Wednesday, August 3, 2016

This Week's Shopping Trips


Yay!  I finally managed to time the cleaning off of the kitchen table with shopping day, so I had somewhere to take pictures of groceries *laugh*.

I went to two stores this week.  Carrs gave me a personalized price on the son's chips, so I grabbed those there and then they had 2 liter bottles of Coke products buy 2 get 2 free, which worked out to be 1.49 per bottle after sale, so I grabbed his Coke for the week there as well (not pictured as I didn't really want to take pictures of soda and chips).


The rest of my shopping I did at Fred Meyer last night (with another quick trip to Carrs).  Fred Meyer had a sale on chicken nuggets that was definitely worth hitting (4.49 per 2 lb bag, plus I had 1.00/2 coupons to make them cheaper yet!), so I ran to go and get that last night and hit a couple of other sales while I was there.  I got the last three they had in the freezer.   And I stopped by Carrs, again, because I had a personalized price on tuna salad for 1.25 a piece.  Since this is the ONLY meat my son will eat at this point, I wanted to stock up for back to school.

So, highlights included:
  • Bartlett pears for 1.49 lb.  I got nearly 10 lbs (to can).
  • Chicken for .99 lb 
  • Olive oil.  On sale for 4.49 with in-ad coupon, but then I had some 3.00/1 coupons for Star products from a survey/marketing thing they did a while back (the coupons had no expiration date, so I've been using them SLOWLY over the years).  I got like 8 coupons from the promotion, so I've been careful to use them when I needed to or when it made things I needed REALLY cheap.  This made a quart of olive oil 3.00 after coupons.  I am hoping to go back before the sale is over (it ends in the middle of the month) to get another quart for cheap (the store coupon has a limit of 2 on it).  
So, overall between Fred Meyer and Carrs I spent 72.10 on groceries this week, but I stocked up on Coke (and will HOPEFULLY have enough for several weeks), got more chips than I wanted to (but my son has been just blowing through them of late) stocked up on chicken nuggets (which will hopefully see me through a few months of school lunch rotations at least) and got enough tuna salad kits to last for a bit with my son's school lunches as well (once again, I bought all they had at the time).  I went over my grocery budget for the week by a bit, but I'm okay with that as I'll be able to save money in the coming weeks from having to buy back to school items at full price.

So there you are folks.  My shopping trips for the week.  Have you run into anything good at the stores lately?

14 comments:

  1. Great shopping, Erika. It always feels so good to stock up on those lunch items you use all the time when they are on sale, doesn't it!?! Plus you got some pears for canning, which also adds to your pantry. Great price on meat too! I sure hope you find your meals more inspiring this winter. You've worked so hard to fill your pantry with a nice variety of options this summer!

    I have not been shopping yet for my "every other week" grocery run (I will be going tomorrow), but I did find some great deals earlier this week. Canadian Tire (obviously a Canadian store) had 2kg bags of sugar on sale for $1.66. The store gives you "Canadian Tire money" every time you shop there, so we usually save it up. So, when I saw the sale, I realized that the price was cheaper than getting it in bulk at Costco and I had a bunch of Canadian tire money as well. I was able to get 6kg of sugar (just over 13lbs) for $2.90 OOP...what a score! While I was in the area, I stopped at Walmart and checked their produce clearance rack. I found a bag with 2 very ripe pineapples in it for $2. Well, paying $1 for a pineapple is pretty much unheard of in our area, so I grabbed them up quick. At home, I immediately cut them up into bite sized chunks, put 1/2 a pineapple in the fridge for fresh eating and froze the rest. I might use it to make some yummy jam, or I might save it to make something later. Glad to have more variety of fruit in the freezer, nonetheless.

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    1. Having things canned in the pantry is thrilling to a point that my husband rolls his eyes at my enthusiasm. He'll appreciate it more this winter for sure. Honestly Rhonda, after last winter? I don't know if I EVER want to see another canned green bean ever again *laugh*. I still am finding reasons not to buy them, even though I know in the middle of winter I'll appreciate having bought them for cheap. I've learned some major lessons this year on how to do things better to get the pantry ready for winter and on less money. I feel pretty good about that :).

      I can not BELIEVE the price you got on sugar!!! That is an AWESOME score! Good for you!!!

      And ripe pineapple? Yum! If you end up wondering what to do with it, there's a recipe for pineapple pickles (of all things...I know it sounds weird) that you can probably look up on the Fresh Preserving site that is really good. I would just eat them out of the jar *laugh*.

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    2. I just went to the grocery store today and they have fresh pineapple for $1.49 each. The last time I bought fresh pineapple it was $2 each and I was super excited about that price. I decided to buy 6 pineapples and a can of pineapple juice. I'm going to can the pineapple next week on my days off, so I have some to eat throughout the winter.

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  2. Great haul Erika! I love it when I can get school lunches squared away before school starts - it always makes me feel like I'm really on the ball. :)

    Can I share a horror story about tuna? My husband ended up with mercury poisoning from eating too much tuna while we were in college. It was the only meat he could get at the food shelf and his Mom sent him cans she got on sale too. I'm positive your son isn't eating as much as my husband was (2 cans/day!) but please check the limits anyway. That was 20 years ago and my husband has permanent liver damage. I'd hate for that to happen to your son!

    I've been terrible about posting shopping trips lately - hoping to get back to it soon. I'm loving seeing yours! Very inspiring!
    Lea

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    1. Oh my gosh! That's terrible! I'm so sorry that happened to him!

      No worries about my son. The tuna salad has lots of things in it besides tuna (veggies for one, which is one of the reasons I love to get it down my son when I can) and is only snack sized. Then he only eats it MAYBE once a week at school. I just like to throw it into his lunch rotation so he's not just eating rice and pasta all week long if I can help it.

      Amazing what horror stories come out from college years. My husband's friend ended up nearly dying from malnutrition trying to live off of Ramen noodles in college as he figured he could save his parent's allowance that they were sending him if he ate super cheap so he could buy car parts. Yeah, that didn't work out so well for him. Just goes to show you...it's called a "balanced diet" for a reason. Sorry your husband had to find out that the hard way :(.

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    2. I remembered you talking about the other things your son eats for lunch, so I wasn't really worried. I have a feeling very few people eat as much tuna as my husband did back then!

      I'm so glad we're past the college-age stage - and hopefully a bit wiser too. :)

      Have a great weekend!
      Lea

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  3. Good deals!! I found a bunch too, even though I had planned NOT to use my full $65, so part could go towards a bulk order, I swung into the grocery outlet, (they sell overstocks, and stuff close to date, or say, right now, the 4th of july packaging on stuff) and got a ton of cartons of fruit punches and orange juice 2 for a dollar, then a bunch of granola bars and etc for lunch boxes. They had juicy juice boxes, the bigger ones a pack of 8 for $1, so loaded up on stuff like that. My son is crazy about Gatorade right now, and they had the smaller sized allsport bottles 5 for $1, and while they only had orange flavor, got 10 of those. The regular grocery store had almost nothing on myist, so that helped me not go over, but I was surprised, they had no flour on the shelves!!

    Hope your week goes well!!

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    1. It is weird what the stores are out of at any given time isn't it? I noticed when I went to the store that the sugar was completely out of both stores (makes sense with canning season and all, but really? You'd think they'd keep on top of that stuff) and of all things baking soda was out at the one store. Baking soda. Not exactly something you're used to seeing empty on a store shelf for sure.

      Carrs has awesome sales on things we use this week that are all pantry type items (flavored water, protein bars, cake mixes, etc) so I'm thinking every penny of my pantry build up money for this month is going to be getting spent in one fail swoop this week. I'm thrilled, honestly, as having full pantry shelves is NOT going to get old I think ever at this point *laugh*.

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  4. What happened last winter with the green beans? Lynn

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    1. We were on year two living off of our pantry pretty much and when I restocked I had to with what I could get as cheap as possible for produce (which meant canned). And so I had a flat of peaches, fruit cocktail and pears and a TON of green beans to last us through the winter and that was about it for produce. So we ended up eating green beans about three times a week all through the winter as we didn't have the money for fresh produce. It got really, really old *laugh*.

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  5. It may be that different stores are out of items because of what's going on weatherwise and firewise in areas where they may be shipped from. You got some really good deals. Our Grocery Outlet only deals in overstocks. I only bought their specials which included cheddar cheese, goat cheese, eggs, wild caught salmon filets, strawberries and baking powder. I usually stockpile baking powder when it's at a good price because I do a lot of baking. I am aware that it can be made at home. It's just one thing so far I haven't done. On to the next store where I got a couple of packages of frozen peas, mixed salad greens, black forest ham, and a bag of veggie chips. The rest if the veggies we'll eat will come from the garden. Tonight we had fried okra with dinner and swiss chard. I'm doing the happy dance with how the pantry's shaping up for winter.Seeing those shelves fill up will never get old here either. It's supposed to be a little cooler this week so I want to start canning bone broth. I don't know if any of you do it, but I also can water in quart jars. Only takes 5 minutes in the water bath. Dorothy

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    1. Canning water. That's a good idea for water storage as that would keep it from molding. I never thought of that. Thanks!

      When it comes to baking powder, you know with the cost involved with how expensive cream of tartar is, I just bought the more expensive baking powder with the potato starch too when my daughter was allergic to corn. There comes a point where convenience is worth something and that's where I drew one of my lines. I liked being able to buy SOMETHING off the shelves at the store, so I can totally get where you are coming from.

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    2. In regards to canning water, I read a post through Pinterest where a lady said she would can water in jars as she emptied them from her pantry storage. She would reuse the canning jar lids, as it didn't need to be perfectly sealed like produce. Once it was canning season, she would empty the jars of the water and refill with produce. I thought that was a brilliant idea for extra water storage. Of course, you would still need to store a decent amount all year.

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    3. That's an excellent idea! Thanks for sharing, Rhonda!

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