Eating from the Pantry, Week Two

Yee-hah!! I did even better during this second week of my Eat from the Pantry Challenge than I did the week before! Other than shifting a couple of meals around to a different night, we stuck to our menu. I did so much better with my second rule in the challenge, only making two grocery shopping stops this week (as oppposed to four last week), both of them at Publix. [In the interest of full disclosure, I did make one other stop at Publix with my daughters, but only to buy a card, flowers and candy for our seven-year-old to give to her teacher for her birthday. NO groceries were purchased during that visit! :) ]

I was also thrilled that I spent less money this week. At my first stop on Monday, I bought these items, spending $31.78 and saving $21.57.


Having just priced some John Frieda hair products at Walmart earlier this month, I was quite surprised to find that they were cheaper (on sale) at Publix. Since I had a $2.50 off coupon, the hairspray was only $.99.

At my second visit on Thursday, I spent $16.38 for these items, saving $25.52.


I had a free product coupon for the Yoplait Smoothie mix. The Halls cough drops were free, since they were on sale at a B1G1 Free price of $1.69 and I had two $.50 off coupons that doubled. The bagels were $.55 each with a B1G1 free price of $2.09 and a $1 off of two coupon. (My daughter takes the bagels to school for lunch or uses them on the weekends to make her own bagel pizzas.)

So, my grand total for the week was $48.16, well below my budgeted goal of $75.00!!

I still have an abundance of pasta in the pantry, so I'll once again be basing some of next week's meals around that. The challenge is going to get a bit more interesting, however, as my husband wants to move to more of a fruits and vegetables based menu for a couple of weeks.

Come back Monday to see what kind of meal plan I create (I'm kind of interested to see what it will be myself!)

Follow others in their Eat from the Pantry Challenge at Money Saving Mom and Life as Mom. See how others saved money this week at Friday Finals, I Heart Publix, Super Savings Saturday, Super Savers and Grocery Cart Challenge.