The contest continues

Saturday ended the third week of the four-week grocery contest sponsored by All You. As you may remember, the challenge is to spend just $25 per person per week in groceries for those in your household, all for a chance to win a $1000 grocery gift card. Weeks one and two passed by without too much trouble and I even figured out some tips to help keep our grocery bills down. This third week we spent $73.89, which is basically in line with the $71.58 and $71.71 we spent in the first two weeks. However, this week seemed a lot tougher to stay in our budget. In fact, due to a last-minute impulsive snack purchase, we actually went over our limit. As soon as I realized it, Mark was kind enough to take the snack back to the store thus bringing us back down below the $75 limit. But considering that the snack was frozen mango chunks, a healthy treat that Charlie adores, it felt somehow wrong to be returning it to the store just to make sure we were below the imposed $75. If we hadn’t already had a package of unopened mango in the freezer, I probably would have just quit the contest then and there.

I’ve been thinking about why this week was so much more difficult than the previous two.

1. Toward the end of the week we ran out of some basic stock items like rice and butter which then limited even more what we could make at home for meals.

2. The veggies in our CSA box were uncharacteristically few this past week. We’ve really come to rely on incorporating those vegetables into meals throughout the week and we just didn’t have as many to use so we had to purchase more vegetables.

3. I felt tired. With less food in the house I had to be even more creative about what meals I prepared which left me, well, let’s just say uninspired to cook (and a little bit hungry).

Fortunately, this week is going a bit better than last and, even more fortunately, the week is almost over which means that the contest is almost over. I’ve learned some good tips to lower our grocery bill, but I’m looking forward to not keeping quite such a careful eye on our food budget.

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Can you believe we’re still in this contest?

Yes, we’re still in the running to win the $1000 grocery gift card courtesy of the All You contest. As you may recall, the grocery challenge is to spend just $25 per person in the household per week (that means $75 a week for our family of three) for four consecutive weeks. Week two ended on Saturday and we spent a grand total of $71.71 on groceries.

There were several things I did this week to keep the grocery bill down. In addition to the tricks I used during week one of the contest, I added a few more this past week:

1. I took full advantage of coupons. Harris Teeter, our local grocery store, was doubling their coupons up to $1.99 (they normally double coupons, but only up to $.99). So I culled through my coupons for all the ones offering between $1 and $1.99 off of products knowing those coupons would yield especially big savings this past week (between $2 and $3.99, to be precise). Then I based meals around items I could get for good prices based on my high value coupons. And, it paid off (pun definitely intended). In all, I was able to save over $18 just using manufacturers’ coupons. Several times I was able to combine these coupons with Harris Teeter specials for some really good deals (I even got two items completely free).

2. I bought groceries at the drugstore. I had $6.50 in “Register Rewards” from a recent trip to Walgreens where I purchased some toiletries (Register Rewards work like Extra Care Bucks at CVS — they essentially represent store credit for purchasing certain items). I used the Register Rewards to buy some snack items. Snacks represent a pretty decent percentage of our weekly food purchases, so the more I can save on them the better. I even picked some snacks that were on sale for extra savings. All told, I bought two big containers of ice cream and a large bag of tortilla chips that, after using the Register Rewards, cost me only $1.74.

3. I let the traditional July 4th holiday cuisine work to my benefit. Who doesn’t like hot dogs on July 4th, right? We don’t typically eat hot dogs but I’ve found that every so often they taste really good. They’re also really inexpensive. I actually bought the highest quality hot dog sold at the grocery store — organic, all beef — with good quality hot dog buns, and each hot dog was still less than $1. Another cool thing about hot dogs: Charlie will occasionally eat them. That’s a pretty big deal since our picky eater almost never eats meat. I paired the hot dogs with some homemade cole slaw made with CSA veggies and some chips with salsa (the tortilla chips were the ones from the Walgreens visit). So not only did we save some money by celebrating July 4th in traditional culinary fashion, we also had a pretty good meal.

4. Just as I did last week, I made a huge pot of soup at the beginning of the week and brought bowls of it to work each day for lunch. Although unlike last week I didn’t use CSA veggies, I did choose the soup based on items I had on hand or were on sale at the grocery store. I made carrot ginger soup which tasted equally yummy hot or cold (making it extra convenient to bring to work). My recipe was based on the one found here.

Carrot Ginger Soup
Makes about 6 generous servings
Adapted from the recipe for Simple Carrot Ginger Soup found on Whippedtheblog

• 1 lb carrots (I used a small bag of the mini carrots)
• 1 yellow onion, diced
• 1 Yukon gold potato, cubed
• 2 tablespoons ginger, peeled and minced
• 2-3 cloves of garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 6 cups chicken or vegetable broth
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions

In a saucepan, place the potatoes, carrots, and broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer. Meanwhile, heat the olive oil in a large pot over medium heat. Add the onions and ginger and saute until onions are translucent (about 5 minutes). Add the garlic and saute another minute. Pour the potato, carrots, and broth mixture into the large pot with the onions, ginger, and garlic. Simmer until potatoes and carrots are very tender, about 20 additional minutes. Remove from heat and puree the soup until smooth using an immersion blender, food processor, or upright blender.

The tally for the soup:

carrots: $1.50
yellow onion, potato, garlic, ginger: $1.00 (this is just a guess since I essentially bought each of these items in bulk and the potato was part of our CSA box)
chicken broth: $1.17 (I made the broth; you can find the recipe and my calculations for the cost here)
olive oil, salt, and pepper: $.50 (again, this is a guess and a pretty generous one since I doubt they were really this expensive)

Grand total: $4.70
Cost per serving: $.78

When I ate this soup at work, I usually brought a hard boiled egg, a piece of fruit, and some yogurt to go with it which all made for some inexpensive, yet tasty, eats.

We’re in good shape to remain in this contest for the third week. We’ve spent about $50 in groceries this week so far which leaves us $25 for the rest of the week. No problem (I think; I might be getting cocky).

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You can’t count us out yet

This past weekend marked the end of the first of four weeks of the All You grocery contest. As you may recall, the gist of the contest is that you spend $25 per family member per week on groceries for a chance to win a $1000 grocery card.

So how did we do? Drumroll, please: we spent $71.58. For those of you not speedy with math, that makes us $3.42 under our limit.

Here’s how we stayed within our $75 budget:

1. We made several small trips to the grocery store during the week rather than one big shop meant to last the whole week. We only bought the food we knew we wanted to eat over the next couple of days and limited ourselves to those purchases. Typically, I like to do one big shop but it turns out that we’re then prone to some strange hoarding mentality and we often over-shop. By spreading out our shopping over several trips to the grocery store, we actually reduced the amount of food we bought. We were also able to visit two different grocery stores, buying the items we knew to be cheaper at each store.

2. I tried to prepare meals based on items we already had. Needless to say, we had lots of fusilli. On another night we had some bean burritos because, other than a jar of salsa, we had everything on hand. I also specifically shopped for sales, creating other meals based on items that were on sale.

3. Our pre-paid CSA veggies took center stage. I let kale and carrots star in a big pot of soup. I brought the soup and a hard-boiled egg to work for lunch several days in a row. We ate our CSA kohlrabi in different ways. I brought whole cucumbers to work to snack on. By stretching the CSA veggies, we bought very few other vegetables or fruits.

4. We went hungry. Ok, I’m kidding. Sort of. Mark would probably tell you that he had less to eat this past week than usual, but he always gets slightly annoyed when I mess with the quantity or variety of his food.

Though we stayed within our $75 budget, we could have done better. I don’t like grocery shopping with Charlie because we end up buying more snack foods when he says he wants them and we don’t pay as much attention to the sales. Last week, for instance, Harris Teeter offered rainbow trout on sale for $3.99 per pound. I asked Mark to go get some. He took Charlie and went off to buy the fish (he even specified to the guy behind the counter that he wanted the trout that was on sale). When he got home though, I noticed that the trout was priced at $9.99 per pound. I went online to the Harris Teeter weekly specials website and saw that the $3.99 sale was for whole trout whereas we bought the fillets. Fortunately for us, this wasn’t an expensive mistake since two fillets were only just over half a pound. But I certainly wouldn’t have asked Mark to buy the trout had I known it was going to be $9.99 a pound. That said, I used the fillets to try out this very yummy and inexpensive recipe for Asian trout that we paired with roasted beets and kohlrabi from the pre-paid CSA veggies.

Now week two of the contest is firmly underway. We’ve spent about $55 so far this week. We’ll make at least one more trip to the grocery store in the next few days, but it will be for smaller items like apples and bananas since we’ve already bought all the food we need for our main meals. We should have no problem sailing through to week three of the contest. I know Mark is thrilled.

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