We are a family of 3. Two adults and a bottomless pit of a 5 year-old. My goal is to average $2/person/meal. I shop every two weeks and plan about 10 dinners per shopping trip. Why 10? Because at least one, maybe two, of those planned meals will be something that I can double, triple, or quadruple and freeze. So, a few nights a week are either something out of the freezer or leftovers. Tonite is a freezer night.
The process starts by checking out what's on sale, specifically meat. I have a list of the various grocery stores in the area and what days their sales run. Most sales cycles around here run Wed-Tues, so I usually start at least thinking about my menu on the Wednesday a week before I pick up my order.
Once I have an idea what's on sale, I start building my menu. If there's something at a fantastic price I'll pick three or four meals with that and fill in the rest with other stuff. My family would riot if we ate chicken 14 straight days, so I do try to mix it up. I also buy a little extra when stuff is on sale so that I have a decent mix of things in the freezer. Speaking of the freezer, I do also like to keep that in mind when I'm picking out the menu so that I cycle through the stuff there. Also, since most of it was bought on sale, I'm cutting my per meal price down.
To organize things, I use an app called Pepperplate. It lets you collect and tag recipes and will build a shopping list for you. You can choose your own tags, but at minimum, I tag recipes with the kind of protein it has. That way if pork is on sale, I can quickly filter down to just the pork recipes. I can also create a calendar to plan which meals go on which days. I do schedule some meals, especially for meals that have ingredients that won't last two weeks in the fridge. I try to schedule those meals for earlier in the week. I also like to schedule time-intensive meals for weekends. It helps with the "what's for dinner" dilemma.
Now that the shopping list is built, check off the things that are already in your pantry, fridge, and/or freezer. There is no use buying something that you already have, unless it's something you use a lot and it's at a rock bottom price (I'll write a separate post about that later...I promise).
Next, I put everything that's left on the list into a Walmart shopping cart. This is my baseline price. Let me tell you, online grocery shopping is a game-changer. I save a ton of money just on not making impulse purchases. Do you have any idea how much less I spend just by virtue of not taking the husband and/ or kiddo into the store? Also, there's no more standing in one grocery store trying to remember if X is cheaper down the street. I can easily see if the Walmart regular price is more or less than the advertised price at the other stores. Sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. Finally, I don't have to be that person standing in the aisle with a calculator trying to figure out what's the best deal (I've so been that person). And if I do go over budget, it's easy to look back over my cart to see what can go back without having to backtrack across the store.
But remember how we built our shopping list based on what was on sale? Now that the WM cart is full, I go back to that ad and see if it's really a good deal or not. If that item is still cheaper at the other store, and it's cheaper enough to make it worth it, I'll take it out of the WM cart and buy it at the other store. I'm not going to drive 15 miles out of my way to save 37 cents, but if it's a store I'm going to be passing anyway and I'd save $8 then I'll do it. This is also a good opportunity to check out all the other items in the ad. If there's something that's slightly cheaper than baseline go ahead and get it somewhere else, and take it out of your WM cart. For everything else, just pick it up.
I tend to not go to more than one other store a week unless it's just a smoking deal or it's something that we use a lot of. I've found that a lot of times, all the local stores will have the same basic things on sale at the same time, so it just depends on who has it cheaper and how far out of my way they are. As for this week, we're looking at pork loin roast and boneless country style ribs for under $2/lb and Sweet Baby Ray's BBQ sauce for 99 cents (that's almost half the price of Walmart, y'all). I'm thinking we'll be doing some BBQ in the crockpot. for under $1/serving. That will leave plenty of room for veggies and starches, if you eat those, and still be under $2.
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| It was almost too pretty of a piece of meat to cut up... |
Now's time to hit the sales items that might not necessarily be on your list. I try to make it a game to see how close I can get to my allotted amount without going over. This can be things that are on sale because of the sales cycle like ketchup just before Memorial Day or things that are nearing their sell-by date. Today's find was a beautiful beef roast for just under $12, or $4.50/lb. It's a little more than we would normally pay for meat, but it's a fantastic price for stew meat. To keep us under our $2 goal, we might use this for beef stew and only use a half pound per batch. So, I took it home and chunked it up and froze it in a single layer. Once it's frozen enough that it won't stick together, I'll throw it in a container that I can scoop it out of when i need it.
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| ....Almost. I'll get at least 4 and probably 5 meals out of this. |
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