Healthy Shopping on a Budget

I started Dave Ramsey's Total Money Makeover plan in late November, hoping to clear out all debt and to get a really good chunk into savings. Part of that plan requires you to put your money into envelopes, which helps you to budget each item accordingly. For instance, we have an envelope for food, one for fuel, and one for entertainment. Once that amount is gone, we are done. I was really interested to see what would happen to our budget when I cut out all the processed foods and started buying local meats and cheeses as well as ingredients for making my own breads, cereals, trail mixes, etc. From what I can tell, it is going to end up costing us about $100 more a month to eat this way. That's just a little over $3 a day - the equivalent of one of those fancy Starbucks drinks - so I think we can handle it.

On Sunday, after church, I stopped at Shop n Save to do a little grocery shopping.

Here is what I got:

Meats: Jennie O brand 99/1 Lean Ground Turkey breast (not local), 96/4 Lean Ground Beef (The butcher promised me this was from a farm within 50 miles), Whole chicken (from an Amish farm)

Cheeses: Delallo sliced provolone (local), Hillandale mozzarella, Lite Ricotta cheese

Produce: Organic green pepper, bananas, Fresh basil, Fresh green beans, Green leaf lettuce, Grape tomatoes

Other: 2 dozen Hillandale Farms eggs, Delallo organic whole wheat lasagna noodles, Triscuits, AkMak crackers, 2 boxes of Gia Russa whole wheat pasta, 2 cans of crushed tomatoes, 3 packs of toilet paper

With these items, I will be making:

Breakfasts:  My go to meal is usually eggs and sauteed peppers.

Lunches: Lunches, for me, are typically sandwiches (I still have Ezekiel bread left in my fridge but I am going to work on making bread myself soon) or leftovers from the night before. I also have whole wheat pasta available, should I choose to go that route. I'll also have homemade soup here, starting on Thursday.


Dinners: Whole wheat banana pancakes for Tuesday, a whole chicken in the crockpot for Wednesday, Leftover chicken (probably on salads) for Thursday, Chicken soup for Friday, and Lasagna for Saturday and Sunday.   The ground turkey breast and ground beef will be frozen and used next week.


 Snacks: Triscuits with tomato, basil and mozzarella, AkMak crackers, as well as lots of fresh fruit already in my fridge from my last trip.





My grand total for this trip was.....

$58.84!!!!!

Not too shabby if you ask me....