food shopping

In the past three days I have done my food shopping. This week consisted of visiting four stores, one just for meat and the others for groceries (one was a convenience store just for milk) My theory is that spending a little more time shopping can be worth the money saved in the long run. Normally I am willing to spend a little extra on my milk to aviod the fourth store, but this week the sale price was really good PLUS I was going to be driving past the extra store several times and it was not going to be a lot of extra time to spend less.
During a normal week I use two grocery stores, shopping the sales and then buying other necessary items based on which store has the better overall price. This week I spent a LOT more than I usually do, almost a third more, but I bought my meat for the next 6 weeks.

At the meat store I spent $44 dollars and bought the following:
5 lbs of frozen ground turkey @$1.59/lb
10 lbs of chicken breast (comes in a 10 lb bag that I take home, split up and freeze) @ $1/59/lb
3 lbs of bacon @ $1.89/lb
1 dozen eggs for $1.89
This much will last me about 29-30 meals without leftovers. My family is not big on leftovers so I have been trying to cook less and waste less. I do sometimes make PLANNED leftovers but not often.
At grocery store #1 I spent $17.18 and bought the following:
4 containers of yogurt @ 50 cents a piece. (I wanted to buy the 32 oz container but they did not have strawberry)
cottage cheese @ $2.79
2 half gallons of ice cream @ $1.99 a piece
apple juice @ $2
2 tubes of toothpaste @ $2.50 each with 2 $1 coupons= total spend $3
1 lb strawberries @ $2
2 avocados @ 99 cents each

At grocery store #2 I spent $32.05 and bought the following:
4 bottles of pepsi @ $1 each
1 bottle of root beer @ $1
2 loaves of bread @ $1 each
3 containers of hand soap # 1.50 each
1 shampoo and 1 conditioner @ $1.50 each (no high priced hair stuff for me!)
shave gel @ $1.99
1/3 lb deli ckn @ $2.32
1/3 provalone cheese @ $1.99
2 bags frozen broccoli @ $1.25 each
2 boxes of microwave popcorn @ $1 each
4 packages of butter(1/2 lb each) @ $1 each
dishwasher detergent @ $2.50

At the convience store I bought 2 gallons of milk. whole milk was $3.49 and 2 % was $2.99.

And yeah, looking over my list I KNOW that much of this was not necessary and I could easily have cut at least $10, almost definatly more, if I wanted to. I mean soda, ice cream and popcorn could be gone or cut down easily. Truthfully I LOVE ice cream and soda. So I buy them since it doesn't break the budget. It just doesn't keep it as low as I could.

So far menu planning is on target. husband used leftover bacon to make BLTs last night and then he made the chicken parm tonight. I made a salad for our veggies using leftovers in the crisper. Lunch was leftover mac'n'cheese at the request of big rugrat (two days in a row now).

Off to put the laundry away, keep little rugrat from destroying the room I JUST cleaned and then help put both rugrats to bed.