My New Love!

FIRST: A Happy 30th Birthday Shout out to my husband's best friend of about 25 years:
Mr. Andrew Freeman!
We met up with them and some of their family at Big Pie in the Sky pizzeria in Kennesaw...yes, home of the 11 lb carnivore pizza challenge! We didn't take the challenge, but all enjoyed a TON of pizza and cake in celebration of Andy's 1 score and 10 year birthday! Corey will be hitting that milestone in just a couple of months himself. Thanks for all you do Mr. Freeman in the US Air Force and for being a great friend!

After our dinner, we headed over to Trader Joe's in Marietta. The store has been bragged on by a few online friends and another local friend, so I had wanted to visit for a while now... but we just had the opportunity tonight. IT WAS AWESOME!!!!!

It isn't a big store, but it seemed to have all the basic things you would want or need to buy on a normal trip to the grocery store with plenty of selection.

We are consciously trying to do everything we can to buy healthier foods, but the price tag is often not cooperative. This place has the best prices on healthy food I have ever seen! The very first find was right inside the front door of the store.... organic hamburger buns with NO corn syrup....for only $3.29! I haven't been able to find a single brand of buns in the local store with no corn syrup! Now, $3.29 isn't super cheap (if you are comparing it to the 0.99 store brand bun) but for what you are getting, that is a great price!

Here are some of my other favorite finds:
Organic and/or natural snack chips and crackers: $1.19-$1.99/bag/box
2 lb bag organic fuji apples: $2.49
Organic natural salted chunky peanut butter: $1.79
Organic concord grape jelly (no corn syrup) $2.99
Organic spaghetti noodles: $1.29
Organic cereal bars: $1.69

We got a lot of other stuff too, really we got all of our weekly groceries because none of it was more expensive than Kroger and most of it was cheaper!


Now, how is this compared to coupon shopping? Well, it is more expensive. But, that depends on what you are comparing..... I recently got NON organic frozen vegetables, on sale with a coupon for 0.90/bag. Yes, that is cheaper than the $1.99 I spent on a bag of green beans tonight. Here's the difference: the ones I got tonight were organic, and they were twice the size bag that I got with the coupon.
I won't stop cutting coupons...because it is still worth it to me....especially if I use the coupon previews to decide which weeks have coupons that I will really use. For items like toothpaste, razors, deodorant, Eggland's Best eggs, scented candles, etc., I will always come out better with using the coupons and buying the papers. Although, with cleaning out the snack cabinet and pantry tonight to make room for all our goodies, I did see what "free" items went bad before we could eat them. A lot of stuff I could have donated if I had known we wouldn't eat them by now....

I have decided to not cut coupons for things that will be unhealthy for us to eat. Sometimes I will cut ones that I know will eventually be free, even if I just donate the items to our church food bank.
But, for us, we have decided that buying healthier foods is worth a little extra for most things, and with the addition of a freezer to the basement, we are going to try to come up with a better schedule for buying up foods so that we can include trips to places like Trader Joe's to buy the things that will be cheaper there. Maybe something like: meat from Cosco once every few months, a trip to Trader Joe's for non-perishables one week a month... then fill in with fresh stuff and random things we need weekly from the local store. And, of course, scoring on my coupon buys too!

If you have one of these stores near you, I a SO envious! The best thing about the trip was that Corey REALLY loved it too! He couldn't believe how great the prices were on stuff that was good and healthy! He really loved that because the snacks in our house have been very few and far between lately since I have taken a stand against pure junk food! ha ha!
Since he loved it so much it will be very easy to work out getting down there...since I will have his 100% support with working out a time and/or taking me himself! :)