I made two significant trips this week and one small one that I did not take pictures of.  The small one first – I stopped at the farm stand for green beans and ham.

Now for the pictures (Apologies for the poor lighting.  I haven’t figured winter lighting out in this house yet.).  On Monday, I went to Stop & Shop.  Everything here was on sale except the juice, yogurt, and hot dogs.  Pasta was on its best sale of the year, but I had some already and I don’t buy a full year at a time.  Bottom round was $1.99/lb, which is great compared to its usual $4.99/lb.  I bought six pounds then cubed and froze it for later use.  Bananas were not on sale, but I had a store coupon for 10¢/lb off, bringing them to 29¢/lb.  So, I bought enough to match with the container of yogurt when making banana bread.  Most of this will be frozen for later use.

On Wednesday, I went to BJs.  Many of these items had BJs coupons, though I had to work extra hard to use two of them.  More about that on Thursday.  I sous vided the pork chops over the weekend and they came out great.  It’s been a while since we had pork chops as they usually come out dry, but this method seemed to mitigate that problem so we’ll probably put them back in the rotation.

I’m not going to post another menu plan until we get out of soccer season in a couple of weeks.  But, we did eat and I did buy groceries.

That being said, I bought so few groceries that I did two stops in one trip and only took one picture.  The oatmeal is from Shaw’s.  I did also get 6 each of pizza dough and pizza cheese, but they had to go into the freezer/fridge before I had time to take the picture.  The primary reason for the Wegman’s stop was the granola bars which two of mine eat for breakfast among other uses.  The other handful of items were just to top off the pantry. All in all a nice, light week.

I did a lot of grocery shopping last week.  I admit it.

On Monday, I went to Wegman’s.  Most of this was standard restocking.  The avocados were for tacos later in the week.  The cheeses were for an evening social event.  It turned out I didn’t need the eggs as we already had another pack, but we’ll eat them eventually.  (For those of you thinking 8 dozen is a lot of eggs, which is what I had once these entered the house, the boys have eggs for dinner most every Friday and they eat a dozen.  Add in breakfast and cooking egg uses and we’ll certainly eat them up long before I have to worry about how to use them.)

On Tuesday, I went to BJs.  I’m back to going every 4 weeks or so, so this was a big trip.  I took a picture of some of the items in the trunk as they were heading for the fridge/freezer in the garage.  I had some trouble with the lighting; the glow on the left is more bread.  As you can see, I bought my Halloween candy supply.  I really don’t know how many kids we’ll have this year so I may have over bought.  But, over is better than under and I made sure to choose things we don’t mind indulging on.  I hadn’t intended to get brown sugar, but in store they had a buy two spices get free brown sugar coupon.  Since I was planning to purchase 3 spices anyway, I grabbed one more + 2 coupons + 2 bags of brown sugar.  Along with that, there were coupons for PB, chocolate chips, chicken broth, and chips.

Then, we had weekend company so on Saturday we went to Wegman’s again to pick up items to BBQ.  We had steaks, salad, creamed spinach, pan fried potatoes, and banana cake.  I picked up a few other items while I was there.

Shopping is getting a bit more regular lately.  I think I’ve finally restocked those items we used up prior to the move so I’ve had fewer “I forgot X” trips.  That being said, I barely squeezed in a BJs trip on Monday so I took the picture of the pile in the car trunk and back seat.  If you look closely you can also see that it was raining.  I try not to go shopping when its raining because I don’t like loading/unloading in the rain, but sometimes it can’t be avoided.

On Thursday I went to Shaw’s.  They were out of pizza cheese last week so I mostly went for that.  But, oatmeal is also on sale for $1/box ($1.79 off), which is a pretty good deal so I bought the max (8) allowed for that item too.

Finally, on Saturday I went to Wegman’s.  This was largely a restocking effort.  The cookies were for a dessert/appetizer pot luck that night.  The older bananas were to top off my supply at home so I can make two loaves of banana bread plus one banana cake this afternoon.

And, the meal plan.  I went easy this week and bought a few pre-made items from Wegman’s.  This is still cheaper than take out.

Saturday:
Chicken cacciatore
Bread

Sunday:
Braised pork
Carrots
Mashed potatoes

Monday:
Spaghetti with Sunday Sauce
Bread
Raw veggies

Tuesday:
We have afternoon and evening activities so: Take out pizza

Wednesday:
Tacos

Thursday:
Kids: Macaroni & cheese
Adults: Tuna noodle casserole

Friday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza

I made two trips to the grocery store this week.

On Friday, I went to Shaw’s.  This is a huge trip there for me, but they had lots on sale.  The grapes and bananas are for soccer snacks.  They didn’t have any pizza cheese.  I learned Italian wasn’t a great substitute.

On Sunday, I went to Stop & Shop.  I find myself doing more weekend grocery shopping lately.  It’s a bit hard to predict the weekend menu with sports and weather.  Since we like to BBQ when possible, the current path has been to wait and shop day of.  It’s not an extra trip, just another thing to squeeze in on the weekend.  The fish is for dinner.  The ham is for school lunches.  The frozen veggies are for the baby – she likes these.  Pasta was on sale along with ice cream, cheese, goldfish, and applesauce.