Taking two little boys to the grocery store is torture for this mama. TORTURE. You know how I sometimes complain about the two of them loving on one another a little too much in the store resulting in falling down in the aisles or chasing one another around the produce? This was not a “love” trip. This was a, “Mom, why did you decide to have another kid? I wish you didn’t have another kid. Why didn’t you stop at me? I don’t want my brother.” trip. True story.

{Sigh} So, if you saw me at Safeway today, please try not to judge me by my parenting skillz, or lack thereof. I was ready to pull my hair out! Grr!

With that being said, I didn’t do any really crazy deals. I just stuck to my list.

This is what I ended up with today:

Yeah, I kinda freaked out a bit at the register. $50.58 is WAY more than I usually spend in one trip. (I budget $50 a WEEK!) However, once I started putting the meat away, I realized that I have at least 11 meat-as-main-dish meals here, plus a bunch of sides and meatless meals.

Some highlights:

LOTS of the value packs of meat are BOGO right now.

• I ended up buying two packages of chicken: thighs and leg quarters BOGO @ $1.49/lb for $8.67, which ends up being 74¢/lb. As soon as I got home I pulled the skin off, tossed a few pieces of chicken at a time in freezer bags (7, total) and squeezed some soon-to-be-expired salad dressing in 3 of the bags as marinade. Thank you, mom, for making me de-skin chicken as a teenager!! I rise up and call you blessed! (Proverbs 31, baby!)
• I also bought two packages of some kind of beef roast @ $4.29/lb, which I had them grind into ground beef. The benefit of this is LOW fat, cheap beef, and it all came from the same cow. Ever see Food, Inc? Yeah. ONE cow. BTW - after the BOGO deal, it ends up costing me $2.15/lb. I cooked up 3 lbs tonight. We are having taco salad, and I saved 1/2 of the meet for the freezer. Probably for spaghetti. I have 3 more lbs. to deal with tomorrow. I’ll probably cook it up because that is super easy to deal with for quick dinners. Let’s call that 4 meals out of the ground beef, although I’m sure I could stretch it into 5 since I like to add beans or lentils to the ground beef to stretch it out!

SALAD was completely free, and a bit of a moneymaker. I used coupons and ended up making 51¢ on each bag I bought, for a total of $1.53 overage. There were a ton of the little booklets in our produce section, so I didn’t have to mess with the printable, plus the coupon didn’t beep. I ended up going back later tonight for 3 more bags of salad and a loaf of bread for 1¢. We’ll be eating salad this week, fo sure.

Mission chips were actually $1.49 each. The price on the in-ad coupon was a misprint. Wahoo!! I was totally going to pay full price for chips if I needed to, because . . .

I’m making restaurant style salsa tonight or tomorrow. That’s why you see fat cans of tomatoes, tomato paste, jalapenos, onion, garlic and cilantro. I stocked up on Rotel a while back, so I’m set there!

And, I have sour cream in there.

You also see Whole Milk and yogurt. Yes, Safeway took my free printable coupon for the Oikos yogurt (Facebook). I’m going to scrape the “plain” off the top for my homemade yogurt.

AND, the beans were a decent price. I bought 2 bags of black beans and two bags of pinto beans. As soon as I’m done with this post, I’m going to get those pinto beans started in the crockpot. I’ll do the black beans tomorrow night in my sleep!

Rice. Probably a better price at Walmart, but I saved time by buying it in this trip.

I took advantage of the Buy 3 juice promo and bought 3 Mott’s Apple Juice @ $1.99. One is Mott’s for Tots and I used the $1/1 Vocalpoint coupon (although I would definitely NOT be advocating tots drinking apple juice on a regular basis! Yikes!) and I used (1) $2/2 coupons from the MDA book. These 2 coupons doubled, so my OOP on 3 juices was 65¢ each.

Apples from the bag are the best price right now @ 93¢/lb. Ugh. I can’t WAIT to be able to buy organic apples for super cheap again! Remember, I’m buying apples out of season, so I can’t expect awesome prices. However, the boys love apples, and I love saying “Go grab an apple” when they start to whine about starving. Bananas work, too.

The olive oil was $2.99 after coupon WYB 2. That’s a decent price, and I probably won’t have to buy more until next year.

I’m pretty sure that is it, but I thought I’d leave you with some main meal ideas from this trip:

• hamburgers, salad, peaches
• taco salad (Had this tonight. MAJOR hit with the boys and they have requested it again.)
• chicken salad
• ground beef enchiladas
• tacos/burritos
• spaghetti
• crockpot chicken (x3 or 5)
• Asian chicken stir fry
• chicken divan

Plus, I’m planning on skipping shaving my armpits tomorrow and instead working on:

• homemade yogurt
• cooked dried beans - pinto and black
• homemade salsa - canned
• peeling and freezing peaches (finally, right?)

This week I also worked on blanching and freezing a HUGE amount of free broccoli. My friend picked too much! I’m so thankful! I used 3 bags and gave 2 bags away.

I can’t WAIT to pick up cheap cheese next week! Thanks to my coupon blogs for putting the deals up so early! You ROCK!

PS - these deals end tonight, so GO!

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