grocery shop more effectively

My husband and I have discovered a grocery store in our area that is basically a store under the Kroger brand umbrella. I’m still clipping/printing coupons, but just shopping here is saving us at least $30-$40/ each trip!!! It’s also more efficient now that my sister is living with us, which means that we have less leftovers to spoil.
I’m also still making grocery menus/lists weekly/every other week. This is really helping for not overspending, but I keep forgetting to put snack items on the list. But that really isn’t a problem except for the pregnancy cravings.

I’m spend a bit of time on the internet each week finding coupons for things on my list. I’ve been saving at least $3-5 each trip that way! We are also eating a bit better, with lots of fruits and veggies and fewer meats and starches. However, this is a bit of a challenge now that I’m pregnant.

I have three goals here:
1. shop on a budget that a person on food stamps would have to shop on $35.40/person
2. eat healthily
3. eat what we buy
4. don’t eat out as much!!!

Plan:
Better planning
better preparation of food.

I’ll post again when I have some menus or something.

I use my PDA to help me pick stuff off the grocery shelves just by having my weekly menu (DASH eating plan) saved in memo format. After some digging, I found a promising application that will go much farther toward organizing my grocery shopping, as well as nutrition. It’s called Pocket Cook. I downloaded a trial version and have found it to have numerous handy (if a little intricate) tools for improving not only shopping, but diet in general.

Instead of grab and go!