South County Girl: Food in May

I finally had a moment to load up the last of the food receipts for May and all I have to say is June will be very interesting. We are going to need to seriously tweak how we do our meals now that SCB has a job. First, we will need to adjust our portion sizes for our dinners cooked because SCB will not have access to a microwave or a kitchen of any kind for lunch. He's literally working outside and will be taking a lunch in a cooler each day to work-- and he normally eats leftovers throughout the day when he's at home.

And, I'll be cooking most of our meals from now on so I will naturally lead to more meals that are healthier in nature since i'll be eating most of the leftovers. June we will most likely go over our food budget while we figure out our new system...

Costco is slowly getting more and more of our business-- but again, not for everything. We are only a 2 family household, but we have learned that its smart for us to buy certain items in bulk because we will actually use them before they go bad. This month we are only tossing 1/2 a gallon of milk because of 2 power outages that hit our home and the fact that we had Relay For Life preparations which meant we didn't cook much last week and were out of cereal for SCB to eat with milk and didn't have time to get more at the store.

We got some INCREDIBLE deals on meat this month because I had some coupons for $2 off a sleeve of burgers... which were already on sale for the holiday weekend so it was awesome getting them for 3.99 a sleeve after the coupons... but again, $94.41 in groceries for only $65.01 because of their mailer coupons and their store app-- we can't beat it! Yes, we don't buy everything there anymore now that we found a local produce place and because we hit up other stores for pantry items, but they provide our "main" meal ingredients so we hope they stick around. Only thing we tossed was 1/2 a package of corn tortillas... The other one went into the freezer since they were B1G1 free...

SCB wasn't feeling very well earlier in the month so I had to to a "get better" market run for some soup and broth and milk and ralphs was just closer that any other store on the way home... The chips and Gatorade we bought for the arts alive festival to go with our picnic lunch so we wouldn't buy food from the food trucks there, and again Ralphs was around the corner... for the most part we really don't shop there much anymore. As for Mission Ranch Market-- their produce is CHEAP-- and since its so cheap I didn't feel that bad when I had to toss some of it out during the month because what they call a bunch of spinach is actually like 3 of what I would have gotten at Sprouts for 1/3 the price too! With us being so busy this month, we couldn't hit the store we normally pick things up from because of time, so I got eggs and a few other things here because it saved us some time... I had to toss a few bean sprouts out, I froze 4 of the bananas in slices because we didn't get to them fast enough so i'll toss them in my smoothies and wait to buy more until I use them. We also had to toss a cucumber out-- 2 was too many since they are TWICE as big as one and 1/2 the cost.

Walmart came out the big winner in terms of the money we spent there and the amount of different items we picked up. Since SCB is now working and we didn't have much notice for a start date (and with us being busy as all busy), we went with traditional more portable lunch items like chips, sandwiches, granola bars, etc... then add in Relay For Life and that meant more picnic type/convenience foods....

But some changes will be happening with the new work shift to dual employment. Especially since I mentioned that SCB can no longer eat leftovers really... or a lot of the boxed type foods he normally makes when I'm not home. We'll still pick these up again in June to have in the house -- but something else I noticed is that we can go to walmart and nothing really ends up in the fridge (it's mostly pantry items).

There produce is more expensive then other places and we get better meat deals at fresh and easy. But with SCB working who knows what we will and won't be buying here anymore.

SCB's lunch so far has been 2 sandwiches, a large apple, granola bar, treat, and some chips (I buy the bug bag and then measure out a serving into some tupperware and just pop it in his bag with a bottle of flavored water and that's that. So far he hasn't even touched the granola bar at all-- but I toss it in there in case there is a busy day.

Here's a few pictures of what we have been eating this month-- a few are blurry but oh well!

The cilantro lime chicken grill packets from Fresh and Easy.
We bake it in the oven and SCB eats the legs and meat while
I shed mine up and put it in tacos.