What to buy at Giant

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I buy almost all of my groceries including organic produce, dairy and eggs at Giant. Weekly grocery bill around $130-150 for a family of 4. About 50% organic, I cook from scratch 5-6 days a week and we pack our lunches.

Can you post a typical grocery list for this price? I can't seem to get out for under 200/week and usually closer to 240. I shop at giant for me, DH and toddler

[Anonymous]

I shop at Wegmans and we recently bought a share of a side of beef. So we bought 80+ lbs of organic, grass fed, pastured beef for about $4.50 per lb. It will last our family of 3 for a long time. At Wegmans I buy organic produce, grass fed milk, bread, deli meat for lunches, organic eggs, cheese, etc. If I make it to the store every week, I usually spend $80ish. If I skip a week, the bill is about $117. I buy very little processed food. I buy only what we need. I no longer stock up on things like canned tomato or canned beans. If I am making a recipe that requires something like that, I buy only what we need. Also, in our house, kids drink milk and adults drink water. That keeps us to one half gallon container of milk per week. I also NEVER send my husband to do the grocery shopping. I hate grocery shopping with a white hot passion, but if I send him with a list he comes back with the list plus 3 boxes of velveeta mac'n'cheese, a case of bad beer, a 5 lb bag of hot dogs, ridiculously expensive muffins, and six different kinds of pretzels. Doing the shopping myself easily saves us $20+ per week.

[Anonymous]

I agree that Wegman's is one of the better choices. They have a variety of organic and grass-feed meats, organic produce, plus all the conventional items.

[Anonymous]

This is an interesting thread. We buy most meat and fish at Whole Foods. I agree that their 365 brand products are often cheaper than our Giant in Van Ness. Our deal is that every two weeks I go to Whole Fooods and buy meat and fish (fish is eaten within 3 days while meat and chicken are stretched out for the time period).

DH loves coupons and makes a game out of saving as much money as possible at the Giant. This includes using those circular coupons that give you more money off the price of gas at Shell. So DH cuts coupons on the weekend while watching soccer/football/baseball and them reads the circular and makes his list. He thrives on buying only what is on sale (and stocking up on well-priced items) as well as whatever I need for our Sunday cooking ((spices, etc.). Then he goes to the Giant with the kids who have grown to love grocery shopping with daddy. I hate shopping. He of course makes it fun.

Perhaps you could try to tailor the week's cooking around sales too? We both work FT out of the house and have a 3 year old and a 1 year old. One of those kids is allergic to soy and eggs so our bills include small meal modifications for him. It took us months to figure this out.

Good luck!

[Anonymous]

H-Mart for fruits and veggies

[Anonymous]

With WF products I have less waste. With sad produce from Giant, etc. things get thrown away so I shop almost exclusively at WF.

[Anonymous]

I too have been trying to go through the circulars on Friday/Saturday and come up with with a meal plan for the week and shopping list. I'm finding that Safeway sale dates run differently from Giant or HT, starting on Tuesdays instead of Fridays.

While I like the idea of shopping only once/week, it just isn't realistic for me, and I find it has been frustrating when I realize I didn't get to Safeway in time. The issue is that the circular still comes out on Fridays, even with the Tuesday sales date. So it is Giant, HT, TJs, HMart as a treat and rarely WF for us.