Budget grocery shopping

OK, we've got a limited budget as well. I try to get as much fresh as possible. We're starting to boil dried beans this week for recipes. We've got a little teeny tiny backyard garden, so we've got lettuce, zucchini, green beans, and herbs covered. I try to make everything from scratch.

Breakfast is usually egg sandwich, oatmeal, homemade pancakes (wildly easy), fruit, cottage cheese, and/or yogurt.

Snacks are a challenge because my kids eat all. the. time. Cheese sticks, crackers, grape tomatoes, and backyard fruit from friends covers it usually.

Lunches are usually PB&J on sprouted wheat bread, fruit, vegetables. Sometimes quesadilla. Sometimes grilled cheese.

Dinner is usually fish (we buy in bulk from Costco and portion it out when we get home) or bean/grain mix with vegetables. I'm also in love with frittatas, though. Unless it's Tuesday, in which it's Taco Tuesday. I usually cook enough for leftovers, so that covers hubby's lunch, and sometimes mine.

I don't buy it if: I don't recognize all of the ingredients and it's not on sale. I only use coupons for things I'd buy normally.

We only keep a few beverages in the fridge. Milk, water, orange juice, and lemon-lime Gatorade. If loving lemon-lime Gatorade after working out is wrong, I don't wanna be right. I use coupons for the OJ and Gatorade.

My staple vegetables are celery, carrot, and onion. I'll only buy other vegetables at the grocery store if they're on sale.

I usually buy my bread at a bread outlet. It's cheaper and they have all the breads I like (Milton's and Health Full).

We buy fish, cheese, brown rice, pasta, and canned vegetables like corn and tomatoes at Costco. I shred the cheese, portion it out, and freeze it.

It's a lot of effort. It would be so much easier to have limitless funds. However, shopping like this forces me to stay vigilant. I like the game of eating really healthy food on a dime.

Good luck!

bump

I use coupons too! In fact, my 16 year old asked me the other day if I had to use a coupon for everything. lol I buy as much as I can from a local vegetable stand. The fresh veggies and fruit are a lot heathier than the processed stuff. For example, I can buy a pound of squash for 99 cents there but if I purchase it at Wal mart, it's almost twice the price. Everything else I try to find on sale and I try to find a coupon. It takes a lot of planning but it's worth it. As for as healthy lunches...... we make homemade personal pizzas with fresh veggies. I would like some other ideas too.

If you look at my last blog entry I was able to use up some of the stuff in my house that I had and buy whatever else I needed to make 28 dinners (with more than enough for leftovers for lunches) for 200$

Breakfast is usually cereal or toast. Lunches we like salad and sandwiches, soup, leftovers etc

dinners is where we get a bit more creative, chili, burgers, nuggets, bbq, crockpot meals, stew, shepards pie and on and on. I substitute for healthy ingredients whenever possible and most of our meals are around 200-300 calories. the odd one as high as 450ish.