This Is This Week

This week, we kicked it up a notch.

I set out to spend less than $50 on groceries and cook entirely out of my pantry and freezer otherwise.

Here’s how it went.

What I Bought

I mentioned in my previous grocery challenge post that I shop for a family of six including my mother. My mom likes to use the meal prep kits these days because as she says, “it forces me to cook something nice for myself.”

So this week, I purchased (with a discount code) three meals for her: stuffed zucchini, baked tortellini, and cheeseburgers. Total: $24.31

Then, I used some coupons on my BJ’s app to pick up a few more items.

Two bottled fruit/vegetable juices, a 2-lb bag of baby carrots, and a jumbo container of hummus. Total: $18.35

The bottled juices may have seemed like a splurge item, but you’ll see what my thought process was.

Lastly, I filled in some other fresh produce needs with an order from Aldi. In full disclosure, I paid a little more because I had my groceries delivered. I really intended to go to the store and pick up the groceries myself because I knew that would be the most economical option. But after a really long and hectic week and with another crazy week ahead, I just wanted to stay home on Sunday night when I would otherwise have had time to do this.

Two packages celery, one watermelon, one pound strawberries, four bananas, three mangoes, one pack of romaine lettuce, three English cucumbers (three packages mini cucumbers were substituted), one half-gallon almond milk, and a three-pack of garlic. (The bananas, mangoes, and lettuce were all items I would have done without, but these were special requests by my children and mom for the week; I did skip the butter my mom wanted since we still had some in the freezer and it was very expensive and the apples and oranges my kids requested as well; one watermelon was cheaper for the same number of snacks).

Total: $30.15 (including the tax and fees)

Combined total: $72.81

Food Prep

One of the keys I have found to reducing grocery expenses and really capitalizing on items you already have is to plan and prepare in advance.

So I took stock of what I had leftover in my fridge and what I wanted to make using items I had in my freezer/pantry, plotted out meals for the week, and decided what I wanted to prepare in advance.

Ready-to-eat leftovers

• One full chocolate-oat zucchini bread
• A bunch of whole wheat chocolate zucchini muffins
• A tray and a little bit of baked zucchini oatmeal
• A container of thawed frozen blueberries
• Two bean burgers and a little bacon-y green bean casserole
• Some spaghetti and fresh tomato sauce

Need-to-use produce/food

• 2 bags kale leaves
• 6ish zucchini
• Sliced tomatoes (plus a whole bunch more tomatoes on the counter in various stages of ripeness)
• 1 avocado
• 2 kiwi
• Burger buns

Once I took this quick stock, I was ready to game plan my meals and food prep.

I broke my prep up a bit:

Sunday

Sunday evening, I juiced a bunch of kale stems that we had leftover from the kale we had picked from the garden the previous week (and turned into dried kale powder and kale chips); I combined the kale stem juice, some cucumber juice (also from some garden cucumbers), and the premade bottled juices to stretch that juice and make it more nutritious.

Tuesday

I was supposed to prepare a number of the lunch, snack, and dinner items on this day, but Robyn and I ended up canning a ton of diced tomatoes and tomato sauce (more on this in a later post!) and I ran out of time and energy.

Wednesday

I used some of the tomato sauce that I prepared for canning on Tuesday to make Wednesday’s supper (meatballs from the freezer heated in the sauce in the InstantPot and served on soft rolls). Meanwhile, I also:

• Cut celery and mini cucumbers for easy snacking
• Cut watermelon into chunks for the boys
• Prepped BBQ tempeh for sandwiches

What I Made

Monday

• Breakfast: green juice
• Snack: chocolate zucchini muffins
• Lunch: two leftover bean burgers
• Afternoon snack: handful of cashews (from a canister that I had stashed in my drawer at work) and three Dove chocolates from a coworker
• Dinner: the rest of the bacon-y green beans, another mini muffin, and some oat chocolate chip bars that A’s mom had shared with us

Tuesday

• Breakfast: chocolate banana smoothie bowl with fresh strawberries and granola
• Snack: a handful of crackers
• Lunch: two mini slices of frozen cheese pizza, Southwest zucchini salad (garden zucchinis spiralized with pickled jalapenos, black beans, and edamame from the pantry/freezer)
• Dinner: chocolate zucchini muffins with blueberries and two GoodPops popsicles

Wednesday

• Breakfast: green juice
• Lunch: enjoyed a catered/potluck meal with A’s family after a memorial service
• Dinner: meatballs (on soft rolls for the rest of the family – a la carte for me) and a simple salad with romaine, carrot, cucumber and tomatoes from the garden
• Dessert: chocolate zucchini oat bread with blueberry sauce

Thursday

• Breakfast: the baked zucchini oatmeal or chocolate oat bread with blueberry sauce
• Lunch: leftover spaghetti with meatballs and sauce (for me); tuna pasta salad and baby carrots for the boys
• Snack: watermelon and some honeydew from the garden (this was very exciting!); the kids also ate celery and cucumbers
• Dinner: green beans from the garden with another two meatballs for me; BBQ tempeh sandwiches with cucumber-tomato salad for the kids and my mom
• Snack: leftover “nice” cream that I had forgotten was in the freezer with a little granola from the pantry. The kids also consumed almost an entire half loaf of sourdough bread toasted up with a little butter.

Friday

• Breakfast: more baked oatmeal and chocolate oat bread with blueberry sauce (those breakfast dishes stretched farther than I expected); the kids also finished the sourdough bread
• Lunch: more tuna pasta salad and leftover watermelon; one of my kids had PBJ instead
• Dinner: leftover BBQ tempeh on some hot dog buns that needed to be used before they got freezer burnt, leftover cut celery and baby carrots (plus some peppers from the garden)

Saturday

• Breakfast: the last of the baked oatmeal and some blueberry muffins A’s mom had dropped off; I had a smoothie bowl
• Snack: since my breakfast came during the kids snacktime, I shared some of my smoothie bowl with them but turned them into cute “parfait”-style cups (layered berry-banana smoothie with a dollop of peanut butter, sliced banana, and cacao nibs)
• Lunch: we ended up skipping lunch because we had a birthday party in the early evening and the kids wanted to save their appetites for party food
• Snack: in lieu of lunch, the kids picked on a little tortilla chips and guacamole and a few leftover cut veggies from the week
• Dinner: birthday fare – pizza, mac and cheese, salad, breaded and grilled chicken, birthday cake and cookies, and roasted marshmallows; I ended up bringing home some leftover breaded chicken cutlets and steamed green beans for A (and his dad since they had gone out fishing together while we were at the party)

Sunday

• Breakfast: some of the last chocolate-oat bread for me; the remaining blueberry muffins for the kids (plus some scrambled eggs since A had picked up a few things from the store on Friday).
• Snack: A and I went to our local garden store and the poor woman was working the entire store by herself, pretty much; she ended up giving us a loaf of Italian bread as a “thank you” for our patience while we were waiting to buy our apple trees (which came with two ripe apples attached!)
• Lunch: another “gift” because my friend’s wedding reception was this afternoon – I had amazing Puerto Rican rice, some pasta salad, a little cheese, chocolate dipped pretzels, and a fruit cup; A had a burger, grilled chicken, pasta salad, and probably some other things that I missed
• Dinner: was sort of skipped because we ate late at the party; instead we just snacked on some chips and granola with milk in the evening

The Week in Review

In all transparency, A bought a few items on Saturday because we were canning tomatoes from the garden and needed a few things like lemon juice and salt to finish the batch. He ended up grabbing some mini watermelons that were on sale, the aforementioned chips, and some clearance blueberry scones (that he opened up at some point and shared with his dad and my mom).

Overall, though, I don’t think we really leaned on those items, and I am not going to count them against our $50 budget challenge.

I ended up surpassing my $50 budget by over $20. I’m not super thrilled about that, but I have learned over the last several years that while shopping at multiple places can save money on an individual item level, I personally find it harder to stick to an overall budget when I shop around.

Next week is the first full week in no-spend September, so I can’t wait to share how that goes!