Triple Clicks

Wednesday, March 14, 2018

New Meals for March and Budget for Shopping

So here's our new recipes for March, scroll on down for the budget on the shopping trip. Usually we just do a few meals a month that are new, but out of desperation of needing to cut out the extra things that more complicated recipes required, we are doing more new... But we've had the basic flavor of the recipe before, so it should be good. 

To keep the recipes, I bind the printed ones we like with my comb binder.  I'll be getting bigger spines soon, but Dennis just bought a small one for now. I do need to find my cardstock to create better covers... 

Another thing you might notice, you'll be redirected on the links through a website called My Fridge Food. Dennis found it somehow (probably through Tech Gumbo on YouTube). You go through, tell it what you have in your fridge, and it gives you recipes. If you are someone who doesn't make a meal plan, but having a hard time coming up with meals, check out this site.  


Sunflower Crunch Salad
Dorito Taco Salad
Pesto Parmesan Chicken with homemade pesto
Honey Garlic Crock Pot Chicken
Ritz Chicken
Sweet Italian Chicken
Skinny Sweet Chicken
Simply Mexican Chicken



These are all on our meal plan for March.  So head over there and read that if you haven't already.  

Let me know if a link doesn't work, and I'll put the recipe on here instead.  Honestly, the only one I'm skeptical about is the pesto parmesan, but hey, we like pesto so it's worth a shot.  




So I was going to end the blog here.. But since we did awesome and actually came in way under what I thought we would with grocery shopping... I thought I'd share that this month too.  Usually we don't get many sales, so what we spend on food is... a lot..  But God got us through and we were able to find sales... even if it seemed like we went to ALMOST every store in town.  

We did get the bad news that the bakery outlet was closing... That is sad, sad news.  She told me Walmart usually has bread for 60-80 cents a loaf...  So we'll check that, but I'm pretty sure we're headed for a bread maker and homemade bread. 

We went to HyVee this month.. One of the stores I had stopped because they raised their prices to serve the organic crowd... We ran into a tip on Youtube to use refrigerated pizza crust as cinnamon roll dough, so we figured we'd give it a shot.  While the taste wasn't too bad, the price was the same as buying the Pillsbury rolls at Sams.. So it wasn't a win in the cost.  We added cabbage to our salad mixes, although it didn't dawn on me until we got home that I have to store it in the fridge, so I'm currently rearranging things to get the other two heads in the fridge and it's supposed to warm up this week so my outside storage is going away.  We also decided to get the Chinese dinner for 4 at Hyvee (29.99) for supper Saturday night, it gave us a 20 cent discount off per gallon of gas and was something different other than pizza.  So that brought our total at HyVee to 111.21 (though taking off the 30.00 for supper, we're at $71.21-so that's the number we're going with for groceries). We also received .65 off per gallon of gas.

At the last trip to the bakery outlet, they had bread for $1 a loaf vs the normal $ .75.. considering the tight budget I would have gotten the bread somewhere else, but it was nice to give the outlet 
one last trip. $13.62 (I got jelly)

Sam's was one of our biggest places.  Though we did some price checking as we were going along and found some things cheaper than buying them in more convenient packing. We shopped on the instant savings ad and saved $19.50 Sam's total was $273.42

We stopped at a local pharmacy, Lewis Drug, for some things we would typically get at Walmart.. It ended up not being the best idea as it didn't save us any money over buying things at Walmart. But we did get a coupon off for 10 cents per gallon of gas at a local gas station-so that's a win. $40.26

Aldis saved us a stop with their prices, we usually get what we can there.  Their diapers were also $5 cheaper, so I was able to get enough of their diapers to equal the Walmart brand price to last us the month.. without going to Walmart.   I was super excited to find Chipolte Ranch dressing, which the taste should be extremely close the spicy ranch we got from Popeyes I loved on chicken strips.  Total was $142.02 

Our last store was Sunshine Foods, another local market.  We mostly only grabbed the sale items, but we did need some specialty vinegars for a recipe so we grabbed them there instead of HyVee... then learned they were cheaper by a few dollars each at HyVee.  You win some, you lose some.  $33.07

That brings our grand total to $573.60. For 6 of us for five weeks.  So $114.72 for every week for 3 meals plus snacks.  My figures had put us closer to $700... Which is a ton, but that was with cutting any non essential I could.  We did grab some extras at Aldi's we saw (such as the Chipolte Ranch dressing, and some snacks that were on sale for a treat).  

We are looking at ways to cut costs.. mostly looking into meatless meals of some sort at this point as we have many ideas for cheaper meals using meat.  Hopefully we'll be able to bring the price to a more sustainable number.  

Have a great week! 

~Tabitha 


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