let's talk grocery shopping

Last night, I was having a hard time falling asleep. Instead of laying in bed tossing and turning, I went to the grocery store to get a few things that I was going to have to get today anyway. While there I was using some instore coupons for $1 bags of shredded cheese (did you know that if you freeze it you can still use it on pizzas, in lasagna or whatever else?) and $2 gallons of ice cream. The cashier handed me a bunch more when I checked out which made my day. They mail these to people so you can generally only get one set of the coupons but sometimes the cashiers have a few that they give out. Hooray! As I was wandering the store, I saw they had big containers of cottage cheese marked down to 49 cents because they were expiring today and tommorrow (can you freeze cottage cheese?). I picked up two but they had a bunch more so I was thinking if I could freeze it I would pick up more. But anyway this brings me to my original reason for this post, my grocery shopping way (which I posted about before) and why I do NOT meal plan for the most part. I do meal plan kind of. You see I will think a day or two ahead about making a roast because I know it will be a busy day at work or we have a bunch of things to do that evening so I will throw something in the crockpot in the morning so we can avoid fast food. In general however I do not meal plan. I find it difficult to plan what to eat for a week ahead, let alone 2 weeks or a month like some people do. We have some fall back meals that we make if all else fails, spaghetti, mac n cheese, hamburger gravy over mashed potatoes or egg noodles, hamburger helper, etc. I know a lot of thrifty families do meal plans based on what is on sale that week and that is a good idea but it just does not work for us. I prefer to look into my stockpile and decide what sounds good. That is why I have a stockpile. I can make what I feel like eating that night with little to no extra expense. Which brings me to grocery shopping. Since I do not meal plan I can pick up a stellar deal on something that is expiring soon (like the cottage cheese-normally $2.49 a container so $5 per lasagna that I got for 49 cents each last night) and use it right away to make dinner). Last night worked out pretty well for me in terms of dinner for tonight. A pan of lasagna normally costs:

Noodles $1.69 for generic

cottage cheese $5 total

Shredded cheese $4.38 for 2 bags

meat and sauce I already have here (but I don't remember the costs right now-it's early, cut me some slack...lol)

$11.07 a pan not figuring in the meat and sauce.



1 pan will last us about 3-4 meals



tonights lasagna

noodles $1.69 for generic

$.98 cottage cheese

$2 for shredded cheese



$4.67 for tonight's dinner



nice huh? That is a huge savings.



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I have noticed that even though I am still on a couponing break I am still deal hunting and using a few coupons here and there. I am slacking terribly lately on keeping up with the deals and as a result we have run out of bacon, a summer staple for BLTs. But in all fairness we have a huge stockpile of stuff and I am watching what I buy and basically just buying for the freezer and pantry whatever is on super sale and using what we have here. So still doing the usual just not the couponing part of it. But I have noticed that I haven't really missed much. Everything that has coupons out is stuff that we haven't needed or wanted so this break has been pretty dang nice.

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I will be back later with more. Kids are up and it is cleaning O's room time.