Groceries are one of the first places families feel the squeeze, so it helps to see what a real week looks like. Lisa Dawn of That Lisa Dawn shops for a household of three adults in Raleigh, North Carolina, and she tries to keep the weekly bill between $40 and $60. This week it landed at $53.
She does not clip a rigid plan. “I primarily shop based on what is on sale or what is seasonally lower priced,” she says, and she buys staples like rice, flour and beans in bulk once or twice a year.
Three Stores, Five Miles, And A $52.57 Receipt Total
Some viewers ask her if driving to three stores wastes gas. Lisa says the stores near her are so close together that the whole loop is only about 5 miles. “If I lived in a really rural area, my shopping strategy would be totally different.”
She started at Harris Teeter, her cheapest stop at $6.77. A box of her favorite pasta shape was $1.18, which she says is higher than the dollar boxes she remembers. Canned black beans were buy one, get one free, so she grabbed six cans at 64 cents each. Garlic was 60 cents a clove, and marked-down bananas were 42 cents.
Aldi came next at $22.53, and almost half of that was coffee at $8.69. She calls it still one of the best prices per ounce around. Parmesan was $4.39, bread $1.45, bagels $1.99, cream cheese $1.79, applesauce cups $1.95, and zucchini $1.39 a pound.
Her last stop was Food Lion for $23.27. Frosted mini wheats were $3 on sale, a 5-pound bag of potatoes $2.50, and sweet potatoes 99 cents a pound. Cucumbers and cabbage were both 69 cents, and ketchup was $2.39.
The Marked-Down Meat That Covered Four Dinners
The best deals were in the meat case. She found a boneless pork loin marked down to $3.45, a little over two pounds at $1.49 a pound. A big pack of boneless, skinless chicken thighs was marked down to $7.28, or $2.27 a pound.
“The meat together right here is four dinners worth of meat for me,” Lisa says. She figured she could stretch it to five dinners.
Her backup plan was ready too. Boneless skinless chicken breast was on sale for $1.99 a pound at Food Lion, Harris Teeter and Aldi that week. If the store had run out of thighs, breast was her fallback.
She makes sure marked-down meat stays fresh. “This meat still smells and feels really fresh, by the way. That’s something that I make sure to keep an eye on.”
“Can Definitely Feel The Grocery Price Increase” But The Week Still Worked
Lisa is honest that the first haul of $52.57 felt like an end-of-week total, not a starting number. “Can definitely feel the grocery price increase, but we’re still not doing too bad.”
She points out that a lot of the haul would last into the next week. Coffee, applesauce and ketchup would not need to be on next week’s list. She also checked her cabinet before leaving so she bought only the type of beans she needed.
Soup From A Chicken Carcass And Freezer Scraps
Dinner one was soup. She started with a rotisserie chicken carcass and a backlog of freezer bags full of veggie scraps and bones, then pressure cooked a broth for two hours.
Then she added onions, aging carrots, wilty celery and potatoes. “Carrots get a little older, they’re not as enjoyable to snack on. They are great to cook with.”
Her secret was a blend of cooked great northern beans and half and half, stirred in at the end. “It just adds a really nice creamy velvetiness to it. It kind of feels like when you add heavy cream to a soup.”
A Freezer Bag Trick And Pasta That Used Up Leftovers
Thighs became pan-fried chicken for a zucchini and tomato pasta. The tomatoes had been sitting on the shelf and were getting wrinkly, and a couple ounces of leftover cream cheese melted into the sauce. She chopped the chicken up, because “the chicken goes further” that way.
She split the rest of the chicken between two meals. Half went into a freezer bag with oil and seasonings, so it could thaw early on Friday for sheet pan fajitas.
Pork Chops, Stir Fry, And Muffins For Game Night
The pork loin made four thick chops, roasted cabbage with a quick soy and brown sugar sauce, and then a pork stir fry over rice. She said the stir fry was a 10 out of 10 dinner.
Thursday was game night, so she baked banana pumpkin chocolate chip muffins using bananas and canned pumpkin already in the house. Saturday’s dinner was a sheet pan of potatoes, frozen kielbasa, onions and Serrano peppers, because she did not feel like spending any more money.
What You Can Borrow From Her $53 Week
- Check your cabinet before you shop so you buy only what you need.
- Look for marked-down meat, then freeze portions right away.
- Keep a freezer bag of veggie scraps and bones for broth.
- Use what is wilting before you buy anything new.
- Stack staples like beans, rice and flour in bulk twice a year.
At the end, Lisa tallied up the week. “I did only end up spending that $53.” She adds that it is a snapshot of one week, not a rule, but her method of shopping sales and cooking from what she has is easy to copy.
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