Pantry Challenge update January 2

I went and did some shopping today.  Normally Wal-Mart is not my first choice for grocery shopping.  I don't think that they always have the best prices, but our little town only has a Wal-Mart and an Ingles and I wanted to get a few things to round out meals for the next week or so.  It was raining and I couldn't justify making the 15 mile trip to the bigger city so I went to Wal-Mart and got a few things.

I spent about $45 today.  I hate that the little pack of ground beef was $7.00 but I will mix it with some ground deer meat and make a meat loaf and some hamburger patties.  The bag of chicken was also $10.00 but at least it had 5 pounds of meat in it.  I wasn't planning on buying 8 pounds of pinto beans but it was such a good price at $6.00 that I couldn't pass it up.  I am hopping that we can put together about 10 meals from this and what we have on hand and that next weekend all I will need to get is some more fruit and some milk.  We will see.

Happy New Year

I know I still have to post my last El Salvador post and I will do that later today or tomorrow.  I really wanted to tell everyone Happy New Year.  We had a bunch over here from our church and a few family members over for New Years Eve.  I like to do New Years Eve because it is after Christmas and before school starts back up so I feel like I have lots of time to get ready for the party and to clean up after.  We love having people over, but with our work and school schedules we don't do it as often as I would like.

Also, I wanted to report on the pantry challenge so far.  We did make a trip to Kroger and to Aldi to get some New Years Eve party food.  I didn't include all of this in my $50 a week but I wanted to show that by shopping sales and discount you can still have a nice party.

 This came from Kroger.  The total was $14.00  The cream cheese and sour cream were on sale.  The broccoli wasn't but I wanted it for a stir fry and the English muffins we made mini pizzas out of.

 This picture is from Aldi. We spent about $35 on these.  We needed the cookies and white chocolate chips to make Oreo balls which is a New Years Eve tradition.

Here are the Oreo balls. Think the kids counted 185 of them.  I think all got eaten except for three.  They are always very popular.

So tonight I will make a pot of spaghetti.  I have home canned tomatoes and the herbs on hand and lots of pasta so I wont need anything from the store.  We don't like black eyed peas or collard greens so we don't usually have a traditional meal.