After last week’s big snow, I was glad to get to the grocery store again. This week, I spent $38.73 so far and am planning to spend the remaining $11 on milk and bread. I spent $12 at Mars and $26.73 at Target. I don’t think I’ll detail everything in a long boring list unless it is an awesome deal I need to explain to you this year.

Photo: SXC

I do want to let you know that if you have a Mars grocery store near you, you should keep a close eye on their produce clearance cart. I get tons of limes, pears, apples and bananas that are just ready to eat off my local cart if I stop in Sunday or Monday. I’m talking about pounds of stuff for a few dollars. I also get cheap rolls there – $1.69 for fresh baked, incredibly soft blunt rolls.)

Target deals to keep an eye out for are clearanced popcorn (Pop Secret was on clearance if you have coupons.) and holiday Oreos in a blue package with snowflakes on it.

How did you do this week?

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.

Wow! Martin’s is really holding some good sales lately. So good, I spent almost my entire $50 weekly grocery budget there. Good thing I still have plenty of fruit and meat. Anyway, if you have Martin’s near you, be sure to check out:

• Del Monte veggies for 49 cents a can. There’s a limit of 8 on this amazing deal. To make it better, look for the $1 off 5 coupon I found in my paper this week. (The flier stated that the deal was for peas, corn and green beans, but in the store, you can also get potatoes, beets and  other veggies for the sale price. Check the tags to find the sale items.)
• Betty Crocker Super Moist cake mix for 79 cents each.
• Scotties tissues for 79 cents each.
• San Giorgio pasta for…You guessed it! 79 cents each.
• Giant brand kidney beans 5/$3.

There’s also a buy five, get $3 off instant savings deal going on. I got Danimals yogurts and used some $1 off one coupons I got from somewhere…a magazine, I think. I ended up spending $5 for five items.

I won’t list everything else I bought, but there are some good frozen and dairy deals, too. How are you doing on your $50 grocery challenge this week?

This week, I headed to Martin’s to take advantage of a deal in this week’s ad. If you buy 8 items, you can save $4 instantly. The products I chose were ones I had coupons for:

Photo: Cindy Kalamajka/SXC

2 boxes of Betty Crocker Chex Mix Bars for $5 – 50 cents off each = $4 (Should have doubled, but didn’t. More on that later.)

2 Kraft Salad Dressing – $1.69 each – $1.25 each coupon = 88 cents

2 Quaker Quakes or Chips – $1.29 each – $1 each coupon =58 cents

2 Betty Crocker Supreme Brownies – $4 – $1 coupon =$3

A total of $8.46 – $4 instant savings = $4.46.

If you have more Quaker or Kraft coupons, you could do much better. Like having them pay you to remove food from the store better! Unfortunately, I’ve only been buying two papers lately, so didn’t have more coupons on hand.

On to the rest of my purchases:

2 bottles of A-1 (free after coupon in Sunday’s paper)

Sunchips

2 bags cheese curls

2 boxes of Mini Wheats

1 box Special K Berries

2 packages of chicken

2 packages of ravioli

2 packages of Capri Sun Sunrise drinks

a half pound of splurge cheese (Wenslydale with blueberries. Insanely expensive at $7.82.)

Vanilla

2 lbs of bananas

Kashi waffles

Milk

3 packs of string cheese

2 loaves of bread

Now, the bad news. It was 8 o’clock at night and I was trying to get out of the store, so I didn’t realize what a mess the kid made of my coupons. He shorted me about $10 – didn’t even use my free cereal coupon for the Special K and only rang up my $4 Mini Wheats at $2 for the b1g1 free coupon. He also neglected to ring up my $3 cheese coupon for the string cheese and only doubled one of the 50 cent coupons on my order. How I didn’t see that last night…Anyway, I spent $50.60 and saved $46.59, but the bill should have been a bit less than $40. At least he used my $5 off $50 and the $3 off $5 for the meat that Martins sent me in an email, though. I’ll have to go in to the customer service desk to see if they can fix it. His drawer was probably a wreck last night.

This week, I headed to ShopRite to buy my groceries. I actually spent $52, but I need to take something that rang up wrong back to have the price adjusted and then my total will be $50.50. (I couldn’t wait to talk to customer service because I had to get back to pick up the kids.)

I only used a few coupons because I didn’t have the sale paper to match things up with ahead of time and I forgot to go online to view the ad. Why would a store not send its ad out to nearby customers? Weird, huh? Anyway, I just basically picked up all their loss leaders and bought some produce. (Note to self. Go across the street to Mars to buy produce next time. I could have probably saved 50% on the produce costs.)

4 64 ounce containers of apple juice
1 gallon of milk
2 bags of ravioli
2 bags of fries
1 box of mini waffles
18 eggs
Mozzarella block
2 packs bacon
2 packs soft tortillas
2 packs cream cheese
Sour cream
Apples
Carrots
Broccoli
Tomatoes (I can’t wait til I’m picking my own produce again!)
2 loaves of bread
8 pack Bounty (I have really reduced my use of paper towels by using cloths I made from old flannel sheets, but there are some things I still use them for.)
2 packs of Fruit Chillers (I love these things. The kids call them ice cream and consider them dessert. I’m going to try to make my own during strawberry season this year.)
Marshmallows (They’ve been begging to make Rice Krispie Treats.)
5 packs Raman noodles
Teddy Grahams
Pasta

Not my best trip, but not bad for no planning. Some day, I will be organized again and will be able to buy this much for $25.

Doesn’t it make you feel good to know someone can buy groceries for around $50 even if they’re completely disorganized and unprepared?