I went shopping yesterday at ChefStore, which is a restaurant supply store and I can get some really great deals there.  Not everything, so I have to watch it, but most things.  You buy in bulk for most stuff, but they do have a few things that are in smaller quantities.  They are just more expensive.

Here is what I bought:

30 pounds of navel oranges $22.98

1 pound loaf of Muenster cheese $4.29

3 pounds of grated parmesan $20.97

15 pounds of Russet potatoes $5.39

1 loaf buttermilk bread $2.99

1 mega twin pack of tortillas $9.89

1 pack of 20 organic German sausages $24.99

1 pack of 10 3.39 toaster biscuits $3.39

1 30 pound case (6 5 pound bags) of diced frozen yellow potatoes $54.19

Total spent: $157.92

I saved $9.50 due to sales on items, that largest discount of which was $8.40 off the sausage.  Otherwise I would not have bought the sausage  It is one thing to buy 20 sausages at $24.99.  It's another to buy them for $33.39.  Even if they are organic.  We will be able to get three meals out of them, so $8.33 per meal for the meat.

We will be shredding the Muenster since we don't have a meat slicer.  Well, we do, but it is buried in our storage unit somewhere and we just haven't had time to find it.  I am hoping when the whether warms up, we can go in there and clean it out and get rid of a bunch of stuff.  We have a ton of children's toys in there that we don't need anymore and that the kids are willing to get rid of.  There are a lot of Barbie dolls and Polly Pockets and stuff like that that my great nieces would probably adore.

There are also a bunch of stuffed animals they could pick through and see if they wanted them.  Some can just be thrown away, too, because they are falling apart.  I do have a few I want to keep.  One that my grandmother made me and one that my mother made me and my first two stuffed animals.  I have a ton of stuffed penguins from when I was collecting penguins that I would like to keep one or two of and two collectible bears, and there is a set of Winnie the Pooh characters that we got at Disneyland back in the late 90's that might be worth something, so I'd like to see about that, before giving them to the kids.  Otherwise, I don't really care.  The kids have their most important stuffed animals from when they were babies at home.  Not many at all, just two each.

But hopefully when we start purging the unit we will also find the meat slicer.  Then we can also make our own roasted chicken breast and turkey breast and London broil and slice it for sandwiches instead of paying exorbitant prices for the cleanest deli meats they offer.  Which still has some stuff in them.  We would have completely clean meat with nothing in it.  Just our seasonings.

The oranges should last us 3 weeks.  We still had some left, but we had really been tucking into them when we were very sick.  We should be slowing down now that we feel better.  The 15 pound bag of Russet potatoes should go two full weeks.  And the diced potatoes should last several weeks.  The Muenster should last a month.  I will vacuum seal half of the cheese and shred half of it, so the sealed half stays protected longer.  The parmesan containers are sealed, but must stay in the fridge.  They will last 6 months and my kids go through powdered parmesan pretty fast.  They eat it on all their pasta and pizza and sometimes on their broccoli or fries.

The tortillas will be for breakfast burritos for the freezer for the guys' breakfasts and also taquitos for one dinner.  I do have a lot left of the pack of tortillas we bought at Costco, but we will definitely needs this one, too.  The toaster biscuits are like English muffins but softer.  They will be used to make breakfast sandwiches.  Egg, Canadian bacon, and cheese sandwiches.  So not all the shopping was just for this pay period even if it came out of this budget.  I will probably still have to buy a couple of things, so I won't save as much these two weeks, but that is okay.  I think the goal has to be that we are eating from home and improving our health than it does that we are saving all of the money.

And when the credit card bill came in for all of the December spending, I realized just how much we did spend eating out.  The money I did save went to pay on the credit card instead of the emergency fund like I wanted.  I will be able to pay off the credit card this month, but barely and only because it is a three payday month for us.  But hopefully next month will be better.  I had a talk with DH about his free spending and I won't be spending any money on my game for a few months, because I did spend a lot on it in December because they were having all kinds of sales on stuff that were ridiculous.

One of the things that happens with me is that when I am in extreme pain, I buy things.  It makes me feel better.  It is an old bad habit.  But since I don't need anything, really, I spend it on my game.  And I need to not do this.  I thought I had shaken it, but apparently not.  It's like now that I am over my food addiction, my old spending addiction is rearing its ugly head.  I think I will talk to my therapist about that in my session on Tuesday.  I mean, I haven't used my credit card in 18 days, so I am doing pretty good for now, but I really have to think about why I am doing this again.  It hasn't gotten to the point where I will have interest to pay, but this one was going to be pretty darn close.