Being Frugal: At the Grocery Store 2

We'll give this another go. (Don't worry - I still plan to post other things on this blog...just a fluke that it's two posts in a row.) This week's grocery trip was centered on 2 recipes whose ingredients were almost all on sale.

Who really has a great grocery-shopping idea is my friend from college, Shateen. She creates her entire week of meals from the grocery ad. If I ever really grow up, I'll buy meat from the meat counter, like her. (That counts as being a grown-up, for me...I think I've done this once in my life. It was cool. And scary.) She blogs over at Knit2Together and just did a great post about Shopping from the Ad.

Here's what my shopping trip got me this week:

Taco Soup (recipe here, at the bottom of the post if you missed it)
I'm doing another freezer meals exchange at the end of this month and since this is pretty much a "can" recipe, I don't need to worry about fresh ingredients. I bought enough to make 3x the recipe (so, about 50 cups of soup total).

• 3 cans of pinto beans - $2.67
• 3 cans diced green chiles - $2.31 
• 5 HyVee Taco Seasoning - $2.50 (2 extra, b/c taco seasoning is good to have on hand)
• Hidden Valley Ranch dry dressing mix, box of 4 - $4.98
• 6 cans kidney beans - $3 (3 extra, b/c I tend to use kidney beans in quite a few things)
• 3 cans hominy - $2.37
• 3 cans diced tomatoes - $2.64
• 3 cans tomatoes and green chiles - $2.94 (HyVee and Rotel are the same price, but Rotel is only 10oz and HyVee is 16oz and the recipe calls for 16oz...so when I use Rotel, I end up buying 2 cans instead of 1. So in this case, that would've been 6 cans total instead of 3.)
• 3lb ground beef - $7.47

COST: $37.85 to make a triple recipe. That's 12.62/recipe (16 cups). That's $0.79 for a cup of soup. That's cheap.
Note: I removed my 2 extra taco seasonings, 3 extra kidney beans, and added 3 more pounds of ground beef to my price calculation. The only thing I didn't buy was onions b/c I had those at home...I added $2 for the cost of 3 onions (I can usually find them much cheaper, that was a high guess).

Rotel Velveeta Dip
My hubby loves this dip. And it's the weekend before finals week. Pretty sure this is a necessary in our apartment right now - and, lucky me, there was a $4-off coupon for buying these items:

• 1 bag Tostitos - $2.50
• 2 cans Rotel - $1.96
• 6lb box of Velveeta - $5.99

COST: $10.45 - $4 coupon = $6.45 for a crockpot full (and a very happy husband).

The other items on my list were mostly staples, and a few other sales items that I picked up:

Bread - $1.59
I'm not loyal to a bread brand. I watch for it to be $0.99 and usually buy a couple to freeze; otherwise, I look for whatever's the cheapest. 

Onion Soup Mix - $0.67
Every time I need onion soup mix I have to buy some. That's silly.

12 6oz yogurts - $5.97
Hubby gets one yogurt with lunch every day.

2lbs butter - $3.98
It was on sale. I had to buy more. Now it's in the freezer, with the other 3lbs. I HAVE run out before though (not recently though!) and had to buy it at full price...I try not to let that happen.

Milk - $4.08
We drink like a gallon a week. We really love milk.

3 bags shredded cheese - $4
It was on sale...for something that's generally $2.30something/bag...I couldn't turn that down (and it joined the other 9 bags in the freezer). 

2 avocados - $1.60
I love these things. And they're really expensive. If they're ever $1 or less each, I treat myself to 1 or 2. Occasionally I splurge and get the gauc seasoning mix...but not today.

I spent $63.50, which is a little high for what I like to spend per week - but I did pick up ingredients to make 6 meals of Taco Soup, so I guess that counts for something.

How did you save $$ at the grocery store this week?