Monday, August 3, 2009

Grocery Shopping: It's fun.

Way back when....I started to blog, it was my intent to have a personal finance blog. This stems from my obsession with personal finance. Then I pretty much ignored this premesis and wrote about whatever I wanted, well at least when I wrote at all.

But with that in mind I wanted to post about my grocery trip yesterday. When J moved out probably a month or two ago now I was rather excited with regards to food. You see I was completely spoiled in that she did all of the shopping and cooking really. It was kind of ridiculous. But it was also no where near as frugal as I am with myself. Also probably not necessarily as healthy.

And so with that in mind I give you yesterday's groceries:


Cucumber: .50 - Easy to eat vegetable. Sold per cucumber so I looked for a good sized one.
2 Ears of White Corn: .50 - Half vegetable half starch. I was looking for medium sized ones because if they're too big they don't fit in my pot but they were all pretty large. I leave the husks on because I won't get to eating them for a few days.
Green Pepper: .46 - So I got this more or less because it was on sale and recipes keep calling for peppers. We'll see how long it lasts and if I use it or not.
Asparagus: 1.61 - A particularly tasty vegetable I've recently discovered.
Eggplant: 1.08 - This was an experiment. I've never really eaten egg plant but it was on sale so I went for it. I'd forgotten from my produce day's how huge the suckers are. Tonight I cut off two good slices. Gave them a bit of olive oil and salt then grilled them. Put a bit of parmesean cheese on after grilling and it was half decent. Now we'll see how the rest of the thing keeps now that it's cut.
2 Bartlett Pears: 1.71 - Fruit of the week it seems. Too bad these suckers weigh a good bit. Relatively expensive which is sad.
Orange Juice: 1.50 - Not quite sure how this will be as it's non name-brand. But for the price I'm sure I'll drink it anyways.
Pretzels: 2.50 - I take a calculator with me and I could see that I was doing quite well and I knew that I'd pretty much run out of snacks in the house so I splurged on these puppies.
Wheat Bread: .99 - Generally I don't get bread. It's difficult for one person to eat a whole loaf before it goes bad and I'm not a fan of the freezer/fridge idea. But I wanted bread for lunches this week and this turned out quite cheaper than budgeted. Yay. Maybe I'll freeze some anyways just because recently I'd think of something to eat and then realize I have bread. I did this for like so many different things. Kinda lame.
2 Powerades: 2.00 - For after biking purposes only. It seems that either these or gatorades (my norms) are always on sale 10/$10.
Tomato Soup: .97 - One of two items that was not on sale. But since I was under budget I figured this shall work well for when I can't figure out what to eat.
Pea Soup Mix: 1.00 - A complete random find. But I love pea soup and so far I've been too lazy to make it. If this turns out well the company has all kinds of different types of soups. I'm not quite sure when I'll make it however being as normally soup is a lunch thing for me and I'd already planned for chicken salad sandwitches all week. Ah well. It also happened to be on sale - w00t.
Brown Sugar: 1.39  - The second and final non-sale item. Randomly useful and I only have like 1/4 cup left.
Macaroni and Cheese: 1.25 - This was in fact a planned item. Mostly with the reasoning being that last week I kinda sucked at meals so I kept being at a loss for what to eat and this type of thing is useful in such situations. And in fact I already made it tonight. I also tried a random brand that had a nicer looking picture than most (yay marketing). It happened to be organic - weird. The result was mediocre at best.
Apple Juice: 1.25 - Being as I don't like water, I drink juice. Specifically this shall be for my lunches. Really it would be so much easier if I would just drink water. Ah well.
The grand total: 10.70
Just about everything was on sale. That's how I generate my shopping list, browsing the sales circular. The "bonuscard savings" on this trip were 7.14.
I go shopping basically once a week. With the only exception really being milk. The problem with the milk is that I seem to vary from week to week with my consumption so I can't figure if a gallon or half gallon is appropriate.
It's ridiculous, and it's awesome.

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