Every Little Bit Helps

I'm finding it monumentally difficult to devise a relatively healthy meal plan for 7 days on $43.  In some ways impossible!  It would be far easier to budget out $194 over the month and give myself a more varied diet if I shopped the way I do normally:  Shop the sales for the best price over the month and portion out the packages of different meats (eating some and freezing the rest for another week).   Adhering to the challenge means $45 and that's that.  So, my diet will be less varied.  It seems fundamentally flawed to me, because it isn't how I normally shop.

What will likely save my taste buds is that the Associated Supermarket near me will have quartered chicken legs on sale for 59 cents a pound.   I can make chicken in a variety of ways.  So as I was planning on making a sauce, I will use chicken legs and thighs (I'll do my own butchering to separate leg from thigh) and put them in the sauce instead of Italian sausages.  Ground turkey also went on sale for $2.69 per pound.  Far healthier and I can do lots of different things with these two meats, but I am mindful that a sale like this doesn't happen often.  But, it might very well have saved my blood pressure!

Before this last circular came out, I was concerned about dairy/calcium.  I generally drink milk in my coffee, a glass with one meal and eat a yoghurt every day.  This provides the USDA recommended amount of calcium for women my age.  With a half gallon of milk at 2.79 and my habit is to go through about two half gallons a week, I will need to cut out that glass of milk out of my diet and limit myself to one half-gallon.   Limiting to one half gallon, also cuts out the possibility of cereal.  I'd never be able to keep to 1/2 gallon if I had cereal in the morning.   The good news is I thought I might have to cut out yoghurt out of my diet next week as well.  I won't because yoghurt goes on sale 6/$3 starting tomorrow.

A package of Bustillio coffee will be $1.99 on sale instead of $3.99.  I've never tried this brand before, but my Hispanic friend tells me it's the only brand she'll drink.  It's only six ounces, so I'll need to limit my coffee.  I will likely go from three cups a day down to two.

No sale on cake mixes (boo hoo!)  Sometimes you can get a box of cake mix for as little as .79 cents.  I wouldn't have had frosting but I would still have a sweet to fall back on.  My only hope is that MetFoods will put them on sale with Sunday's circular.

I also priced out a small bottle of oil for cooking.  An off-brand 16oz bottle of corn oil will be $1.99.  Again, here is where I find a flaw.  I don't buy oil every week.  One 48 oz bottle will last me a month and I can generally wait to buy it on sale for $1.99.  So, I'm paying a lot more for the smaller bottle, but saving my budget.  I'm finding this a big issue with other things as well.

Butter:  I go through about a 1lb package a month.  I wouldn't buy butter every month but wait for it to go on sale (generally 2.99 per lb).  I noticed today that a 1/2 lb package of butter was $3.49.  Yikes!  That works out to $1.75 a stick!  Double-Yikes!

Oatmeal:  I generally go through a carton of oatmeal in about three weeks.  Buying a package of store brand will take out $1.29 and I will only go through, at best, half of it.

Rice:  Well I've already gone over that in a previous blog so I won't go there and make your eyes glass over.

Lentils:  I plan to make lentil soup next week.  I'll pay for the whole package (1.49 cents) but only use half to make the soup.

This is the biggest problem in adhering to this challenge.  Planning meals with a small budget but needing/wanting to buy items that are prohibitively expensive in smaller packages or being forced to make a choice because although butter might be on sale for 2.99 a lb, I can't buy the one stick I use each week.

So next week will be a no butter week.  Instead I'll use peanut butter on my toast which is on sale for 2.50 a jar.

I'm going to really miss butter...