Thursday, April 13, 2006

Remember The Grocery Game?

If y'all will remember, a few weeks back I posted about discovering The Grocery Game, and how I was going to try to play it myself. So for the last month or so I have dutifully been clipping coupons and checking the grocery ads. Well, this week I figured that I had a good enough stockpile of coupons to take my version of The Grocery Game for a spin.

To start, I chose the store I would do my shopping at. The store I chose is my favorite to shop at, but it is not always the most economical, as I know for a fact a lot of their items are cheaper at my regular stomping ground. The reason I chose this particular store was because I have their savings card in my wallet, and I had every intention of shopping with it. Armed with the sales flyer and a stack of coupons, I planned a week's worth of groceries by choosing items on the flyer. Then I went through and pulled out the coupons that matched up with some of these sale items. Today I did my shopping. I very carefully stuck to my list and bought what I needed. Now, lately, a normal shopping trip at my regular store has been about $150 for a weeks worth of groceries, plus a few staples. Today's total? After coupons and card discounts, my total bill came to $111.34! And are you ready for this? My total discounts at this store on this visit was: $32.21. Seriously! That my friends, is serious savings!

So what did I do with that savings? Lol. Went to the butcher and bought a few extra specialty items, including some never before had lamb which will be on the menu tomorrow. So while technically I spent my savings this week, I'm greatly ecnouraged by the results so far. I will do the same thing next week, and report back again. Where I may have gone wrong this week was that I didn't buy extra of the REALLY good deals. Like butter was on sale at a pretty low price, I probably should have picked up 3 or 4 packages to last a while, but instead just picked up the one I needed. I'm sure it will be trial and error. But for my first few runs I want to try and stick to my list.

Not much of a dinner report tonight. Andy is working late, and of course tonight I have some ribs slow-cooking to be grilled later. It was Abigail's request to have ribs for dinner soon, and I figured tonight would be a perfect night for that. We all have the day off tomorrow, and are planning on spending it at the zoo before attempting to cook that lamb... tune in tomorrow to see how that goes. I'm not so sure about that one.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

What cut of lamb did you get? Roba nd I are adicted to lamb and have it every couple of weeks!

Erika W. said...

Hey Linda! Tomorrows cut is a sirloin steak. I was surprised to find lamb at my butcher actually, it's new for them, and they expect to continue it past Easter. They also had the standard chops, ground lamb, and leg of lamb, but the sirloin was a little less intimidating...any tips you could share would certainly be welcome. I'm thinking a simple garlic/rosemary rub and a flash on the grill? I'm worried we won't like it. :-)

Unknown said...

Erika, as far as I am concerned, you cant go wrong with garlic/rosemary. Infact, slather the lamb with it now and let it sit for the rest of the day. Grilling sounds wonderful, but I am thinking sirloin is fairly lean, so be careful about over cooking.