A foodie Mom looks at life.

You did great!! Wow! 140 for 2 weeks including extra expenses.. great job!!! Now I know you said you do not want to do this again.. but I'd love for you to make my menu and do the shopping for me... that would be a huge help! lol ;)

Congrats Evin, you did great, especially with Tristan around. Although you said you don't want to do it again, you might find yourself looking a little closer and saving a little more!

That is awesome!!! I know the feeling about it seeming like to much work...but sometimes it's totally worth it.

That's great! I agree it is more work to plan and shop around, but totally worth it!!

Sounds like you did a great job to me! My budget is 150 every two weeks for two people.

I wish I had the option to go to multiple places to find the better prices... I live on Okinawa and all we have is the military grocery store and most of the prices are okay, but the produce is awful!! And off-base is even worse, so I don't even bother. Haha. Sounds like a good plan you have going.

It was a total joy to ready your blog this morning! Bravo for a job well done. It's all about planning and executing the plan. Your TP comments were....ta die for. This may sound awful, but...um...once things were soooo awful for me, I was taking home the last of the tubes in the office bathrooms. (Housekeeping was tossing them and replacing them with full new rolls...what a waste!) It's fun for me to see prices of groceries in other locations; they are so much cheaper than here in Anchorage. But if I'm truly careful, I can find some killer deals. I bet if you try your list again, and stock up on something (like chicken at 79 cents/pd...super cheap for us), you'll do even better next month!! ...and...Christmas is just around the corner, eh??

You are in my neck of the woods. 8 dollars for toilet paper! Have you tried Sam's. I go there for saving on paper towels, bulk canned goods and toilet paper.

Well I am envious, the 18 dollars for organic goods was fabulous, I only have Safeway or other regular stores to shop at, and forget 18 dollars for as many items and amounts at that! I'd be lucky to get that for 35, which would be just 4cents on the dollar cheaper in your money. Its not cheap living in the north of Canada. ALL our produce except for farmer's market (which is closed for the season) come's from at least 400 miles away, and anything from Florida or California runs around 3000 miles by the time it gets here, so organic is very expensive, and sometimes not a lot better quality than the regular run of the mill stuff. Same said for your meat prices, even shopping in the butcher shop, I could not have gotten your meat for that cheap. And I'm experienced at keeping to the budget and buying for a menu, and working at keeping the prices down. May I suggest that you invest in a small freezer, if you don't have one, then when you get a great deal on things like meat, you can place some in the freezer. I just bought a Rival brand food sealer, its a bit expensive to bag the food, as the roll material is more costly than Ziploc bags, but it keeps the food better in the freezer. Its a vacuum sealer, and I got it at Wal Mart, for around $85 Canadian so they should be cheaper down there. The bag material is about $12 for around 10 bags but when I consider the cost of throwing out freezer burned food, it makes it worth it. Freezing vegetables is simple if you have access to running water, and ice, I live without a lot of water, we probably use less than 10,000 gallons in an entire year, and this includes washing clothes at home. I don't use the house water for cooking, its not exactly the best water as its rather turbid, but the other side to living in the far north of Canada is that the weather is cold this time of year, so when I blanch my veggies, I simply put them out on a cookie sheet to cool, works fine, and takes me almost no extra time, if I want to do it the regular way, I need a large jug of water (you know the kind that goes in water coolers) and some of those frozen gel packs for coolers, put the water into a large bowl, add the cold gel pack and dip my blanched hot veggies into the water to cool them. Blanch the veggies in the microwave, 2 minutes for a quart (I use a quart bowl or ziploc container to measure)and cool each container bag, and vacuum seal, pop into the freezer and voila, fresh organic frozen veggies waiting for those times when money is short, or company drops in and you need a bit more food to go around. By the way, the toilet paper here is well over 15 dollars at most places, and paper towels run 9 bucks for six super sized rolls!

Wow, you put a lot of effort into that shopping excursion! I don't think I could do that. I go to WM and that is about it. I think I am going to go to Sams this week and get meat for the next 2 weeks, (it IS cheaper there!) and then just get the staples at WM. Hope I can save a few bucks this way, but unfortunatly in our neck of the woods, we don't have a lot of options other than good ol' WM! NO Asian markets, which I LOVE! :(

i hope you get good TP! that's worth the extra $$$$ :) BTW, love the new pic. T and M are soooo adorable!!!!

I wish I there was a Mexican Market where I live.

I need to start going to the Mexican Market! Thats where the deals are.

oh and I spend about $250 for two weeks of groceries. I'm almost never under $200. lol

You don't want to see the bill for us -- 3 kids who eat like adults, and one smaller one (not including M&D) we go through over 1/2 gallon of milk at one setting :)

Evin: I shop the ads and all the stores.....Sam's.....Mexican Markets & the Asian market ROCK! Shop ads...my DIL has got her list down to $80. for two weeks!....that is for 2 Adults and 3 kids. Amazing! Make a game out of it....you can do this!

When the kids were home I did way better in budgeting for food. Now there's just me & hubby. We eat what we want (no more picky eaters here), but that means I buy what I want without regard to looking at what is on sale. I need to mend my ways! I think I spend more on food now than when I had 2 teenagers in the house and I usually fed a few extra mouths nightly then...