Monday, September 12, 2011

Another #LowCarb Shopping Trip - MEAT!

We like to buy our meats at Steve's in Harrison, MI for the most part. It's about 20 miles away but I have found their meats to be far superior to what I can buy for a decent price in Houghton Lake. We have Glen's, who have good meat, but unless it is last-day-marked-down or part of a super-sale, it is just out of our budget. Sav-a-Lot has decent meat. But it's nothing like Steve's. So once a month we drive down to Steve's and stock up for the month. I plan on spending about $100 each time - we are big meat eaters.

This month we did it for just $80 and change. And here is what we got:
3.84# of Pollock
6.55# of chicken thighs
13.38# of pork (steaks, chops, country ribs)
11.87# of chuck roast, which I usually slice across and broil as steaks

We averaged $2.24/lb for our meat. Last year I would have been disappointed in anything over $2/lb but this year, considering many prices have almost doubled since last summer, I consider this excellent!

After rewrapping the meat for the freezer, I ended up with 8 chuck (my favorite cut!) steaks, 9 packages of pork, 5 packages of chicken, and 3 packages of fish. Easily a month's worth, considering we go out for our fish dinners once a week, and sometimes we have dishes that don't involve much meat...

Then I went to Sav-a-Lot to stock up on $70 of other stuff, like dairy, eggs, tuna, and other canned goods. I haven't shopped as much as usual this summer, so we'd use up all of the meats and veggies in our big freezer. I don't have my usual "stock" on hand at the moment (except baking supplies), so we're eating what we're buying. This is a great chance to have a more realistic picture of what we are actually spending each month.

So far this month I have spent $165 on groceries. We will probably need some more dairy and some more produce, and I will place my monthly amazon.com and netrition.com orders...but we'll still be under $300 for the month for food. YAY!

3 comments:

  1. I see someone else has my fascination with buying quality meat. It really does make a difference in the meal if the meat is a better quality. You got an excellent price for yours.

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  2. We have Save-a-Lot here in Delaware, too. I don't drive, so my two easy choices are Save-a-Lot and Acme. Acme always seems sooooo high! And I don't notice their quality being a bit better. So Save-a-Lot has saved my budget!

    I'll have to scout around to see if there is anything like your Steve's here in northern DE. You are doing very, very well on your food budget!

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  3. Your Acme must be similar to our Glen's :(. And our Sav-a-Lot is just as expensive as Walmart (our other store in the town) now; up until a few months ago it was much less expensive. Even when the prices started going up, I still went to Sav-a-Lot to support the smaller stores...but now it is much more to my benefit to shop Walmart at times.

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