So, the two week grocery challenge will be up on Saturday and I’m not planning any more trips to the store because we’re going to be eating leftovers like Thanksgiving sandwiches. Yum. I think I like them better than the actual meal! Anyway, I was able to stay under $50 for two weeks. My brother did buy a second gallon of milk with his own money, but he was making a huge batch of rice pudding, which has been his specialty ever since he worked at a restaurant that served it and needed the milk for that.

Photo: Vangelis Thomaidis/SXC

What did I get?
Gallon of milk 3.60
Ton of tea from Amazon 16.00
Dinner out $7
Trip to Martin’s $22.65

• 2 bags of chips (Buy 1, Get 1 Free)
• Paper towels (I try to use rags when possible, but I haven’t been able to cut them out completely.)
• Macaroni salad
• 7 Banquet frozen meals (Only $2 total after instant savings. I had a coupon off 6, so I only spent 80 cents total on them. Look hard at the fat and calorie content. Most of them are pretty high in both, but there were a few that weren’t too terrible.)
• 2 Dr. Oetker pizzas (Best pizza in the world. I like the spinach pizza the best.)
• Foot long Italian sub

Free food – The really nice farmer my brother helps out when he can gave us a ton of yams fresh from the ground last week, my mom gave me some apples because the packing house was overly generous with her box of seconds and my sister stopped in at the bread outlet and gave me a bag of bagels, which I used instead of a bag I had in the freezer.

My total for two weeks was $49.25 and I actually got a break because of the three convenience meals. (Eating out, subs and mac. salad and pizzas.) We got to use up a lot of stuff that needed to be rotated out  of the pantry and had a lot of fun with new recipes, like pepperoni pizza bread in the breadmaker and veggie filled tortillas. (We’re going to try the pizza bread again sometime, but with more cheese. The oregano completely overpowered the cheese.)

Now, if you are going to try this challenge, you do need to have a stockpile to start with or you’ll end up being really frustrated and overwhelmed. You may also want to completely avoid the convenience stuff. The pizzas were only $2 each because I had coupons from last week’s Sunday paper, but the sub meal was $11 and the meal out was $7. That’s about a third of the money right there. If I wouldn’t have already had enough fruit and veggies to use, I wouldn’t have been able to afford to do the meal out.

I think I’m going to try the challenge again soon without convenience meals to see if I can really build the stockpile, at the same time. I’m not going to do it next week, though. I’m going to need to stock up on bread and meat, so I’ll be doing a $50 trip on Sunday.

We were looking at our grocery stockpile this week and realized we had all of the shelves pretty full and we had plenty of fruit and veggies, too. So, we’re going to try a $50 for 14 day grocery challenge. Will we be able to do it? I don’t know, but it will be fun to try. We’re planning to add the extra cash to our savings account for a rainy day.

Photo via amazon.com

Yesterday, I spent no money on groceries. Today, I bought a case of one of my favorite teas from Amazon for the stockpile. It was $16, but will last about 6 months. I wasn’t sure if I should count the whole case of tea in the $50 challenge, but someone gave me a ton of fruit and bread today, so I think it will even out.

So, that brings my total grocery challenge money until the end of November to $34. Want to play along?

(Oh, if you are interested in the tea deal, I love Twinings British Blend tea and it is on sale for $22.89 for a six pack. Until Nov 30th, you can use the code TETTEA44 to get another 25% off. Add something small to get the total from $22.89 to $25 and get free shipping, too. I added a baby bib. Then, I used a $5 Swagbucks gift card I earned to get the total to $16. You may be able to do even better because there is a 15% off when you do subscribe and save deal, but I didn’t know if you could enter the 25% off code before it checks you out and I’d rather save 25% if I couldn’t combine the two.)