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Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Weekly grocery shopping for someone with a pantry

Just a footnote (or headnote?) to earlier posts, where I advocated setting up a pantry to keep food costs down. This week was perhaps the most unbalanced shop I have ever done.

We ate well this week--homemade pot pie with biscuit topping (2 days), bean and cheese burritos with garden greens on the side, FREE dinner after FREE concert. Tonight we are having minestrone, sort of, with various things in the house (beans, carrots, celery, onion, greens, mushrooms...may add tomato and other stuff.)

But all those ingredients were in the fridge, freezer, or pantry. All I bought was 1 gallon milk ($4.50), 16 jars of peanut butter at Walgreens ($32.00, which yielded 2 $10.00 coupons for future purchases), and some macademia nuts with chocolate (about $3.00--see earlier post on great deal at Walgreens).

Total: $39.00 and however you want to count the $20.00 for future purchases at Walgreens.

Tomorrow, we are being treated to dinner by Frugal Son. He is giving us 2 dinners on his board card (part of his scholarship!). We usually have pizza and a salad and whatever looks good. The cafeteria has excellent food. For dessert, we have ice cream made at the Ag School. A popular flavor is called Tiger something, in the purple and gold school colors.

After accumulating a full pantry, you too can eat well for very little.

Any tips, dear readers?

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

LOL! Problem is, you have to accumulate to get the pantry full.

Actually, SDXB (Semi-Demi-Exboyfriend) was an artist at this. He called it "buying food futures." He shopped grocery sales -- would never pay full price for anything, even if it meant spending more in gas to drive around searching for deals than the few pennies he saved -- and would buy things in bulk just because they were on sale. Once he stuffed our pantry with cranberry sauce...you know, the canned gunk that's sort of like Jell-O? Urk. Klingon food!

He did the same with the freezer: it was always jammed with bargain meats and fruits bought in season and frozen.

But he always has plenty of food. He's a great cook and he eats well. And sometimes he can go a couple of weeks without having to make a significant grocery shop.

Frugal Scholar said...

Thanks, Funny! Andrew Tobias calls it "commodities trading," which I think is the same as futures. He says there is a guaranteed return on investment. Needless to say, it's about the only thing. Some of the peanut butter is going to my children, both of whom live in dorms. Plus, Mr DFS and I take peanut butter sandwiches to work every day.

Hey! I was HURT by the comment about cranberry sauce! Like SDXB, I have about 30 cans. It was 33 cents at Big Lots.

Duchesse said...

I love pantries and don't know how else to eat. Maybe 15% of my pantry though is underused or simply ignored. Stuff people give me, things I bought without a clear idea how to use, things i bought on sale but the family doesn't like. I'm going to clean up my act.

Nice blog, Frugal!

Frugal Scholar said...

Again, Mme la Duchesse, I am thrilled to have your comment. If your kids live away from home, bring your pantry extras to them. Believe me, they have hungry friends. I've been blissing out reading your blog.