This Month's 2024 Extreme Budget Grocery Spending – August

 

This month I was all about stocking up for winter and filling in any gaps I might have in my pantry as well as my long term food storage.  With the deep freezer pretty much stocked up I was able to focus my grocery budget dollars on canned and dry goods along with some fresh produce for the new refrigerator.  After my very successful July pantry challenge I was nearly ready to restock the crisper drawer with some fresh goodies.

 

I divided up the frozen veggies and vacuum sealed them for the freezer

I began the month at Costco and picked up some goodies for the LTFS including a four pack of jarred peaches.  I decided not to can my own this year since I do not eat a lot of fruit and it doesn’t seem it would be worth the trouble and expense, to be honest.  Yes, these peaches may be a bit on the pricey side, but I remember my mom telling me years ago that after all of us kids had flown the coop this was one of those items she regularly picked up for my dad because he felt he’d earned a better quality of canned fruit and he loves canned peaches.  I decided now that I am an empty nester too, so do I!  I used the remainder of a gift card to cover the bulk of this shopping trip.

 

A second trip to Costco left me with more peaches, some salsa and dill pickles as well as a ten pound bag of sugar for the LTFS.  I picked up croissants, which I ended up putting most of them away in the freezer and another rotisserie chicken that I pieced out into several meals and froze.  I used the chicken carcass and the one from a prior shop along with some veggie scraps I’d been collecting in a bag in the freezer to make a delicious stock that I ended up canning.

 

A few pantry items I was low on

My next shopping trip was to Winco to pick up some pantry items and fill in a few gaps.  I added pickled beets, which I love on a salad, as well as some chiles, ketchup and lemon juice to the LTFS shelves.  I also picked up sour cream and cream cheese since I was completely out of both after the pantry challenge in July.  A quick stop into Fred Meyer to pick up a couple pounds of butter replaced what I have used so far this spring and summer.

 

I was gifted these two lovelies 😀  

The crisper drawer in my refrigerator was getting pretty low on produce by the end of July, however I still had a few things left in it as well as a lot of frozen vegetables and some berries I wanted to work on before I brought home anything new.  I began the month of August with 6.25# of potatoes, three carrots and three heads of romaine lettuce plus a nice handful of tomatoes I’d picked from my garden.  After canning some sweet relish I had a large onion, half of a large green bell pepper and about a third of a large red bell pepper to add back to the drawer.  Plenty of veggies for me to make quite a few salads and even a stir fry.

 

After challenging myself to use up every bit of fresh produce and even some of the frozen stuff I finished off the month and headed back to the store for some fresh produce.  At Winco I picked up a package of salad mix, green onions, apples and bananas as well as onions and peppers for another canning project.  I also added yogurt and cottage cheese to the cart.

 

A couple days later I stopped into Albertson’s to pick up some colored bell peppers and an English cucumber they had on sale along with a half gallon of organic milk.  Low and behold, I found a nearly eight pound pork butt on markdown in the meat department which I quickly snapped up.  I grabbed and onion from the produce section and then headed straight home to make a batch of pork verde and check that roast off my “wishlist”.  I was so happy!

 

This turned out to be a beautiful roast

It was a lot of shopping at various stores this month and I did make multiple trips.  It helped that most of this shopping was completed on my way home from work so I didn’t waste fuel in the truck and it made better use of my time as well.  Amazingly, I managed to get a huge list of items, carefully using digital coupons and sales prices as well as some gift cards to help me shave off the prices and help to keep me on track.  Even more amazing, I stayed well within my budget!

 

My list was so long I had to break it up into two pics!

I am super thrilled this month!

There were no nonfood expenditures this month so all of my shopping and spending was geared solely toward food.  At the beginning of the month, after the July pantry challenge, I had $60.42 to rollover and add to my $50 August budget.  I spent a total, after gift cards, of $97.35 of my allotted grocery budget with a remaining balance left of $13.07.  I will roll that amount over and add it to my September $50 budget and once again I will be off and running.  Can you believe I was able to buy all of this, do a ton of home canning and stock my LTFS shelves for winter and still have money leftover?  I’m just absolutely thrilled!