All You Grocery Challenge

The All You Grocery Challenge started this week! Are you participating by tracking your food spending? We are! You get $25 per person per week, which includes all food items, both groceries and eating out. This week we haven't spent too much yet, as we're using a lot of things we had on hand. Here's our rough menu plan for this week:

Breakfasts: Eggo products, cereal, pancakes and bacon, fruit; milk or juice

Lunches: PB&J sandwiches, fruit, cheese, yogurt, macaroni and cheese, leftovers; milk or juice

Dinners: Camp Chicken and broccoli, Spaghetti with Meat Sauce and salad, Chicken a la King and salad, Salsa Chili and chips, Chicken Alfredo and broccoli, Taco Bell; milk or juice

Snacks: Crackers, graham crackers, Goldfish, cheese, fruit, cereal

This was my grocery trip this week. I spent $15.37 on items to supplement what we already had in the cupboards and freezer. We might have more eating out this weekend, but we have plenty of room in our weekly budget of $150, so I'm not worried at all! My shopping trip next week will look more like normal, since our refrigerator and will be pretty bare, but "normal" for me is around $50-$60 a week. I shouldn't have any trouble staying within the All You budget.

It's been fun to have this challenge to spark conversation with my sister and my parents about their grocery and eating out habits. My dad likes the thrill of couponing and I wish we could shop together every week. My sister spends WAY too much money on eating out because she feels like she doesn't have time or energy to cook. So this week I helped her make a list of items she had on hand and recipes she is interested in trying. Then we scoured the ads and coupons and made a grocery list. I went shopping with her and showed her how to add her purchases up on the calculator and keep track of her coupons. I had to rein her in a few times from straying from her list, but she ended up doing really well. She spent $31.04 and saved $35.57! She was THRILLED to have saved more than she spent using coupons and shopping sales. I went to her house yesterday and helped her prep 7 meals to put into the freezer (Camp Chicken x2, Tater Tot Casserole x2 (in the comments section of this post), and Chicken Pasta Bake x3). Today we are going to make a menu plan, plugging meals into days so that she doesn't have to think about what to cook (it stresses her out) and she will be sure to have time to thaw something out to bake it instead of running to get take out again. She kept saying, "WOW. You are SO good at this!" but I kept reminding her that I've had seven more years of practice than she has since I'm older. :-)

How about you? Are you participating in the All You Challenge? If you are, please let me know that I'm not alone! If you are blogging about it, please leave your link in the comments.