Wow. $4.59/lb?

I'm not a big fan of poultry. It has to be in something for me to enjoy it and a lot of the times we will plan a few chicken meals to give ourselves a break from red meat. (The great majority of our meals are vegetarian; out of 90 meals and 30 snacks, 7-12/month have beef, 2-3/chicken. We eat fish, but I don't count that the same.)

Every week before we go to the grocery store I try to plan as many meals as possible out of ingredients we have on hand. Hubby and I discuss what we're really hungry for. Then I go through sales flyers (usually online) and determine what's on sale. This ends up being the remainder of our meals.

I used The Grocery Game for almost a year. It was my first experience using coupons, shopping lists, and matching up sales to get things for almost free. I learned a lot. Now I use those concepts on my own. We save at least $50 every week by doing it this way.

This week we decided that we wanted fajitas as one of our "hungry for it" choices. Usually this is a low cost meal for us. It's also one of the few ways that I enjoy chicken. I had the tortillas and salsa in my cart, ready to go. We headed towards the meat. I was horrified; chicken was $4.59/lb! Scratch that off the list. I'm really kicking myself for not stocking up with a local store had it for $1.29/lb a few weeks ago. We have a vacuum sealer and hopefully will be getting a chest freezer soon.

We did score big on the bacon this week. I usually avoid center cut bacon. Even at 2/$6 on sale it's only 12 ounces. I wait until the 16 ounce packages are 2/$6 and then stock up. Today, however, they had installed a coupon dispenser ("blinkie") right next to the display with $1.00 coupons! I ended up getting four 12-ounce center-cut bacons for $8!