It helps to have a "stock pile" - Meal Planning July 11th - 17th

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This past weekend we ended up doing our grocery shopping on Saturday instead of our usual Friday.  Lately it seems to take us longer to decide on what we're having for dinners.  I think it has a lot to do
with the fact that we're starting to get into an eating rut.  You ever have those?  We get them all the time because of Jon being so much more of a picky eater than me.  With that being said, here's what we finally decided on (hopefully we stick to the plan):
  1. Spanish Rice (already had the ingredients)
  2. Wings (already had the ingredients)
  3. Spaghetti (already had the ingredients)
  4. Chicken Enchiladas (already had the ingredients)
  5. Sloppy Joes (look for a post about this later)
  6. Cheese Steaks
You're probably thinking, "Wow, they already have most of what they need.  This must be a cheap shopping trip." or "Why do they really need to go to the store?".  This actually was a cheaper trip, but we still had to get some of our weekly staples which are not that cheap.

This week, the Walmart list was probably one of the shortest that we've had in awhile.  We had actually done some errands before hitting Walmart and Michael ended up falling asleep.  Instead of waking up the beast and having a horrible shopping experience for us and everyone in Walmart, I stayed in the car with Michael while Jon went on in and did the shopping.  Here's the list that he had to go by with the prices for each item:
  • red wine vinegar  $1.34
  • hot pepper sauce  $1.18
  • hoagie buns  $2.50
  • Steak-umms  $7.16
  • gallon of white vinegar  $2.38
I did receive several phone calls from him about what he should buy, but he still bought the wrong "hot pepper sauce".  I guess I should have written "hot sauce" and he might have understood.  We will be returning the can of diced tomatoes with red peppers because I don't think we'll be using that.  If you've read my other posts about our grocery trips, you know we normally get the Steak-umms at Wegmans.  Well, we decided that since we were going to have a little more money to work with that we would buy the larger count at Walmart which is actually a better deal when you do the math.  The total spent at Walmart was $14.92.

Because Michael was asleep even after Jon got back in the car, we decided to head home so he could finish his nap in his bed.  We didn't end up finishing up our shopping trip until Sunday night.  Here's the list for Wegmans and the prices for each item:
  • 1 lb of ground beef  $3.47
  • 1 green pepper  $0.96
  • 4 lemons  $3.00
  • deli sliced provolone cheese  $4.87
  • gallon of whole milk  $3.49
  • OJ  $2.49
  • 2 lbs of strawberries  $4.49
  • potato chips  $2.50
  • bananas  $1.24
I have been wanting strawberries for weeks, but have never had enough money to get them so I made sure I got some.  We were thinking of possibly getting a family pack of ground beef, but didn't want to go way over our budget so just went with the 1 lb that we needed.  The total spent at Wegmans was $27.17.

We had a $1.00 carry over from last week and made our total budget $51.00 to work with.  The total amount that we spent was $42.09.  Making us under budget by $8.91!  When we got home from Wegmans, I earned $0.25 for the milk through Ibotta and $0.25 for the bananas through Checkout 51.  Plus we still need to return the can of tomatoes to Walmart.  That will give us back $1.18 plus tax.

You might see us try out a new grocery store sometime soon.  During our running Saturday, we found an Aldi.  I have never been in one even though there was one in my hometown and where I went to college.  I know several people who go there and say they have great deals.  The downside to this store for us is that it's a good 30 - 45 minutes from our house in good traffic.  It wouldn't be a problem if I was still working because I just worked 5 minutes away from it (used to be a Shoppers when I worked over there).  To those who shop at Aldi, would it really be worth the gas to go there?  Stay tuned...

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