A new way to grocery shop...

So one of my goals for this year is to be extremely strict on our grocery budget. As we prepare to grow our family that means most likely our income will be changing. Therefore I need to get in the strict, strict habit of staying within our budget. For the most part I, we do, I mean really we have no room since our normal "fixed" expenses are set and can't change, mortgage, vehicle fuel, electric, tithe, sitter, etc. So when I do the monthly budget and enter in all those plus more, there's nothing left. Which should be the case so that we are not wasteful, but that being said, that means whatever I budget for groceries is all we have and that's that.

Starting in 2010 I have set a goal to diligently plan our meals in advance and only buy what's on the grocery list. However, I know I will always forget something and not realize it until I am at the store, so I always leave room for those items. I usually shop at Wegmans and Aldi's, mainly Aldi's for veggies and some fruit and then Wegmans for everything else. And I found something awesome on Wegmans.com that makes grocery shopping easy and fun, well maybe not quite fun but easier.

The Wegmans secret...online shopping list and they give you the prices! So awesome! I enter everything from my list and add up the cost, of course some items will be variable such as meat and fruit but I know what I spent last week and can guessimate. I always leave $25-30 for those unexpected items and to buy milk inbetween grocery days. We grocery shop every other week, which I found early on in our marriage is the easiest and we save money rather than weekly shopping.

We have our regular items that I try to find coupons for, either online or in the circular, great way to save, obviously.

And so far so good for the first month of meal planning. I've been using all those magazines that I sorted through, usually one magazine per two week period, sometimes I can get longer out of it. This obviously means that we are always trying new recipes, some good some just ok. If it's good, it gets a smiley face with a date and if not, a frown with date and why we didn't like it. If I do anything different to the recipe than what it calls for, I always make notations. I try to have one meatless meal, crockpot meal, and then every other Friday homemade pizza. We don't try new recipes everyday and oldies/regulars get added to the meal plan too, but I still have to mark them on the list in order to make sure I have all the ingredients.

And another bonus of putting in some extra time to plan our meals, means that every morning I don't have to guess what's for dinner, and less waste because we use the fresh vegetables first. Plus, we have great leftovers usually for lunch the next day or day after. Resulting in spending less on those frozen meals for lunches.

And with all this extra effort I hope to really fine tune my strategy, such as planning our meals according to the sales flyer, but that will come in time. Plus I want to get very thrifty and begin to start our family on organics. This will take time since it is so much more expensive to buy organic but this is my goal for our family...overtime, little by little.

I actually started this post to share a wonderful recipe that we had the other day...potato soup. It was absolutely delish and so very easy to make. But since I babbled on about grocery shopping, who knew so much could be said, I will have to post the recipe tomorrow. But it will be worth the wait...