Plenty of people go far longer than I do between shopping trips for a wide variety of reasons.  In this case its been only a week since I last went to the grocery store.  But, what I have been doing is purposefully eating through items we had stocked up on during the holiday sales (or in some cases fresh produce we over stocked on) while supplementing with fresh items and continued to purchase items on sale.

I’m going to focus here on the freezers, which I audited in mid-December.  But, we’ve also been eating more potatoes than usual to account for those I purchased at excellent prices during the holidays.  And, I used up a few miscellaneous items like the leftover leak I used in place of scallions in a stir fry.

In mid-December, our freezers held the following:

• Meats
  • boneless / skinless chicken thighs – 9 pouches (2-3/pouch)
  • chicken thighs with bones & skin – 3 pouches (4/pouch)
  • bottom round beef cubed for stew – 2 bags @ 3 lbs each
  • ground pork – 1 lb
  • beef rib-eyes – 4 seasoned and vacuum packed
  • beef chuck roasts – 2 @ 3 lbs each
• Other
  • ginger
  • minced cilantro in chicken broth
  • a single pie crust
  • pecans
  • walnuts
  • 3 servings of butternut squash ravioli
  • 5 frozen mini pizzas
  • 6 lbs salted butter
  • 4 lbs unsalted butter
  • corn
  • blueberries
  • peas & carrots
  • meatballs
  • ice cream
  • yeast
  • white bread
  • wheat bread
  • banana bread
  • pizza dough
  • 10 lbs whole wheat flour

We used some of the boneless/skinless chicken thighs for chicken pot pie, and some more for Asiago Chicken.  I used the ground pork to make pot stickers.  We sous vided the rib eyes.  I made pecan pie and date-nut muffins to use up the nuts.  I’ve used some of the ginger and cilantro.  I finished the container of yeast in the fridge and promoted the one that was in the freezer.  Similarly, I finished my open whole wheat flour and promoted one of the bags from the freezer.  We finished one container of ice cream; I ate the mini pizzas for lunch.

Christmas sales and availability meant that I’ve added 4 loaves of gingerbread, some fudge, 4 sheets of puff pastry, two 6 lb NY strip roasts, 1 boneless leg of lamb, 1 ham, 12 salmon fillets, and 2.5 lbs of ground beef to the freezers.  I made a batch of sausage stuffing for Christmas and froze 2/3 of it in meal-sized containers.  I also made lemon-chive compound butter to use up produce and froze the leftover.

So, where do we stand now?  We use frozen corn, frozen peas & carrots, meatballs, pizza dough, and butter regularly so they’re more in circulation than storage.  I shouldn’t need to buy bread soon as we have 1 loaf of brown and 10 white.  I have 4 loaves of homemade banana bread for the boys’ snacks.

There are items I should consciously stay aware of.  There are 10 meat meals (the sausage stuffing and meatballs) in the freezers.  While I will be purchasing some based on sales and because we’re generally lacking ground meats, this will cover things for a while.  The store-bought breads should be used before being restocked.  As tempting as the seconds bananas might be, I don’t need a big batch right now.  I should eat the butternut squash ravioli for lunch (nobody else here wants to eat it anyway) and make a single crust pie.  At this point I’m not sure what I’ll do with the puff pastry – that will take some thought.

In summary, the churn is reasonable.  Nothing is getting too far gone and the only item I have more than I reasonably need is white bread, which we can eat through as long as I remember not to buy more.  I hope this bodes well for the grocery budget, at least for the next few months.  I’ll plan to touch on this again in another month to see how things are going before the Easter sales.

Before I get too far into this, I should say that this is not the stereotypical price book.  Because some of the food stores around me do not have many sales, I wasn’t looking for the lowest ever price but the lowest everyday price.  Then, I can compare another store’s sale price to see if its a good deal.

Specifically, Wegman’s opened about two years ago.  It doesn’t advertise sales, though they happen fairly regularly.  But, everyday prices are available from home through the app so comparing to sale prices is fairly straightforward, and they’re claim is that their everyday prices are better than others and competitive with club prices.  I did some comparisons when they first opened and determined that, yes, on the same non-perishable item (or store brand) their everyday prices were almost always better than the grocery store sale prices.  Perishable items are not so clear cut.  And, they don’t carry all the items in the brands I’d prefer to buy.

But, I hadn’t done a thorough comparison to BJ’s, largely because the bulk quantities make it necessary to compare unit prices which are not as clearly advertised.

So, the approach.  I went through BJ’s, Wegman’s, Target, and Stop & Shop (in that order) listing the unit price and total price/quantity of each item I buy reasonably often.  This way I can compare across packaging and determine the impact of coupons, which are usually by item without regard to quantity.  I did this over the span of about 6 weeks as I did my regular shopping.  In a few cases I had to go back to recheck something.  But, in the end, I feel like I have a good understanding of what is what at this point in time.  (Note, since prices change all price books have to be reconfirmed occasionally.)

And, the results.  As I expected, BJ’s was best for just about everything.  However, there were some interesting exceptions.  Wegman’s was best for dishwasher detergent, tissues, and Cheerios.  For items that BJ’s doesn’t carry (or have in a reasonable for us size), Wegman’s was best.  But, Target was best for single serve raisin boxes.  That leaves Stop & Shop with items that are not available at the places above.  Note, that is not a small number of things and I still go to Stop & Shop regularly.  Also, Stop & Shop has the most sales of any of the places listed above so those have to be watched and taken into account. I can get most things they exclusively carry on sale.  I do also go to Shaw’s occasionally for three items that none of the other places carry.  But, their prices have historically been far higher than Stop & Shop so I didn’t bother including them in this effort.

I made three grocery stops this week.

On Thursday I went to Stop & Shop.  Yes, that’s a Wegman’s bag in the picture with Stop & Shop chicken.  I’m not a huge fan of official reuseable bags because they don’t stay clean, but I often try to bring grocery bags to reuse since I can get a few visits from each of them.  Potatoes & goldfish were the big sale items so I went through twice (limit 1 per $25 transaction) to get two of both of those.

Because of timing, I didn’t take a picture of the Shaw’s visit on Friday where I bought 8 oatmeal, 8 pizza dough, and 4 pizza cheese.  I also stopped at Wegman’s on Friday.  The primary purpose was produce, but I also got a few of the items they hadn’t had last time like bagels and cereal.

My aim is to largely eat through our freezer right now, while fleshing it out with sale items from time to time.

Saturday:
Leftover chicken pot pie
Green beans
Harvest bread

Sunday:
Lemon chicken
Pan fried Brussels Sprouts
Pan fried potatoes
Salad

Monday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Tuesday:
I’m going out so likely pizza for the crew.

Wednesday:
Braised pork
Carrots
Homemade bread (type tbd)

Thursday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Friday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza