January Monthly Totals

This month I spent $297.95 on $668.79 of products. That's an overall saving of about 55%.

I have been doing less stockpiling this month because I am pretty well stocked on many things. This month more of my focus has been on just finding and taking advantage of the best prices on fresh items like meat & produce. You can still save a lot of money each month and eat healthy. And when dealing with things like produce, you usually don't have to use coupons, you just need to use the tools that are out there to find the best prices.

Produce Co-op

So I have been really excited to try out this food co-op I blogged about earlier. This morning I did my first pickup. It was very well run, very organized. You wait in a line which moved really quickly. They then have the fruits and veges sorted into orders in seperate baskets so in my case I was picking up 3 orders (mine and 2 of my sister-in-laws) so I took the produce from three vege baskets and three fruit baskets and loaded them into boxes and that was it. The produce all looks very fresh and none of it looked overripe. I paid $15 and got all of the above:

1 huge bunch of lettuce
1 head of broccoli
2 cucumbers
3 zuchinni
7 red bell peppers
Roma tomatoes (Kyle couldn't keep his hands off them!)
Bananas
Apples
1 bag of pears
1 pack of strawberries
Mandarin Oranges
Grapefruit

I also got some 9 grain whole wheat bread through the co-op which I am really excited to try out.

Here is a link to the one I went through - www.bountifulbaskets.org. But if there isn't one in your area then you could always google food co-ops and see about one in your area.

Walmart Deals

I don't go to Walmart very often but I did go today because there were enough things I needed that I could get a good deal on there.

So here is what I did:

1st - I went to Hip2Save's Walmart posts and went through those to see what deals I wanted to take advantage of.

2nd - I made my grocery list to see what I just needed to get.

3rd - I went to the grocery smarts printable planner that you can see in the list of links to the right. In the drop down box that has you choose your store I choose All in One and then shrunk that down to show the 4 & 5 star deals (Click on Start, click on the Star and then click on Shrink). The main reason I wanted to go to Walmart was because they price match and I wanted to price match for my produce. The nice thing about the grocery smarts planner is that you can see what the best deal is by store. As you go down the list you will see that each stores best deals are listed and the produce deals are usually listed first. So it's quick and easy to glance down the list and make note of what the best prices are for produce.

In the end I got all the above:

1 red onion
1 red bell pepper
4 big slicing tomatoes
2 bunches of bananas
1 pinapple
5 pears
1 bag of oranges
1 cucumber
1 bag of baby carrots
1 bunch of romaine lettuce
1 bunch of red leaf lettuce
1 bunch of broccoli
3 crisco cooking sprays
10 La Victoria Salsas
10 Healthy Choice frozen entrees
3 Digiornio 200 calorie portion pizzas
2 jars of Dole Sunfresh fruit
1 bag of cheese sticks
5 packs of Yoplait smoothies
2 gatorade's
4 packs of Chef's Requested steak wrapped in bacon

all for just $60.02!! I saved $52 from coupons and about another $20 by price matching the produce.

Food Co-ops?

Has anyone ever used a food co-ops? I am looking into trying one since we go through tons of fresh produce. My old college roomie sent me this email:

My sister bought a 33 pound basket of produce for $15. She has been doing this for the past two months, two times a month. This last week she got pears, mangos, bananas, cantelope, watermellon, and kiwi. The vegetables are just as good. Half are veggies and half fruit. For Christmas they ate corn on the cob. The produce may be underripe at times but I would rather have that then too ripe. Here is a link to someone's site that can explain what she got for the week.

http://www.couponeverafter.com/2009/07/bountiful-baskets.html

The shipment comes ever two weeks. Ordering is done the Tuesday and Wednesday before pick-up. On Saturday you need to be there sometime between the 20 minute pick-up window or your food will be given away. Here is the acuatul link to the site.

http://www.bountifulbaskets.org/

(Thanks Anna Marie!)

I am really excited to try one of these out. This one has a pretty close pick up location every other Saturday at about 104th South and 40th West in South Jordan. I was talking with my friend Rachel about this and she mentioned that there was one right by our neighborhood, at the Senior Center on 22nd West and Sugar Place. I googled that trying to find that one and found that pickup is through this website https://www.foodco-op.net. This one only does a pickup once a month and you can also do meat through the co-op. I was wondering if anyone out there had used either or these or any other co-ops in the Salt Lake area and what you thought of them. Let me know!

I'm Back!

By the looks of my blog I am sure it appears that I have been slacking. And I guess you could say that is true. My husband and I just got back from a week long cruise to the Western Caribbean to celebrate our 10 year anniversary. It was great but also nice to be home. Now I just need to get caught up on the good deals!