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What We Ate this Week on a Budget | 06.05.15

This post may contain affiliate links. That means if you sign-up for services or make a purchase after clicking on a link below, I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you.
Also, I am not a financial advisor. I'm a blogger who LOVES to share how I manage the finances for my household.

June 5, By Kristia 4 Comments

06.05.15

Every Friday, I share what we ate for the week on our budget. Currently our monthly budget is $500 for my family of 4.

I do most of my shopping at Giant Foods and they just started offering the grocery delivery or pick up. You place your order online and then schedule the delivery or pick up times. There is a fee, but many of my friends have been raving about the convenience of groceries being delivered right to your door step.

Recently, there was a $20 off $100 purchase promotion, so I decided to try the service. Unfortunately, the home delivery time slots quickly get filled, so I opted to pick up at the store. The fee for pick up is only $2.95, and I drive by this store several times a day on my way to work or the YMCA so it was still very convenient.

wasteful bags

I was very excited about this option, because it will save me about an hour or more of my time, but I was a little disappointed about how they packed my order. They used 22 plastic bags to bag 31 items. When the guy was putting my order in my car, I inquired about all of the bags and his response was “that’s how they bag it.” I know that I can recycle the bags, but it seemed wasteful to me and I have to think about whether I’ll do the service again.

Does your grocery store offer home delivery or store pick-up? Have you tried it? What are your thoughts?

This Week’s Dinners:

Saturday: We went camping over the weekend. The weather turned out to be perfect. It was sunny and clear during the day and cool, yet comfortable at night. For dinner, we ate grilled chicken wraps stuffed with avocado, salsa, cheese, lettuce and pasta and fruit salads.

We’re fairly new to camping. We have a pop up and a small propane grill that we use to make most of our meals. I haven’t gotten into to fire pit cooking yet. I don’t want to spend a lot of my time preparing meals when we’re camping so I pre-made a large pasta salad and a fruit salad before our trip and kept them iced up in the coolers.

Sunday: Grilled sausage with peppers and onions hobo packs and the last of the pasta and fruit salads. After eating pasta salad all weekend, I will not be making or eating it for awhile…or until our next camping trip.

Monday: Sausage burgers, baked beans, watermelon. My oldest daughter loves sausage burgers, so when they’re on sale, which is quite frequently, I buy them. I normally make my own burgers, but it does save time to buy them pre-made.

Tuesday: I browned 3 pounds of ground turkey and added my homemade taco seasoning, so we had hard shell tacos with watermelon and strawberries as a side.

I like to make a big batch of taco meat, because it freezes well, but we ended up eating all 3 pounds this week. I ate tacos for lunch and my kids had them for after school snacks. The taco meat also goes well in my Homemade Burrito Bowls, in place of the chicken.

Wednesday: Grilled Salmon, steamed broccoli, strawberries and pineapple. I stopped buying farm raised fish a couple of years ago for two reasons: (1) my daughter had a severe reaction to tilapia, and (2) the 60 Minutes segment about farm raised fish–ewwwwww! So when wild caught Alaskan Salmon is on sale, I’ll buy it as a treat. It’s sale price is $9.99 a pound, so I only buy it occasionally.

pineapple planked salmon

 

I tried a new grilling technique that I found on Pinterest: use pineapple peels as planks for the salmon. You are supposed to tie with kitchen twine, but I don’t have any so I just carefully flipped without. The grilling time increases with this technique, because the meat in not directly on the grill and I was getting impatient, so I took the salmon off the pineapple and placed directly on the grill for the last few minutes. BUT I had a phone call and completely forgot about the grill and overcooked the salmon. It was thankfully still edible, but a little dry. I will try this technique again and maybe with chicken too, but it does increase the cook time.

Thursday: We had a busy night, so I treated my girls to Subway for dinner to celebrate the end of the school year. They both had great years and my daughters kissed third and first grades good-bye.

Friday: My now fourth grader is taking an interest in cooking. She loves Rachael Ray and found two recipes in a recent magazine that she is making for dinner tonight: shrimp po’boys and a spinach & walnut salad.

This Week’s Breakfasts, Lunches & Snacks:

Breakfast was eggs, sausage & toast and cereal. Lunches and snacks included leftover tacos, ham and cheese sandwiches, apples,  yogurt sticks, cheese sticks, tortilla chips & salsa.

Would you like to lower your grocery bill? These posts will help:

  • 11 Simple Meal Planning Tips
  • How I Use Pinterest for Meal Planning
  • 8 Freezer Meal Recipes
  • 10 Paper Products to Avoid

We had a tasty week! Did you try a new dish this week that your family enjoyed? Please share it in the comments.

Filed Under: What We Ate This Week

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Comments

  1. Sarahc says

    June 6, at 9:23 am

    I have been buying groceries online & from the supermarket directly off and on for years. Not so much now, more when my kids were all at home. They do use lots of plastic bags so that whoever carries them to your door and in my case up 2 1/2 flights of stairs won’t kill themselves. The delivery fee is a pain but the great advantage is that you can save major $$ as it makes impulse buying impossible.

    Reply
    • Kristia says

      June 6, at 10:01 am

      The pick up fee of $2.95 is a steal considering the time and money I saved.

      Reply
  2. Lynnette says

    June 10, at 10:43 pm

    You are lucky that they don’t charge you $.10 a bag as they do here in Southern California!

    Reply
    • Kristia says

      June 11, at 6:38 am

      WOW, CA is pretty serious about hating on plastic. PA has taken such extremes, but I was really surprised by this. There are signs at check-out reminding customers to use reusable bags.

      Reply

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