Our $80 Grocery Budget: 3 Weeks of Shopping Under Budget

I spent a total of $39 this week. I got all the stuff in the picture at Dominick's and Aldi for $38 -- the highlights were Aldi butter at $1.29 a pound and Dominick's cheese at 99 centes for 8 oz.  In fact, since I bought 10 for $10 and used two expired $1.50/2 lbs. coupons, I got all that cheese for just $7. Oh, the food in the picture actually cost $48, but I am deducting the $10 I'll be getting back from the Nabisco rebate. Since the Triscuits were just $1 a box after coupons, they'll be free after the rebate.

I ran the General Mills Catalina transaction twice for free soup (in fact I made enough overage on the soup to get two pounds of split peas as well), and then I spent $1 on seven boxes of frozen vegetables with the Catalina deal. We had plenty of soup already, so those 25 cans went to Nutmeg's school food drive.

And, I supplemented my groceries with one gallon of milk from CVS, which I paid for with ExtraBucks.

So I $40 left over, which I will apply to my $400 beef purchase.

We didn't spend our full $80 budget in the previous two weeks either: The week of Nov. 25, we spent only $10 on milk and bread. That was Thanksgiving week, so we were out of town for most of it eating food provided by family. So instead of spending it on groceries, I spent my remaining $70 on a gift card from Alice.com, which I will use to buy household items. In the past I have not included diapers and other household items in my grocery budget, but I think that with this boost I am now going to start including them.

The week of Dec. 2, we spent $50 at Trader Joe's. So we had $30 left over, which I'll also apply to the beef fund.

I had previously put aside $80 toward the beef, so adding $70 more dollars, it's now down to $250. (In reality we paid cash for this purchase out of a savings account, and I am paying back my savings as I am able.)

What's the secret to being so far under our $80 grocery budget in recent weeks? Of course, Thanksgiving was a fluke, but in the past two weeks one difference is that we have not had to buy liquor. I received a $40 Trader Joe's gift card for my birthday which I naturally used to purchase a case of two-buck Chuck, and Epu has stopped drinking beer because of the gout. Instead I buy him bubbly water at $2.50 a case and he seems perfectly content with that. We also haven't had to buy any meat, between the beef in the freezer and the chicken I stocked up on during a recent Target run.

So, what did we eat this week $80 or less?*

Snacks all week: apple slices with peanut butter/yogurt, celery sticks, Goldfish crackers, Pop-Tarts, candy canes

Wednesday: spaghetti with meatballs

Thursday: curried salmon over cous-cous

Friday: dinner = frozen pizza

Saturday: dinner = frozen pizza

Sunday: friends over for brunch = chocolate-chip oatmeal waffles, breakfast pizza on croissant dough, oatmeal brulee, banana bread & pear bread, coffee, egg nog; dinner = beef stew with frozen peas and potatoes, sweet potato bread

Monday: breakfast = cereal, banana bread, pear bread; lunch = macaroni & cheese & leftovers & bagel; dinner = split pea soup sprinkled with bacon, sweet potato bread

Tuesday: breakfast = cereal, banana bread, pear bread; lunch = canned soup & leftovers & bagel; dinner = some kind of chicken casserole w/ frozen vegetables

* Since I cook a lot from our stockpile, I usually don't prepare even half the stuff I buy in a given week for meals that week.