Since I have been home on maternity leave I have been trying to find ways to save money, however towing a newborn to various grocery stores in the cold with a handful of coupons has not been working. In fact, I find myself making several trips to HyVee each week, even though I know I am paying quite a bit more at HyVee than I would at Walmart or Aldi's. But Hy-Vee is just right around the corner from our house and I don't have to fight quite as many people for a parking spot or a grocery cart as I do at Walmart. My desire to find ways to save on our money grocery bill has been renewed by two things: my return to work on a part-time basis, and one of my friends' blog posts.
I remember when I was in college standing in line at the grocery store behind a young family whose grocery bill exceeded $100. I thought, that will never happen to me...I will never spend that much money on food. And look at me now! Austin and I have always had a budget, but lately we haven't really been sticking to it. We have $400/monthly budgeted towards groceries (not including household items and diapers), but I know we are spending more than that with all my quick grocery runs. So yesterday I planned meals for the next week (maybe I can stretch it to two weeks) and then today I went grocery shopping.
I have a book with all of my frequently used recipes, so I looked through those and picked a few that I wanted to make this week and this is what I came up with:
Chili
Chicken and Dumplings
Cheesy Rigatoni
Quesadillas
Lasagna
Stuffed Chicken Breasts
Pizza
I went to Aldi's and bought the majority of my groceries and then drove across the road to Walmart to pick up household items. And I only spent $60.99. Woohoo! That's great improvement for me!
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| A picture of my receipts from my grocery adventure today and the recipe I used to make lunch: Cheesy Rigatoni |
While dinner was in the oven, I calculated both the calories and the price of the meal. The meal cost $4.74 and the cost per serving (it could serve 8, but in the Oates household it will only make 6 servings...) is $0.79. The whole dish has 1310 calories (plus the pasta noodles...they vary depending on brand and ingredients), which comes to 218 calories (plus the 100+/- calories in the pasta noodles) per serving. Again, if you can stretch it for 8 servings, you save even more calories!
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| All my notes |
Throw in a loaf of bread with butter and garlic salt (yumm!) and a quick dessert (I didn't make one! Oops!) and you have a cheap, semi-healthy meal. Ready in 45 minutes. 15 minutes of prep and 30 minutes in the oven. Perfect.
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| Not too bad for a quick lunch-time meal. |
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| He is always drooling. But even so, isn't he cute? |
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| Of course I took 30 pictures of him sitting in his bumbo. Just be glad you only have to see two of them! :) |
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