Category Archives: Groceries

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 12, 2017

27 Monday Mar 2017

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Produce is definitely driving my shopping at the moment.

I made a small trip to Stop & Shop on Tuesday.

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Then I made a small trip to Wegman’s on Wednesday.

On Sunday, I went for the big weekly shopping trip.  Note how much of it is still produce!  And, yes, all the blueberries from Wednesday had been eaten by this point.

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Dinners were all pretty straight forward this week.

Monday:
Sous vide salmon
Pan fried potatoes
Salad

Tuesday:
Kids: Take out pizza
Adults: Homemade pizza

Wednesday:
Penne Gorgonzola with chicken
Green beans
Salad

Thursday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Friday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Chicken pot pie
Broccoli

Sunday:
Chili
Corn muffins

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 11, 2017

20 Monday Mar 2017

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This was a more sane week of grocery shopping.

On Monday I made a small trip to Wegman’s.  My primary need was actually Spray ‘n Wash, which wouldn’t be pictured here since it isn’t food.  But, there was a snow storm coming (no school Tuesday and 2 hour delay Wednesday as it turned out) so I got the obligatory french toast ingredients and a few side items since more people would be home.

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We were in pretty good shape for the whole week, largely eating from the freezer.  On Friday I went to Shaw’s to stock up on the three items I only buy there – oatmeal, pizza dough, and pizza cheese.  The first and third were on sale (pizza dough basically never goes on sale) so that was a win.

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Finally, yesterday I made the big weekly trip to Wegman’s.  I could have waited a day or two, but the schedule this weeks prevents me from going until at least Thursday so it was better to just get it done.  It also gave me a few more options for dinner.

 

I’m trying to keep up the dinner variety before baseball/soccer season kicks in in a few weeks and we’re more limited to quick foods.

Monday:
Fajitas

Tuesday:
Kids: Hot dogs
Adults: Homemade pizza

Wednesday:
Sous vide beef roast
Mashed potatoes
Carrots

Thursday:
Spaghetti & Meatballs

Friday:
Kids: Chicken nuggets
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Enchiladas
Corn

Sunday:
Sous vide rib eyes
Homemade rolls
Salad

 

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 10, 2017

13 Monday Mar 2017

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Things largely held to plan this week.  I planned to go to Stop & Shop and BJ’s.  I got to both of them on Monday.

I went to BJ’s first.  Rather beverage heavy, I think.  We ate the salmon for dinner that night.

 

Then I made the visit to Stop & Shop.  Everything was on sale except the bananas.  Since the chicken was down to 77¢/lb, I bought three packages.  We ate one and I froze the others.  One package is basically one meal for us.

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Tuesday was the shop local fundraiser for the preschool.  I don’t usually buy soup there, but in the spirit of the fundraiser I decided to give these a try.  They’re both good, though I’d probably lean towards the butternut squash if I buy any again.

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By Wednesday I had figured out a plan for the weekend, so I went to Wegman’s also.

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It’s been a produce heavy shopping week.  I did also go to Stop & Shop briefly on Saturday in anticipation of the 1-2 feet of snow we’re supposed to get tomorrow and Wednesday.  I bought 6 gallons to carry us through the storm, a package of mushrooms, and bananas.

You may see some of the above items in the menu.

Saturday:
Kids: Chicken nuggets
Adults: Out

Sunday:
Asiago chicken

Monday:
Salmon
Rice
Salad

Tuesday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza

Wednesday:
Pot roast
Mashed potatoes
Salad

Thursday:
Lemon chicken
Pan fried potatoes
Broccoli

Friday:
Kids: Chicken nuggets
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Beef with snow peas
Rice

Sunday:
Pork tenderloin
Green beans
Homemade white bread

 

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 8, 2017

27 Monday Feb 2017

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I feel like I was in and out of grocery stores all week.  No stop was particularly large, there were just a lot of them.

On Tuesday, I went to Wegman’s and Stop & Shop.  The first picture is Wegman’s.  Not all of this will be eaten this week (or next).  The fish is all frozen, for example.  Similarly, I intended to buy one pepper, but it was almost the same price as six so I got the larger pack.  I gave away two and we’ll plan to eat some extra salads to use up the rest.

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This is Stop & Shop.  So why both in the same day?  Wegman’s doesn’t carry Kraft/Cracker Barrel and we have tried their cheddar and found it not as good.  The don’t carry either diced tomatoes or Russet potatoes in as large containers making Stop & Shop’s unit price better, especially when both are on sale.  Blueberries were buy one, get one free.

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On Thursday I went to Shaw’s.  Why?  There are many reasons.  (1) The boys prefer their store brand of oatmeal.  (2) No other store in our area carries either Taster’s Choice French Roast or Kraft pizza cheese, both of which we prefer.  (3) While other stores do carry this pizza dough, I can purchase many at a time here and freeze them.  They’re all the same price.  I also picked up swiss cheese that I had forgotten from Stop & Shop.  I got some additional jalapenos because I decided two wasn’t enough.  And I grabbed a can of beans for chili, which I was told had to have beans in it.

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On Saturday, I went to Stop & Shop again – different sale cycle.  Onions and chicken were buy one, get one free.  Orange juice was on sale plus I had both a store and manufacture’s coupon for two so I got an additional $2.00 off the sale price.  The cheese was on sale.  The tonic, mushrooms, and bananas we were just out of.

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Finally, on Sunday, I went to BJ’s.  My primary purpose was diapers.  (We’re enrolled for Amazon’s subscription service, but its hard to match use to auto deliveries so I supplement with BJ’s.  Our next delivery isn’t until Friday and we weren’t going to make it that far.)  I got our usual milk and bread.  Shrimp and tuna had coupons.  The stir fry beef was for dinner that night.  Interestingly, the nut bars were free with a coupon.  But, they actually saved me $2.00 on my bill because the coupon rang up to the full amount even though there was an e-coupon for $2.00 off.  We’ve never had them, but just taking them out of the store was a bonus!

 

It was school vacation week so we went a bit easy on dinners.

Monday:
Leftovers

Tuesday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Wednesday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza

Thursday:
Chili
Corn muffins

Friday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Fish tacos
Guacamole
Pico de gallo

Sunday:
Beef & broccoli stir fry
Rice

Grocery Update & What We Ate, – Week 7, 2017

20 Monday Feb 2017

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This week was one moderate sized trip to BJs and one small trip to the farm stand.

I went to BJs (again, despite a recent trip) on Friday.  Since I was pressed for time I took the photos in the trunk in two layers.  So, you’ll see I did buy some non-food items also.  But, it can be fairly summarized as lots of milk, bread, and chicken (actual chicken is under the nuggets).

Then, Sunday I went to the farm stand to restock green beans and broccoli.  I got harvest chicken salad (cranberries, pecans, and a yogurt binder) for lunch and snap peas because they were on sale.

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We ate in every night except Sunday, and largely from things already on hand.

Monday:
Chicken pot pie

Tuesday:
Tacos

Wednesday:
Kids: Pancakes* or leftover chicken pot pie
Adults: Homemade pizza

Thursday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Friday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Ham
Sausage stuffing
Broccoli
Spinach salad

Sunday:
Out

*The boys are usually reluctant to have any breakfast item beyond eggs for dinner.  But, the preschooler had homework associated with If You Give a Pig a Pancake that included reading the book, coloring a pancake, and making pancakes.  So four of them (plus the baby girl) made an exception and one finished off the leftover chicken pot pie.  This was his once a year homework assignment.

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 6, 2017

13 Monday Feb 2017

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After a week off, I went to BJ’s and Target plus multiple trips to Stop & Shop and Wegman’s.

Monday was BJ’s.  It has been a while since I’d been, and I had a lot of coupons so it was a pretty big visit.  While I was over that way, I picked up some water, juice, and raisins at Target.

On Wednesday, I went to Wegman’s and Stop & Shop.  This was a stock up day.  I had intended to go to Stop & Shop, but we were forecast to get a lot of snow starting Wednesday night.  We did get quite a bit and after three storms and multiple snow days I’m glad I went to Wegman’s also.  For example, we ate all these eggs in one week!

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I needed to go to Stop & Shop to order cakes for the weekend.  I got a number of other items that were on sale also.  The cheese and herbs were the only items not on sale.

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On Saturday, I went to Wegman’s and Stop & Shop again in the break between storms.  The primary purpose of Wegman’s was to pick up wine and ingredients for our Valentine’s Day dinner (lobster thermador, which we ate Saturday night).  Yes, more eggs.  Bread for french toast.  Lollipops for the birthday party.  Meatballs, pork, tomatoes, and applesauce to restock.  Lobster, herbs, and raspberries for the dinner.

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At Stop & Shop, I picked up the cakes and celery for the dinner.  Eggos, OJ, tuna, and mushrooms were on sale.  The other items were just to restock knowing we would be at home with more snow.

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With all the snow, we did pretty well for dinners.

Monday:
Sous vide salmon
Pan fried potatoes
Broccoli

Tuesday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Wednesday:
Sous vide steak
Baked potatoes
Carrots

Thursday (snow bound potluck with our neighbor):
Kids: Macaroni & cheese plus leftover steak
Adults: Chili

Friday:
Kids: Chicken nuggets
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Lobster thermidor, spinach salad, potato

Sunday:
Kids: Shrimp & broccoli
Adults: Homemade pizza

January 2017 Grocery Review

06 Monday Feb 2017

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So, the Super Bowl was last night as we live in New England.  Yes, I did watch it.  Yes, I thought about turning it off at halftime.  No, I didn’t.  I saw the end.  But, that’s the reason this post is going up so late.

Now for the subject at hand.  After a huge month of December, January was far more reasonable.  This makes sense as there weren’t parties to provide food for and I didn’t stock up on meat the same as in December.  Hopefully, things will stay more like this going forward.

  • January TOTAL: $791.38
    • Stop & Shop: $84.09
    • Wegman’s: $525.95
    • BJs: $120.04
    • Other: $61.30
      • Local: $16.65
      • Star Market: $44.65
      • Trader Joe’s: $0
      • Target: $0
      • Other: $0

After no grocery trips last week, I did make four stops this week.  There was a quick visit to Shaw’s for pizza dough, pizza cheese, and oatmeal (no picture).

On Monday I went to Wegman’s.  I must say the peaches have been a disappointment.  Very stringy and mushy.  I’m going back to the Dole pack from BJs after this one.  This was a bit of an expensive trip with all the cheese.  I was also disappointed to discover that milk prices are going up so the milk alone was about $7 more than last time.

Then, on Thursday I went to Stop & Shop and the farm stand.  The cider and deli turkey are from the farm stand.  Everything else is from Stop & Shop.  Everything was on sale except the jalapeno and the hot dogs so this was more of a stock up vs getting ready for the week shop.

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We did eat last week, though.

Saturday: gone

Sunday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Monday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza

Tuesday:
Chili
Corn muffins

Wednesday:
BBQ chicken
Biscuits
Salad

Thursday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Friday:
Kids: Chicken nuggets
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
Salmon with lemon-chive butter
Pan fried potatoes
Salad

Sunday (Super Bowl):
Homemade pizza

Eating What We’ve Got – Jan 2017

26 Thursday Jan 2017

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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.

 

Grocery Update & What We Ate – Week 3, 2017

23 Monday Jan 2017

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I decided to change things up a bit and list what we actually ate last week, vs my plan for the upcoming week.  I still have a plan, but I’ve found over the last year I need to be more flexible so things move around a bit.  For example, this past Saturday was nearly 60°, so we pulled some steaks from the freezer to BBQ.  Since this often means meals move from the end of one week to the start of the next, they were coming up twice on the “plan.”  This way, you’ll only see them once.

Two shopping trips this past week.  I went to Wegman’s on Wednesday.  I would have gotten 14 milk (the baby is on whole milk now so I’m adding two of those), but only 12 fit well in a standard cart.  We’ll have to see if I can fit more in a BJ’s cart.  I had coupons for the bread crumbs and loaf of bread.  What you can’t see in the bag between the bagels and the limes are chives.

Then, on Friday I went to Stop & Shop. I promised the boys “pizza in the living room” for the AFC Championship game so there are some supplies for that.  The blueberries & potatoes were buy one/get one free.  (I promptly made a batch of blueberry muffins when I got home.)  The mushrooms and fruit cups were on sale (plus I had a coupon for the fruit cups).  The cucumber (60¢) got tossed in to get me just over $15 in produce so I could use a $3 off coupon.

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Since we have this one chance, here’s what I planned to eat this week.  Now, for what we actually ate.  Since I write these posts Sunday evening/Monday morning, I’ve moved the weekend to the end of the list.

 

Monday:
Spaghetti & meatballs

Tuesday (I didn’t end up going out.):
Sous vide salmon
Pan fried potatoes
Green beans

Wednesday:
Kids: White chili
Adults: Homemade pizza

Thursday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Baked paccheri

Friday:
Kids: Chicken nuggets
Adults: Homemade pizza

Saturday:
BBQ rib eyes
Baked potato
Carrots

Sunday:
Homemade pizza

Updating the Price Book

19 Thursday Jan 2017

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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.)

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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.