The $100 Dollar Grocery Challenge

So this year my fantastic parents gave my husband and I the best Christmas gift ever!  They sent us 100 dollars with a note expressing concern with the state of the economy and the projection of higher food costs.  Their instructions were to spend this money on food storage, so I decided to have a little fun with it.

I created what I'm calling the 100 Dollar Grocery Challenge!  The idea is to look for the most rock bottom prices on items we use and get the absolute maximum amount of groceries for a hundred bucks. 

So here's the list of what I bought, how much I paid for it and pictures to show just how much food you can really get if you pinch your pennies.  Take the challenge yourself and see what you can do!

1 Gallon of 2% Milk                                        $2.08
4 Dozen Eggs                                                    1.18 each dozen
3 Loaves Bread                                                 1.39 each
2 Pkg of Whole Wheat Tortillas                            .50 pkg
20 Cans of Bumble Bee Tuna                               .48 can 
6 One Pound Packages of Penne Pasta                .69 pkg
6 One Pound Packages of Bow Tie Pasta            .69 pkg
5 Large Yellow Onions                                      1.00 Total
8 Large Gala Apples                                           .88 / pound
1 16 lb Turkey                                                    .50 / pound
12  18.6 oz cans Cambells Select Harvest Soup  .50 / can
6 One Pound Packages of Fettuccine Pasta         .69 pkg
2 One Pound Packages of Small Shell Pasta        .69 pkg
2 Pounds of Tyson Bacon                                  1.99 / pound
4 Pounds of Real Butter                                     1.88 / pound
2   #10 Cans (7.5 lbs) Cranberry Sauce             1.99 / can
2 Three pound cans of Shortening                       1.99 / can
2 Four pound sacks of Flour Tortilla Mix              .50 / sack
1 Jar (2.2 lbs) of Chicken Bouillon Granules        3.99 / jar
2 Big Pork Steaks                                               1.28 / pound
3 Bottles (17 oz) Olive Oil                                   1.99 / bottle
1 Big container of Oregano                                  1.39 / jar
1 Big container of Lemon Pepper                         1.39 / jar
2 lbs Medium Cheddar Cheese                            3.99

Total Spent >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>      $99.34 (and the rest went in my change jar)

One Weeks Worth of Brown Bag Sandwiches

Wow, eating at the fast food joint while working outside the home can really kill a budget.  This used to be one of my biggest stupid tax moments.  Let's just look at how ridiculous it can get.  Will use Wendy's Hamburgers for an example (no particular reason I'm singling them out, I just used to go there a lot).  If you order a 1/4 lb. Single Combo meal in our area, you'll pay about $5.17.  If you really decide to splurge and get the 1/2 lb. Double Combo meal you'll pay about $6.60. 

Ok, Lets break it down.  If there are 20 working days a month and you do this every day, you would spend between $103.40 and $132.00 per month!  Think about how many groceries you could buy for this amount! 

What would the same meal cost if you cooked it at home?  Well if you do it smart it would look something like this:  1/4 lb beef patty .67 cents, bun .04 cents, cheese .13 cents, ketchup and mustard almost free, pickles again almost free, 1/2 a pound of potatoes for fries .07 cents and a 16 oz soda (mostly ice at the fast food joint) .24 cents for a whopping total of $1.15.  This is all assuming of course you buy your items on sale.  If you really want to have some fun, grow your own potatoes, bake your own buns and drink some free water.

Let's face it we are paying almost a 500% markup on food merely for the convenience of it. 

The solution:

1.  A little common sense planning
2.  Buying stuff on sale
3.  An attitude that being frugal isn't a drudgery, it's a fantastic challenging game.  A game of "how can I provide a better, richer life for my family and retain as many coins as I can instead of letting them fall through my and my family's fingers.

Here are 5 terrifically easy sandwich ideas that I have been using recently.  On Sunday make a meatloaf.  Our family loves it.  You might have to make a couple depending on the size of your family. 

On Monday, make meatloaf sandwiches (so good with mustard and horseradish, but for the kids stick with ketchup).  Our grand kids love these.
On Tuesday it's Egg Salad Sandwiches.  It's like deviled eggs on bread! Yummy
On Wednesday it's PBJ or PBH
On Thursday it's a good old tuna fish sandwich or sometimes I use canned salmon (not store bought, salmon we catch and can ourselves)
On Friday it's chicken salad sandwiches.  Again, not store bought.  I wait until chicken breasts are on sale for $1.39 to 1.49 per pound and can them in pint jars.  Makes great chicken tacos, enchiladas, chow mein etc. in a new york second because it's already cooked, all you have to do is just have to heat it up.

You can do this with left over roast from Sunday as well.

My challenge to you is to fire up your frugal brain cells!  Get creative!  Our brains are an amazing gift from God and he has given us the ability to create and come up with fantastic ideas.  Have fun with it and see just how much coin you can put in a jar instead of in the fast food industry.  It's your money, how much of it are you going to keep?

Fantastic Deals if You Can Look Past an Expiration Date

Let me tell you about one the best kept secrets in the Ogden area.  It's a little hole-in-the-wall place where you can save some serious dough and eat like royalty.  Where is this frugal mecca?  It's located at 3135 Harrison Blvd and it's called Carl's Super Saver.

Maybe you've been there or maybe you've drove by a million times and never breached the doors.  I love this store and the adventure it holds every time I enter.  This place buys all the groceries that aren't pretty or have odd brand names that just don't move in the regular grocery store.

Let me show you just how fantastic the deals at this place can be.  Our family loves clams.  We love clam chowder, clam dip, linguine with clam sauce, clams, they're a wonderful thing in our book.  A tuna-fish sized can of clams will run you $1.79 to $2.25 for a 6.5 oz can of chopped or minced clams.  One day I popped into Carl's and found 51 oz cans (that's 3lbs 3 oz's folks) of Seawatch brand clams for $2.99!  Can you believe that!  This would be like paying 37 cents a can for the one's in the regular store.  I bought all I could and called everyone I knew.

But what am I going to do with a 51 oz open can of clams, right?  Here's what I do.  I open a can of clams and use what I need for what ever I am making.  I take some small ziplock storage containers (which are disposable, but I use over and over again)  that hold about 6 oz each,divide it all up and freeze the containers.  When I need more clams, I thaw one out in the microwave and presto!  37 cent a can clams.  Just so you know, these were not past the due date clams.  They were SeaWatch brand clams.  Not the standard brand you see in the regular stores, but I look at it this way:  All clams come from the ocean or fresh water.  They don't know what kind of clams they are going to be until they get in the can.  They are just clams until that point.

What kind of deals can you find there today?  I just slipped in this morning and here's the low down on some fantastic deals:

Campbells Select Harvest Soup; Italian Wedding Soup  1 lb 6 oz can              2 for a buck
Saltine Crackers (can't remember the brand)                                                   2 for a buck
#10 Can of Jellied Cranberry Sauce (big coffee can sized)                               $1.99
(I'm going to divide this up in pint canning jars and re-can it)
Knorr Chicken Bouillon Granules 2.2 lb jar (really big)                                    $3.99
(I'm going to divide this up and vacuum seal in jars.  I'll blog on how to do this later)

***Best Deal of the Day***
Beautiful Big Fresh Strawberries in 1 pound packages for .69 cents  Unbelievable

Give this place a try.  It's a little untidy at times, but if you can over look that and plan your meals around deals, you can create adventures in dining and save bucks at the same time!  Have a great day, count your blessings and do a good deed for someone today; it'll make you smile :)

P.S.  "Use by" dates are not expiration dates.  If you're going to freeze something, they are totally irrelevant.  If it's in a can, it just means the nutritional quality is diminished, but it still probably has more food value than a poptart, so don't sweat it.  Canned food lasts a long time.  As long as the can isn't bulging, I eat it and I haven't died yet.  When it doubt, feed it to the chickens.  They'll eat any thing and magically turn it into an egg.

Why This Blog?

You know life is funny.  One day the economy is good and the next day a financial asteroid hits the USA and unemployment is hovering around 10%.  Count me as one of the millions of people who got caught up in the financial upheaval of our country.

As a successful real estate agent, life was pretty good, but I was really starting to burn out from the race-like pace that it was taking to maintain that success.  I began to realize my spirit, principles and family were suffering. I prayed for a solution.  Sometimes God provides a solution and sometimes he knows experiences are coming your way that will provide the solution for you.  Nothing like an economic holocaust to help you re-prioritize your life.

I started to notice home inventories beginning to rise in the late summer of 2006 and that almost always means sales are slowing down.  Soon I found my income rapidly diminishing and the skills and way of life I had experienced were no longer viable.  I began to get back to my roots and rediscover the skills I had developed in my childhood thanks to the examples of my parents and grandparents.  I was raised in a frugal home where self-sufficiency was a way of life.  My wonderful grandparents were also survival-minded people who had lived through the great depression and shared what they had learned with me in a natural, everyday sort of way.

Even in the best of financial times, my husband and I have been pretty self-sufficient. We have made our share of dumb decisions and have paid what my favorite get-out-of-debt-guy, Dave Ramsey calls stupid tax.  Funny thing about paying stupid tax, it's a great opportunity to get smarter if you pay attention to the lesson and are willing to change behavior.

I have quirky little ways.  I can't stand to see anything go to waste.  I can't stand to pay full price for anything; especially clothes.  When people first get to know me, they are usually in one of two camps.  The first camp thinks I'm some kind of weird survivalist, backwoods, stuck-in-time, pioneer hermitess and the second camp thinks some of my skills and knowledge are kind of cool.  If you are in the first camp, let me save you some time and pain.  Stop reading right now and go buy a $75 - $150 pair of jeans at the mall.  If you are in the second camp, stick around and let's see if we can learn some things together that will strengthen our homes, families and communities.  Let's go back to a simpler time and learn to focus on the basics.  In posts to follow, my hope is to provide you with some valuable skills, lessons learned and a place to swap ideas.  Two minds are better than one, ten minds are better than two and so on . . . .

P.S.If you start out in the first camp and change your mind later and want to be in the second camp, no worries, you are welcome here