My First GF Shopping Trip

The thing that I've been most worried about with the entire process of changing my diet has been how it will change our grocery budget and shopping habits. Ben and I have tried pretty hard over the past year to establish meal plans, shop every two weeks, and stay within our $250/month budget. This total includes groceries, snacks, alcohol, etc., but does not include if we go out to a restaurant as we have a separate budget set aside for that.

With all of that in mind, I wanted to make sure that when we made this switch at home that we would still be eating things that we like and taste good, and that we could keep the budget managable. Yesterday, I sat down to do my first meal plan. OOF...

The first thing I did was read a TON of recipes on Pinterest. The nice thing about going GF after it has kind of become a "fad," is that there is an endless amount of information and thousands of recipes at my fingertips!! As I read through, I found a number of recipes that sounded great, and a few that I decided against. I started a new pin board so that I can access them easily when I need them. Once I had decided on a handful of recipes that I wanted to try, I went through and chose meals for the next couple of weeks:

As you can see, I planned for the rest of the month, but when I speak of shopping, I did not factor in the final week or buy any of the ingredients for those meals. I also based this menu on recipes AS WELL AS food that we already had in our freezer. One of things that Ben and I do to cut costs is buy meat at Sam's club once every month - 4-5lbs of ground beef and 8-10 chicken breasts - and freeze it in 1lb or 2 breast packages. We buy pork and fish as they go on sale at the grocery store and stock up/freeze those as well.

I ended up deciding to use four recipes that I got off of Pinterest, and a bean recipe that I got from my uncle [it's a secret, so I had to cover it - sorry!!]. I went through and wrote out the ingredients for each one, and then on a separate paper [pink], I listed out the ingredients that I DID NOT ALREADY HAVE AT HOME based on their section at HyVee. This helps me ensure I have everything I need for the recipes/meals I've chosen, and it also helps to prevent me from wandering and buying a bunch of extra things that I don't really need!

 

**I did buy Ben hot dog buns for Bratwurst night; I will not be eating those! :)

By menu planning and utilizing sales I was able to get all of the groceries we needed PLUS A TON OF EXTRAS for $84.17 - AND I earned 47 cents in fuel savers! Here are shots of the haul:

 

 

Overall, I was really pleased with how everything went, AND I was happy to learn that HyVee has their HealthMarket organized to make things super easy. They have an entire aisle of just GF products, along with 5 coolers full of cold products. This made it easy to find snacks, seasonings, etc. that I know for sure will be GF for me. They also have a great promotion on Wednesdays where you earn fuel savers just for shopping in that department, so I know that when we need something from that section we are definitely going on Wednesday!

As a side note, I also went to Aldi's over the weekend because I had heard that they carry a number of GF products. When I got there, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of options... snacks, pasta, frozen meals, frozen pancakes, bread, etc. I ended up grabbing one of a bunch of different things to try them out. I got everything pictured below for about $14.00!

I am hopeful that as I get the hang of things and find/master recipes that we like, the process won't be as lengthy as it was this time! Stay tuned!