Last Weekend

I made a couple of trips to Aldi's this last weekend, as well as one brief trip to Dillon's. 

We made plans to eat dinner at a friend's house on Friday, so I needed to go and pick up a few items for the side dish I planned to bring.  While I was there, I went ahead and picked up a few items I knew that we would soon need.  The most expensive item was a 3lb bag of frozen chicken breasts.  The price on the frozen breasts is certainly reasonable, but I prefer the 10lb bag I can buy at Sam's because the breasts are a little smaller and more consistently sized.  The price at Sam's is not that much more than Aldi's, so I will probably go back to buying the Sam's chicken after this month.

I was excited to find pork chops for $2.49/lb.  I had looked at Dillon's recently and they were over $4/lb; a package with just three pork chops cost over $7.  For just about the same unit price, I was able to buy 5 pork chops at Aldi's (and one of those chops was big enough to actually make the total 6).

I spent $36.95 on this first trip. 

The second trip came on Sunday after I had made our weekly menu plan.  There were just a few items that I needed, so the trip only cost $16.82.

Since I also wanted to buy some yogurt, I went over to Dillon's.  They had a mariachi band playing for their Mexican celebration, so I enjoyed the added pleasure of live music to my shopping experience.  While at Dillon's, I just stuck to my goal of only buying certain produce and other items that I am not able to buy at Aldi's.  Red leaf lettuce, bananas, and yogurt were the only items I placed in my cart to purchase for a total of $5.25.

I have to admit I struggled a little bit while at Dillon's with the temptation to look for food bargains. 

A third of the way through the month, my grocery total sits at $135 and change.  This would keep me at the $400 mark for the month if I stay at this pace.