I've been thinking about it, and I decided it was silly to calculate my shopping for grocery stores and drugstores in different ways. So for now on, I'm reporting my weekly shopping in terms of what I spent out of pocket, period. I will not subtract the value of Catalina coupons from my costs, and when I spend Catalinas and other coupons, they will not show up as expenditures. At any rate, I'll make it clear here what's going on when I'm using coupons so I hope this will clarify things rather than obfuscate.
I'm sure you've just been on the edge of your seats about that so now you can sit back, relax, and enjoy your weekly peek into my grocery cart.
This week I spent about $73 of my $80 grocery budget for what feels like very few groceries. For instance, I'm fresh out of vegetables right now, either fresh or frozen (although I do have some nice fruit). I stopped by a number of different stores:
Whole Foods: $2.46 for a carton of hummus, minus a dime for bringing my own bag. (No, I didn't go into WF just for hummus, I went to see if Steaz were buy one, get one free, which they weren't.)
Dominick's: $26.64 for two bags of groceries -- I was really happy with this shop. A bag of Caribou Coffee (Got this for just $1 since there was apparently still a $2 coupon loaded on my card, plus I used a paper $2 coupon. Nice!) 10 boxes of Mac & Cheese @ 40 cents each, three bottles of Indian curry clearanced to $1.50 each, and the Hormel nitrate-free ham for $1.25 after coupon.
Jewel-Osco: I can't find my receipt but I think I spent about $23.50 on one round of the P&G Catalina (NyQuil/DayQuil + Puffs, small moneymaker after the $10 Catalina coupon) and a few groceries and clearance items (like coffee).
Target: About $7.50 on groceries including a pound of beef for 47 cents after coupon, a ham steak for 36 cents after coupon, a whole "natural" chicken which was delicious, and four boxes of Morningstar Farms fake meats for free.
Walgreens: $1.20 out of pocket on Electrasol, cookies and aluminum foil.
CVS: 83 cents (blew $6.50 worth of ExtraBucks on Christmas clearance stuff and $5 ECBs on Clorox wipes).
Woodmans: We stopped while in Kenosha in to buy a cheesecake sampler for a half-time dessert at my parents' house, for $10.
What we ate:
Breaskfasts were cold cereal or oatmeal and clementines or raisins. Lunches were leftovers or sandwiches unless noted.
Wednesday: canned soup with homemade bread
Thursday: lunch = macaroni & cheese, dinner = homemade ham & bean soup with homemade bread
Friday: frozen pizza
Saturday: dinner = tacos made with 47-cents-after-coupon beef from Target
Sunday: Ate at my parents house while watching disastrous Packer playoff game.
Monday: roast chicken, potatoes and carrots
Tuesday: salsa/sour cream casserole w/ leftover chicken
Because there's only $7 left over this week, I'm not going to bother applying the savings to our bulk meat purchase, on which we still owe $220. I'll just keep it in the coffers in case I want to spend it this coming week.
2 Comments
dgmarie said:
The recipe looks very yummy. I blogged about it, and am considering changing the recipe to suit a crockpot. We do a variation of this using boneless, skinless thighs, a cup of salsa, a cup of frozen corn, and a can of drained black beans. Cook in the crockpot for 6 hours on low (don't use breast meat or it will dry out) and serve with tortillas. Easy peasy!
Sara said:
How did you get the Morningstar Farms stuff for free at Target? I saw today that they're still $2.99, but the only coupons I know of are the $2 expired ones that were available at Dominicks and now the $.75 cent ones from Jewel...I know there were printables on Target's website at one point too, but without using the expired ones I can't figure out how you did it. Unless Target takes expired coupons??? Help, this will drive me crazy! ;-)
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