Food in March

I'm surprised i'm still at it when it comes to keeping and recording our food receipts! So lets take a little looksie!

Pretty much the same as always for Costco. We generally buy Milk, Cheese, and eggs there and we make a point of filling up the gas tank so its not a total wasted trip. I think I may have forgotten to add in another milk purchase because we still have milk in the fridge... hmmmm...? I am also LOVING my costco eggs. They are way larger than the ones we get in the store and since i generally only eat the egg whites, i'm a happy camper with these.

We went to Ralph's once this month as a compromise. SCB didn't want to cook dinner and I didn't want to go to a restaurant, so we went by Ralph's so he could get some cheap frozen pot pies for dinner and I took my hand at cooking frozen Salmon... which turned out really well so we might see that in our meal rotation more frequently. We also hit up Sprouts because we were in the area and we might have to make it a weekly thing or an every other weekly thing because some of the produce is much better than fresh and easy price wise. Not everything is, but since I don't really like to buy lettuce at F&E, we might buy it at Sprouts instead. I can always walk there and carry a small grocery bag home on the weekends.

We actually did both this months and next months Walmart visits. We were going to end the month with a surplus in the food category, but I knew we were running out of other Walmart items and instead of having a tighter month, we went early and that's why we busted our food category for March and went slightly over. The personal items aren't included in this list, just food that we picked up. I'm slowly trying to get the hubby to eat better and eat less junk, but some times its hard with our $50 a week food budget.

Got to love me those coupons! We would have spent 25% more without them. I should have around $9 in fresh and easy bucks to use next month too so that should work out nicely. I'm going to try and be really good about not letting things spoil, but we did pitch a few items over the course of this month. Sometimes I'm finding that we just don't use the full amount before it goes bad, but that I can't buy things in smaller amounts (like bean sprouts) but I realized they are cheaper at sprouts so when we do pick them up, well probably pick them up from there so I feel less guilty when I pitch half the bag. Same with spinach. I can't go through a whole bag before its time has ended, but if i can buy a smaller bunch at sprouts for less, that might just be the best way to go in the long run.

I've also need doing really well with maintaining the weight I've lost and I'm noticing that it means we make different food choices than we used to. I'm trying to only eat grains at one meal a day, unless I exercise that day and you'll notice the over $20 we spent on Greek Yogurt this and last month... Eating healthier does cost more but if we are being careful and make the changes slowly we will begin to see savings in other areas that should help balance everything out in the long run... I mean, I am literally eating wayyy less food than I was and not feeling deprived. Cheese lasts a little longer for the most part since I measure out portions and i've been trying to good about how much fresh veggie items we keep on hand so that we don't end up wasting food because we don't get to it fast enough. This is why I think Sprouts might just become more of our friend.

So what is your family eating and buying?