Shopping Day

I was not going to do a major shop until June's grocery budget; however, there were a couple of great sales on this weekend. I was completely out of dishwasher tabs but I was making do with my homemade dishwasher detergent. I decided to bite the bullet and stock up. I ended up going to three different grocery stores.

The big sale that drew me out of the house this weekend was this one at No Frills. Whole eye of round roasts were $2.97 a pound. I should have got more than these two large roasts. They sliced up beautifully into 24 steaks. I cut the tips of each end of the roasts to cut into stewing meat, and the rest went into steaks. I put the "trimmings" into the stockpot with some frozen vegetable peelings to make soup stock. If I buy anymore this week, I will cut into some smaller roasts

Proteins $55.91
Giant Tiger had 4 one pound chubs of lean ground meat on for $10 (usually $14), frozen chicken for $5 (50% off) and hotdogs for $1.99  Total meat purchases came to $55.91

Produce cost $10.68
I had to pay $3.27 for 10 pounds of russet potatoes. I was not happy about that, but we were completely out.  English cucumber was 88 cents, 2 lb. bag of carrots was $1.47. 3 yellow onions cost $1.25, 2 sweet potatoes were $1.61, and the small head of cabbage cost me $2.20 I really noticed the price increase this week on fresh veggies, but my son and his GF left some fresh veggies in the fridge that we have to use up.

Pantry items cost $$20.39

The noodles are for serving stir fries over, instead of rice. The vinegar and salt will be made into weed-killer. The sugar and shortening are for baking, and I pretty much settled with no-name brands for the rest. The peanuts are a treat for my Sweetie. They were less than $2 on sale. 

Non-food items came to $12.72, but they still come out of my grocery budget. 

Dairy came to $17.88, which is all you see here. I try to stick with Becel margarine for everyday, but I like to buy the Imperial margarine for baking because it is packaged into 1/4 lb. or 1/2 cup measures. The block of Armstrong cheese was only $3.97 and the 24 slices of plastic cheese was $2.99  If I had remembered to bring my flyers with me, I could have price-matched with Metro for only $1.99  Arghhh!

The reason I have the dairy purchases in two separate photos is because I wanted to show you my FREE food. You might remember that I had a coupon printed on a box of cereal a couple of weeks ago for a free 2 liters of chocolate milk....well not entirely free, because I had to buy a box of cereal today. But I needed to buy some more Cheerios anyway. But the 4 liters of Chapman's ice cream is entirely free. Every year just after New Years, I contact Chapman's and request a coupon for their product. (You are allowed one a year) They used to give a $5 coupon in the mail, but 2 years ago, they cut it back to a $4 coupon. As more and more people heard about the offer, more and more people began taking the offer. This week, Freshco had their Chapman's ice cream on sale for $1.97 a carton. That translated into 2 cartons of ice cream for me, completely FREE.  Yippee! 

After spending another $5.48 on a package of hot dog buns and a box of Cheerios, my total came to $123.06  I am still within my budget for May. 

Remember we bought laminate flooring for the renovation in the upstairs bedroom? Well, we had one full unopened package left over, which my Sweetie took back for a store credit. I used that credit today to buy a round pointed shovel and two 6-packs of wave petunias...one red and one white. I spent another $6 + tax OOP to buy a pack of pink ones as well. I will use these to put in my planters this weekend. All in all, it was a successful shop. And how is your weekend going so far?