Category Archives: Groceries

Grocery Update & Menu Plan

18 Wednesday Nov 2015

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Well, this post is really late!  Turns out this week is more chaotic than I thought and not just regarding dinner.  We have contractors doing minor work on the house.  The issue is, its a little everywhere.  Specifically, the main hallways are all being painted (among other things).  As of now the only room not affected is the living room, which means getting anything done and keeping the kids entertained requires much extra effort.

I thought meals would be back to normal after the last soccer game last weekend, but he got invited to participate in a tournament this weekend so we’ll have to postpone “normal” until after Thanksgiving.

Besides 2 evening soccer practices, we have second grade math night and a preschool event during the dinner hour this week.  First for the shopping,

I made a few stops this past week.  First, I went to Wegman’s.  The juice boxes are for one of the preschool dinners.  The paper wrappers are swordfish we ate last week.

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Over the weekend I went to the cheese festival at the farm stand.  Naturally, I got a few items, including a fair amount of cheese.  The brown bag is seconds bananas, which work out to about 10¢ each and are great for banana bread.  The blueberries were not on my plan, but were begged and pleaded for by my 4y (and they were all eaten by the end of the day).  The cranberry sauce was another extra.  We usually prefer the can shaped variety, but I’ve had a variety of “Turkey Dinner” sandwiches this month and I decided a less jelly-like version would make a better sandwich spread.

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Here’s the menu plan for this coming week.

Saturday:
Spaghetti

Sunday:
Chicken & Dumplings

Monday:
Kids: chicken nuggets, broccoli
Adults: homemade pizza

Tuesday:
Kids: eggs
Adults: homemade mac n cheese

Wednesday:
Beef stew
Oatmeal bread

Thursday:
Kids: shrimp, broccoli
Adults: leftovers

Friday:
Out at a preschool event.

Wegman’s Fails & Price Check

11 Wednesday Nov 2015

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Wegman’s has been open about a year now.  I wrote a review after it initially opened, but I thought I should revisit it.  I also completed my price comparisons between BJs & Wegman’s this week.

To follow-up on my review from a year back, I have been to Wegman’s more than I thought I would, especially over the summer when I was getting local produce from the farm stands and farmer’s markets.  I find their produce is often higher priced than Stop & Shop, but most other departments are priced better.  So, I spent the summer buying local produce, meats at BJs, and aisle items at Wegman’s.  Part of this also is that Stop & Shop was annoying me by making it hard to get bags, discontinuing items we purchase, and just generally being a less friendly place to shop.  And, while Wegman’s is still farther from our house, Stop & Shop is close to preschool which I’m not at in the summer.

All that being said, I’ve found some items at Wegman’s we really don’t like.  Specifically:

  • Store brand bottled water – I tried twice and the boys thought it tasted terrible.
  • Store brand egg noodles – They were much gummier than Stop & Shop.
  • Store brand deli meats – I tried a few though turkey and hard salami stood out as not great.
  • White mushrooms – I would have thought these would be fail proof, but two tries and neither were very good, and spoiled fast.
  • Store brand extra sharp cheddar cheese – It doesn’t compare to Cracker Barrel (which Wegman’s doesn’t sell).
  • Store brand pizza dough – It doesn’t compare to Boston Pizza Company (which Wegman’s doesn’t sell).

On the plus side, most of the store brand items I have tried we’ve been happy with – salad dressings, cream cheese, breads, etc.  I’ve also been happy with both their seafood and meat departments.  And, the aisle items are still cheaper than Stop & Shop.

So, this past week I was able to complete the price comparisons between Wegman’s and BJs.  I’d been hoping to do this for a while as Wegman’s advertises that their Family Packs make club memberships unnecessary.  Well, its still necessary.  I checked 30 items across all departments except produce (which I only rarely buy at BJs anyway).  I only found five items – pork butt, NY strip steak, Babybel cheeses, Swanson beef broth, and Kosher salt – that are cheaper at Wegman’s using standard pricing.  Most items are decidedly more.  There are some that are basically the same – whole chickens, milk (with Wegman’s card), Finish tabs, 3oz bath cups, cream of mushroom soup, and tomato paste.  I think generally, though I’ll stick with my basic categorizations for purchases and continue to look for sales, especially the best of the year variety.

Grocery Update & Menu Plan

09 Monday Nov 2015

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Things are returning to normal, in fact more than normal as evening sports are phasing out for the year.  The last one is tonight.  So, we’ll hopefully be having more family meals.

I went to Stop & Shop again this week.  Frankly, I can’t think of the last time I went two weeks in a row!  But, they had some good things on sale.  The Coke, juice, and Oreos were the big coupon items of the week.  Pasta, bacon, cheese, and sugar were on sale.  The cans are tomato sauce, which was on sale though not the best of the year sale.  I’m out so I only bought what we’ll use soon.  English muffins were buy 1, get 2 free (which is the only time I ever buy them).  Finally, Hood ice cream was on sale and if you bought that you could get a store brand ice cream free.

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The next day I went to BJs.  The apples (better the grubby hands get their own bags vs a big grab bowl) and bananas are for soccer snack this past weekend.  The frozen pizzas are probably enough to last me through the winter – adds to my lunch options.  They were out of pizza dough or I would have gotten that too.

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Thursday I went to Shaw’s, primarily to pick up the pizza dough BJs didn’t have.  But, oatmeal & cheese were on sale so I bought them out of those two items.  The candy was a post Halloween sale and we somehow got next to no Kit Kats this year.  Since they’re a family favorite I thought I’d grab the sale bag.

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Finally, on Friday I went to Wegman’s.  I’d thought I’d take the week off, but the boys were asking for dried strawberries (for which there was a coupon this week, and which I forgot to put in the picture).  So, I also got two chickens and lemons for dinner over the weekend, as well as a few things that are usually cheaper than Wegman’s.  Since I had both younger boys with me I didn’t attempt to work on the price book.

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Here’s the menu plan for this coming week.

Saturday:
out for Japanese Hibachi

Sunday:
Spatchcocked lemon chicken
baked potatoes
Brussels sprouts

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Monday:
Kids: mac n cheese, broccoli
Adults: homemade pizza

Tuesday:
fish (not sure which yet, I’ll decide what inspires me when I’m there)
salad
rice

Wednesday:
spaghetti
potato bread

Thursday (I’m out.):
eggs

Friday:
Out at a preschool event.

More on Fridges vs Freezers

05 Thursday Nov 2015

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Some time back I wrote about the virtues of fridges vs freezers and their relative capacity.  In summary, I know lots of folks have second freezers, but for us a second fridge is far more relevant.

For example, I largely cleaned out our fridge before we went on vacation.  Our second fridge primarily holds drinks so I didn’t worry so much about that one.  (At this point it also had lemons, limes, and apples.)  Here’s the pictures I took upon our return (note I bought one gallon of milk just before we left specifically so the expiration date would get through the first two meals or so when we got back).

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Upon our return I promptly went to BJs, among other places, and both filled up again.  But, the freezers.  No.  They stayed pretty much the same through the entire process.

Anyway, as I was thinking about this I realized that The Frugal Girl had posted about something shockingly similar just before we went on our trip.  Specifically, she had cleaned out her chest freezer (I think she only has one fridge.) and found a variety of VERY old things, including three frozen turkeys.  Now, I thought, if someone who tracks their food waste so well (she admits this tracking started after the chest freezer was purchased) can have so much old stuff buried in their freezer, what hope is there for the rest of us?

This is not to say that I don’t use our freezers.  I keep meat in there temporarily.  They almost always have bread.  I do freeze some extras/leftovers.  I keeps some flours/nuts/butter there.  But, I can pretty much always see everything.  So, every time I open it I’m faced with the mental note of what I should maybe use up.

The downside to this is the upcoming months when turkeys (and other roasts) go on excellent sales.  If I had more space I could freeze lots of them to eat over the rest of the winter.  I even noticed BJs has a frozen turkey purchase limit this year.  But, I don’t want to be roasting in the oven come summer.  Nor do we want to eat turkey every weekend.  So, I think I’m going to stick with buying fresh items as best I can and save the freezing for someone/something else.

October Grocery Review

02 Monday Nov 2015

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The numbers are low this month largely because we were traveling for a large chunk.  But, we’re also getting into stock up sale season so we’ll have to see how that affects things through the end of the year.

I wanted to take some extra space to talk about my crazy Stop & Shop shopping the last week in October.  Because of that, and because with the hectic schedule this week its not very interesting, I’m going to skip the menu for this week.

  • October TOTAL: $608.28
    • Stop & Shop: $208.52
    • Wegman’s: $98.88
    • BJs: $219.70
    • Other: $81.18
      • Local: $23.22
      • Star Market: $42.83
      • Trader Joe’s: $15.13
      • Target: $0
      • Other: $0

I only went to one grocery store this week – Stop & Shop.  But, because of transaction limitations I went through 7 times!

I went twice on Tuesday.  It wasn’t super efficient because I actually went morning and afternoon because I had very small time windows, but I was only two blocks away to start each time.  Here’s purchase #1:

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Here’s purchase #2:

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Notice their shocking similarity!  Yes, the only change is cheese instead of grape tomatoes.  Ever other item is transaction limited and I only had one coupon for free grape tomatoes.  Frankly, I probably wouldn’t have gone back in the afternoon except that I realized that I needed the cheese Thursday morning for the boys’ preschool Halloween parties (that’s why its orange), and I wasn’t going to shop again until after I dropped them off.

Sale prices for the transaction limited items:
– granola bars @ $1.88/box, limit 5
– soda @ $3.00/sleeve, limit 3
Limit 1 with a total purchase over $25 after all coupons:
– bread @ $1.98
– OJ @ $1.88
– chips @ $4.99
– chocolate chips @ $1.99
– potatoes @ $0.97 (since this is for a 5lb bag, its just under 20¢/lb, which even the Prudent Homemaker would approve of)

Thursday I was more efficient, going through 5 times and stopping at the car to drop off items each time.  (Note: I bought the perishables last.)  This is where their self scanner option is very handy, because I had to make $25 after coupons on each transaction to get the single item per transactions as described above.  Since I haven’t been to Stop & Shop in a while, and there are a few items I can’t get anywhere else, it took a number of transactions to get this all done.  If I’d priced it all out I probably could have gotten away with one fewer transaction, but I’m really not complaining.

Here’s the total of my five rounds on Thursday:

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I got chocolate chips and potatoes all five times through.  I got one more OJ.  I got one more set of 5 granola bars (subbing in two boxes of cereal at $1.88 each since I’d bought out the shelf of granola bars and cereal was part of the sale too).  Most items were on sale plus I had coupons for the fruit cups and sugar on top of their sale prices.

Items that weren’t on sale:
bananas – Regularly 39¢/lb. I really can’t ask much more.
hot dogs – The store recently lowered the every day price to what used to be the standard sale price.
hot dog buns
egg noodles
salsa – yes, it does sometimes go on sale
store brand yogurt
parmesan cheese
bacon – Bummer that it went on sale this week.  I’ll buy a few more.
baby carrots – The smaller bags were on sale, but the larger bags were better per pound.

The total for seven rounds came to $179.57, which is pretty good given that I had to spend $175 after coupons to use all of them.  And, the machine didn’t balk at my many consecutive transactions, though the sales folks did find it funny.

CSA Week #20, 2015

29 Thursday Oct 2015

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This is the last one.  And, while its fairly good for us, I was surprised that there weren’t more storage crops in it.  There are also a lot of duplicates from last week.

The good:  green peppers, grape tomatoes, apples, broccoli

The ok: buttkin squash, eggs (medium?, and really you can get eggs pretty much anywhere), carrots, spinach, scallions, leeks (again, really), red cabbage, escarole

The waste/donate: cilantro, kale

In a final attempt to add some variety, this week I’ll take the “good” category plus the spinach, scallions, and cabbage.

The farmer’s markets also close this week.  Though, we have a holiday version prior to Thanksgiving to give everyone one last chance to stock up for the holiday or whatever they can store for the winter.  I fully expect to buy a large supply of apples, if nothing else.

Grocery Update & Menu Plan

26 Monday Oct 2015

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Since we emptied the fridge (largely) before going on our trip, I had some restocking to do this past week.

First I went to Wegmans.  Nothing particular out of the ordinary here, except that the bananas are organic.  I had a coupon for $1 off organic produce and while I would have preferred to use it on strawberries (couldn’t find organic ones) or tomatoes (price difference was too high), the bananas made the most sense.  So I got this batch for $0.19.  We can’t tell the difference other than they spoil very fast.

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The next day I went to BJs.  Again, most is self explanatory and things you’ve seen before.  The Skittles are for Halloween; the Hershey’s kisses are for winter baking.  There are three beef roasts because I bought a primal and had them break it down and trim it.  I’m actually going to break it down further to make one batch of beef stew this week, and one batch of beef chunks I’ll freeze for beef stew sometime in the future.

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Then, over the weekend I took the older four boys to the farm stand for pumpkins and the hay maze.  Plus we got some in season produce.  Obvious exception is the bananas since they don’t grow around here.  This farm stand is a big one, open year round, and imports produce from all over.  The green beans are no longer local either (sigh); they’re from Georgia.

The two bags of green are broccoli and green beans.  There is some local apple cider.  The two paper bags are seconds bananas.  I took them out and sorted them in the second picture.  Those on the left could be eaten if its done fast enough.  Those on the right will be turned into banana bread more quickly.  It turned out there were 30 bananas at $3.00, or $0.10 per banana, which is pretty good.

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Here’s the menu plan for this coming week.

Saturday:
leftover beef stew

Sunday:
Chinese take out

Monday:
Kids: leftovers (mix of pizza & Chinese)
Adults: homemade pizza

Tuesday:
tacos

Wednesday:
succulent braised pork
mashed potatoes
green beans

Thursday:
Kids:  shrimp, green beans
Adults: homemade mac n cheese

Friday:
Kids: hot dogs
Adults: homemade pizza

CSA Week #19, 2015

22 Thursday Oct 2015

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Well, we’re holding and maybe moving backwards.

The good:  broccoli, green peppers, grape tomatoes, apples, leeks

The ok: buttkin squash, escarole, red cabbage, spinach, carrots

The waste/donate: cilantro, kale

This week I’ll take the “good” category plus the buttkin squash.  Not sure I’ve ever had that one, but I’m assuming its a winter squash of some sort.  Frankly, this time of year I’d prefer to have beans, Brussels sprouts, cauliflower, and lettuce vs the “ok” and “waste” categories.  I’ll have to track some of those down on my own.

CSA Week #18, 2015

15 Thursday Oct 2015

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Not quite as good as last week, but still only one true miss.

The good:  apples, pears, cauliflower, red leaf lettuce, green peppers, swiss chard, winter squash

The ok: broccolini, parsley, spinach, carrots, romano beans, escarole

The waste/donate: beets

Again, I only need to purchase the “good” category!  This is two weeks in a row, which is fabulous.  My guess starting this was that we’d do better in the fall than the spring and that seems to be proving itself to be true.  I do feel like a few of these things are coming a lot so I will need to think about getting them used promptly even though they keep longer, or I’ll end up with cauliflower overload, for example.

September Grocery Review

12 Monday Oct 2015

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We’re back in the fall routine now.  Unfortunately the number is getting a little higher than I might like so I’ll have to pay more attention going forward.

A few observations about this month.  The local number is still fairly high, but half of this is a single nice meats purchase.  I haven’t been to the farmer’s market since before school started because its schedule doesn’t fit well with the school schedule.  I’ve been at the farm stand pretty regularly though – lots of green beans and corn on the cob specifically.  Second, I haven’t been to Target in what seems like forever, though that’s probably ok.  Third, I discovered that BJs is now carrying our preferred pizza dough, which will reduce my Star Market number going forward.  Finally, the Stop & Shop number looks a lot higher, but that included two birthday cakes.

  • September TOTAL: $1254.22
    • Stop & Shop: $273.06
    • Wegman’s: $353.96
    • BJs: $332.20
    • Other: $295.00
      • Local: $230.66
      • Star Market: $55.18
      • Trader Joe’s: $9.16
      • Target: $0
      • Other: $0

I didn’t do too much shopping this week.  I was at BJs first.

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Then I went to the farm stand.  It’s a little hard to see in the picture, but from the top left are broccoli, corn on the cob, green beans, and shallots.

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Here’s the menu plan for this week.  By necessity it is very simple and easy clean-up.

Saturday I was out all day
Kids: chicken nuggets, carrots
Adults: homemade pizza

Sunday:
beef & broccoli stir fry
rice

Monday:
Kids: macaroni & cheese
Adults: homemade pizza

Tuesday:
Spaghetti

Wednesday:
take out pizza

Thursday:
Chinese take out

Friday:
Kids: Eggs
Adults: Homemade pizza