroceries.com, sync it to multiple accounts and when you go shopping and cross something off the list on your phone, it will cross the item off the list on the other people’s lists on their phones if they’re synced to your account…this may make the shopping process faster since you can split up and instantaneously know if your other shopper has grabbed items from the list already…just a thought.
Hi Jen! That sounds like an awesome program…but alas, I do not have a smart phone.
You need to get on the smart phone bandwagon then…it’s great! Although I only got one to “keep up” with my students. :-/ Now I love it as much as everyone said I would…drat, I hate it when “they” are right!