Menu Plan Monday, and Grocery Shopping Primally at Sam's Club

We hit up Sam's Club this weekend. I have mixed feelings about Sam's - good for the budget of someone eating whole foods to manage insulin, but also makes bulk-packaged items a little too available. Here's an example:

Pro: Raw almonds are the cheapest per pound that I've seen anywhere - 48 oz. (3 lb.) for around $11.
Con: 48 ounces of raw almonds in a big resealable bag. Seriously? How long do you really expect those to last in our household?

Other things I have found that I can get for the cheapest at Sam's compared with local grocery stores:

• Organic Omega-3 eggs, around $3.33/doz.


• Dates, 3 lb., less than $10


• Organic baby carrots, at close to $1/lb.


• Organic greens and organic baby spinach, around $3.50 for a huge clamshell container


• Gigantic 3-liter bottle of extra virgin olive oil, $11ish
  

Here's the scoop for this week.

Monday:
Breakfast - Fried eggs, bananas for the girls
Lunch - Apples, gouda, grain-free granola
Dinner - Green curry beef pot roast, and stewed veggies - pot roast is on sale at Giant this week.

Tuesday:
Breakfast - Warm banana pudding
Lunch - Leftover beef roast and veggies
Dinner - Bacon quiche, roast Brussels sprouts, salads

Wednesday:
Breakfast - Oeufs Boursin (This is really just eggs mixed and scrambled with Boursin. Be sure to really tweak the nasal "n" for extra cheesiness.)
Lunch - Leftover quiche and salads
Dinner - Primal Matriarch night: Bacon and Crab Somethingorother and Primal Mini Apple Pie Bake* *My husband has a lifelong mouthfeel issue with mushrooms, so I plan on baking AndreAnna's bacon-crab filling stuffed in some other type of veggie. Perhaps stuffed in cabbage leaves? Or as a dip with some parmesan cheese baked grain-free crackers?

Thursday:
Breakfast - Leftover apple pie bake with mascarpone
Lunch - salad, possibly some bacon-crab stuffed leftovers
Dinner - Spaghetti squash with a carbonara-style sauce

Friday:
Breakfast - Joyful Abode's Grain-Free Granola Bars, made Wednesday night, ideally
Lunch - Baked chicken drumsticks OR leftover spaghetti squash, salads
Dinner - Butter-glazed shrimp with hot butter-lime dressing over a salad (shrimp is on sale at Giant!)

Preschool Lunch Ideas:
Lunchbox #18: Leftover pot roast with a wasabi sour cream dip, salad, fresh mini peppers, diced nectarines
Lunchbox #19: Miniquiches, leftover Brussels sprouts, carrots with Boursin for dipping, almond-stuffed dates
Lunchbox #20: Leftover spaghetti squash, half-banana, grain-free granola bars

Necessity = Mother of Invention, When Eating and Couponing Primally

As you may recall, I (A.) have been eating a "caveman-style" diet since mid-June in a bid to manage my insulin levels. That is, no processed foods, no sugar, no grains. While the new lifestyle has been a boon to my energy levels, and has enabled me to lose a significant amount of baby weight with minimal hunger, it has really put the brakes on my couponing abilities!

I used to coupon with the best of them, even once hauling in over $40 in free yoghurt over the course of a Shopper's Food Warehouse double/triple couponing event (yes, we were eating free yoghurt for weeks). It was routine for me to pay pennies on the dollar for my breakfast cereal, yoghurts, condiments, snack foods, and so on.

But now, I'm discovering that almost all of the foods that I'm eating - fresh fruit and vegetables, eggs, full-fat organic dairy products, seafood, animal protein like poultry, pork, and beef, and nuts (excluding peanuts) - have little-to-no coupon offerings. That's not to say no couponing exists for these categories; it's just that manufacturer coupons for such things are rarely offered, and I think that this is because whole roasting chickens are not exactly something that a manufacturer yearns to incentivize. Why? What is more profitable for a manufacturer: getting me initially hooked and then paying retail on nonperishable toastable breakfast pastries, or a perishable, minimally processed hunk'o'poultry?

*Sigh* So our food budget has been going through a few spasms. By no means am I planning on giving up my current eating lifestyle; I've gained too much energy and lost too much baby weight to go back to processed carbs, which just seem to wreak havoc on my system. We have also saved a significant amount of money in that we are no longer buying a lot of snack food and soda. But I am definitely going to have to get a lot more creative if this lifestyle will become a sustainable line item in our budget.

So here is my game plan for the future as I try to get our food budget lean:

1. Buy and freeze animal protein at a discount, when possible. This is a tactic that I've been using for years, anyway. For me, the cheapest that animal protein gets gets is omega-3 organic eggs (I buy these in bulk at Sam's Club) and Nature's Promise whole chickens (~$1.89/lb. retail at Giant).
   
   
2. Find the few coupons out there that enable whole foods eating: Cascadian Farms and Muir Glen coupons, produce coupons (though rare they still exist), organic dairy coupons via Mambo Sprouts. If I can apply $1 coupons during doubling, I could get a deep discount on bags of Cascadian Farms frozen fruits or veggies, or free or near-free Muir Glen canned tomato products. Other items that I could still coupon would be coconut milk, nuts (excluding peanuts), dried (no-sugar-added) fruits, and Eggland's Best eggs.
   
   
3. Research price points at Whole Foods and Trader Joe's on organic dairy and other items. Though I don't live all that near to either one of these, my parents and inlaws do, and we see each other every weekend or so. Though WF and TJ's are often maligned for their expense, the fact is that their organic dairy prices are competitive or even well below those of organic dairy as sold at mainstream chains like Giant. Also, if you buy a case of anything at Whole Foods, you get a 10% discount. So, I could probably save up to about 20% or more by buying my organic dairy products from Whole Foods. My new favorite grassfed butter - Kerrygold - is $2.69/pack at TJ's, but $3.99/pack at Giant! That's a huge difference, especially for something that keeps as well as butter does. (Also, on a related note, Bloom has some of the cheapest half-gallons of organic milk out there, at $2.99/ea.)
   
   Whole Foods' produce is often competitive as well. This past Friday, for example, they were doing BOGO on $5.99 watermelons, making them about $3/ea., cheaper than Giant has ever offered this summer!
   
   
4. Think seafood. I'm slowly gaining an appreciation of price points for fish, scallops, shrimp, and so on. The more I monitor prices on these, the more I become aware of when a truly great sale price comes up in a weekly ad, so I can take advantage. Bummer, though, that most of Giant's seafood is thawed; you're not supposed to refreeze seafood or animal protein that has been already frozen! So while it's often true that I can't stock up for the freezer, I can plan to make a couple of meals in a week from a thawed well-priced seafood product that is on sale.
   
   
5. Buy produce on sale. Again, a tactic that I've been using for years. I think that, more than ever, we will be eating seasonally in conjunction with what's fresh and on sale.
   
   
6. Eye toward next year's produce. I'm mulling options to make produce even more affordable for us - maybe a CSA, maybe some square-food gardening (as many frugal bloggers do), or maybe a bit of both. Of course, the plants by my kitchen sink are about 2% alive right now, so a venture in home gardening may take a few seasons before I've got a workable harvest. ;-)
   
   
7. Source specialty items from Amazon via monthly deals and Subscribe and Save. This way, I can usually save 25, 30, even 40 percent if I watch the deals carefully. (And by specialty items, I mean things such as coconut oil, which is much cheaper from Amazon than from Giant.)
   

Do you have an eating lifestyle that precludes most couponed food items? If so, how are you still managing to trim your food budget?

Menu Plan Monday

I love it when we hit Sam's Club for the overall cheaper produce. I can't get enough of the papayas! I also have a LOT of salad greens to use up in the next couple of days, hence the salads for lunch.

I get to "dress rehearse" for Saturday's planned pancake breakfast; my college roommate and her husband are coming to visit us later this week through the weekend and I am so excited! :) Ergo - I'll throw in Saturday's plan, as well.

Monday:
Breakfast - Cereal with milk, banana
Lunch - Cubed papaya, salad with gorgonzola and avocado
Dinner - Shrimp bacon club salads

Tuesday:
Breakfast - Fresh strawberries and blueberries, yoghurt with honey
Lunch - Salad with gorgonzola and avocado, bananas, ginger teff muffins
Dinner - Scrambled eggs with shredded cheese, home fries, baked mushrooms

Wednesday:
Breakfast - Orange chocolate yoghurt, ginger teff muffins
Lunch - Carrot, onion, and leek soup, beer bread, mango slices
Dinner - Gorton's salmon fillets (didn't manage to make these last week), steamed veggies

Thursday:
Breakfast - Pancakes!
Lunch - Pumpkin soup, leftover beer bread
Dinner - Frozen pizza

Friday:
Breakfast - Banana bread, milk
Lunch - Out at a park playgroup: Hummus and pretzel chips, fruit salad, yoghurt
Dinner - Rotisserie chicken, veggie crudites, fruit crumble with whipped cream for dessert

Saturday:
Breakfast - Pancakes, fruit salad
Lunch - Cooking out - BBQ ribs, salad, hummus with chips
Dinner - Crockpotting - Corned beef, cabbage, carrots, potatoes, beer bread, and brownies for dessert

Target Setting Up Warehouse-Style Sections in Stores with Bulk-Packaged Necessities Like Toilet Paper

Y'know how Target's dollar spot is a competitive strategy vis-a-vis dollar stores? Well, look out, Sam's Club and Costco!

Over-the-Moon milk...wowza!

I know that I just did a post on cheap milk and other staples at Sam's Club (and reader Matt helpfully pointed out Wegman's low milk prices in his comment to the post - thanks, Matt!).

Before I knew that we would make it to Sam's Club, though, I had picked up some of the half-gallon 1% Over-the-Moon milk that I had bought for $1.49 after doubled $1 coupons at Shopper's Food Warehouse. This was still cheaper than regular milk prices at most grocery stores (~$2/half gallon or ~$3.50+/gallon), so it made sense at the time. Not usually the type to believe the hype of product packaging ("You won't believe how creamy it is!", etc.), I was just reflexively going with numbers on this one.

My husband had tried the Over-the-Moon first yesterday, and was instantly smitten - so I drank some with my breakfast toast this morning, inspired by his endorsement. It tastes like I'm drinking whole milk! There's a skim Over-the-Moon version...I wonder - does it taste more like 2%? lol

Anyway - if you loooooove creamy milk tastes, whole milk runs you a little under $2.50/gallon at Sam's and Wegman's, but as couponed, this Over-the-Moon costs $2.98/gallon for 1% calories and whole milk taste. For some of you, that little bit of extra coin may be worth the indulgence sans guilt. (At Over-the-Moon's standard price, though - $3.49/half-gallon, it's pretty cost prohibitive otherwise.)

Here's a PDF printable coupon for $1 off Over-the-Moon milk that doesn't expire until the end of the year!
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Notes on Sam's Club v. Current Prices

This afternoon I ran to Sam's Club with my family for the first time in weeks. Before I got into couponing, Sam's was our regular grocery and diaper stop, and we rarely went to other stores for groceries. Now that I've been swimming in the couponing lane since last summer, I was pleasantly surprised to realize that there are still some reasons why Sam's Club (the nearest warehouse club to us) is worth our family's annual $40 membership fee.

• Sam's gas runs 5-10 cents per gallon less than anywhere else. We fill up there almost any time we can manage it. Savings on our medium-sized SUV for a fillup is can run up to $1.50 or more - so even if we filled up for gas 30 times in the year just in our SUV (we also have a late-'90s sedan), we'd 'pay off' that membership fee!
• Milk is $2.44 for a gallon of whole all the way down to $2.14 for a gallon of skim. This is even cheaper than double couponed milk at Shopper's Food Warehouse. Most stores sell milk for $3.50-$4.00/gallon. (Note that organic milk is not cheaper; at a little over $3 for a half-gallon, it doesn't beat Giant's $5.69 for a gallon of organic milk).
• A quart of half'n'half is less than $1.50, the cheapest price anywhere that I've seen for half'n'half. Since I'm powered by caffeine, Sam's is where I still get my half'n'half (which has a surprisingly long shelf life).
• Bananas were $0.42 cents/lb., and since bananas are rarely loss-leaders and run $0.50/lb.+, this is a significant savings. (We go through 2 large bunches each week since our daughter eats at least 2 each day...at least she doesn't clamor for 2 papayas!)
  
• Asparagus today was $1.73/lb. - four cents/lb. cheaper than Giant's loss-leader price for the week of $1.77/lb.!
• Strawberries were 2 lb./~$4.50., still cheaper than Safeway's 2 lbs./$5 price.
• Many other produce items went for loss-leader prices for most NOVA grocery stores, like nectarines, pears, and apples between $0.90 and $1.25/lb. - . Avocados were under $1 each.
  
• Most spices and seasonings sell in huge containers for $3.50-$5.00. If you're like me and use garlic powder like it was going out of style, this is cheaper than the spice selections at grocery stores. Of course, there's always the CVS spice rack, if you need transaction filler at $1-2.
  

Some things that were not cheaper:

• Grapes, at nearly $2/lb.! A lot of local grocery chains routinely loss-lead grapes at around $1/lb.
  
• DanActive drinks, ~$0.40/ea in the multipack (compare with $0.20 each at Shopper's doubled coupons this weekend)
• Cereal selections (double pack boxes) were $6+
• Dunkin' Donuts coffee is 2.5 lb. for $16 - OK price, but if you buy the smaller bags with coupons, you can do better at even Target or WalMart, much less Shopper's doubles
  

Looks like a few staples make renewing our membership worthwhile...at least until I figure out how to coupon gas and milk down to those prices! ;) Meanwhile...the price of paper towels was enough to make us consider trying out Crystal Paine's paper towel free household for a while.

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