All Aldi Grocery Haul: 06/10/24

Welcome!
We are a homesteading, homeschooling family of 7. Due to recent events (job loss/career change, health issues, rising food costs, etc.) we are having a hard time making ends meet despite our best efforts at frugality. So we are tapping into our local food banks to help us feed our family. Come along as I show you what we are blessed with, what we add to it via grocery store and garden, and how I use it all to nourish our bodies.
Thanks for watching and God bless!

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welcome to weeping willow Homestead and today I have a grocery haul for you this is all Aldi this is uh we are a family of seven my husband is a semi- TR driver and is gone 5 days a week so he doesn’t eat a whole lot from at home but we try to um plan things for him to take in his truck with him he takes a lot of leftovers and um random snacks and those kind of things um my I am a stay-at-home mom and uh we homeschool so the kids and I eat all of our meals at home like we very very rarely eat out um it’s an extremely rare treat because that is part of our grocery budget and I would rather spend $100 at the grocery store than $100 at a at a restaurant or even $25 at a fast food place any anymore we can’t feed us for $25 at a fast food restaurant and for $25 I can make at least a couple of pretty darn decent homemade meals anyway uh we have a grocery budget of we try to stay under $500 a month um preferably under that but we have enough leniency to get up to 600 if we’re finding some really good deals or um if we just find that we need to spend a little bit more than we usually do um and with the price increases yeah that happens more and more often it seems um we are in a season of needing a little bit of a hand up so we do visit a couple of food pantries in our area and uh that saves us some on our grocery budget and saves a whole lot of food from going to the dumpster because that’s where most of that food is headed and yeah I think that’s my whole Spiel let’s look at my meal plan for the next at least two weeks uh generally what we try to do is we try to grocery shop for two weeks worth of groceries and meal plan two weeks worth of groceries like a solid two weeks um maybe a little bit more and then um at the end of that two weeks I assess whatever I have on hand and then I wing it for the next two to three week one to yeah grocery shop for at least two to three weeks worth of food and then we push the third to fourth week from what we have received from the food pantry what um we have on hand that’s left what we’re getting out of the garden that kind of thing so all right meals wise we have hot dogs and Burgers um I had picked up hot dogs the last time we went to the grocery store and we just never got them used and my husband ate most of the burgers um he got on like a burger kick so uh I picked up another thing of those uh Big Mac salads is a family favorite meatloaf and I want to do like the little mini ones and make them bacon cheeseburger meatloaf something along those lines and then probably do something like potato wedges or potato salad or something like that with it to make it um kind of more like Burger flavored I don’t know we had a lot of the that kind of meals in this uh rotation and this is like when I write down I start out with I will ask the kids what meals they want so this was all of their um choices and then I’ll fill in the rest from whatever I have on hand and what um sounds good and that kind of thing uh oh I also needed to say um my husband and I eat low carb generally for health reasons our kids don’t but they do eat less carb than the average kid does but we kind of try to stick to uh the carbs coming from the food pantry rather than us purchasing them so you’re not going to see like breads rice and pasta chips um there’s some snacky food but like a lot of that comes from the food pantry so uh anyway um breakfast for dinner is a family favorite and is a nice oh crap I need to come up with something to make for a dinner meal um hay stacks is taco salad but instead of taco meat you use canned baked beans and you can do them cold or warm if you do them cold it’s a really nice meal for um like a hot summer day and we are getting ready to have a heat wave coming up where it’s in the 60s today and uh by the end of the week it’s supposed to be in the 90s boo uh pesto chicken zucchini is it’s pretty much that you cook chicken you um put zucchini in the pan and you toss it all with pesto put some mozzarella cheese on top and it’s done um like a you can either do it in the skillet or in the oven uh cracked chicken is a crock pot recipe Salsberry steak is a it’s like a poor man Salsberry steak so we’re going to try it uh the crock Tuscan chicken is a Pinterest recipe um baked sandwiches are the like sliders lunch meat sliders with the Hawaiian roll and we have some of those in the freezer bacon cheeseburger casserole there’s another cheeseburger thing for some reason it’s cheeseburger season uh lasagna one night and I’m going to do these egg wraps to make it low carb and that just sounded good and then a taco casserole that’s on Pinterest that I have made before and the kids all really liked the bacon cheeseburger was one that I made just a while back and the kids really liked and then I don’t plan I just kind of planned the main dish some of these won’t need another side dish like a side dish with them at all um I just plan the main dish and then I know what generally fruits and vegetables I need to have on hand for making sure that I have four sides um so that’s why you don’t see like everything exactly planned out I did write down broccoli salad because um that is something that the um kids really like and I thought oh one of these meals especially one of those like cheeseburger meals that would be good with so all right one to tuck that off to the side so let’s see what I picked up to make those meals happen first round is all of the cold stuff all right um these are for casseroles on Bagels that we get from the food pantry anything like that string cheese uh if my kids are still hungry after a meal and they have eaten seconds if seconds are available and they’re still hungry they can come into that the kitchen and get a meat stick a cheese stick a spoonful of peanut butter a hardboiled egg a squeezy pouch or a homemade protein popsicle so that’s what those are for they are not something that we get out a whole lot it’s not something I get out and like put on their plates for lunch anything like that goat cheese are uh on Sunday evenings we have shakery board for dinner um and so I will pull out just one of these per week so these should last us these three should last us three weeks this one probably won’t this flavor was so good the spring garden uh me and especially my oldest really liked this like on crackers I would eat it with like pork rinds that kind of thing um I kind of wanted try doing maybe like a a wrap with the egg wrap with this in it and like lunch meat um some like sliced carrots or something like that would be really good maybe for lunch one day with the kids I’ll do it with tortillas for them uh Mount chees more there are eight sharp cheddar eight mozzarella and eight colby jack the reason why I buy an entire box of them is because I shred all of our cheese by hand it is sometimes cheaper like that per ounce sometimes it’s not the biggest thing for us is that the pre-shredded cheese um that you buy at the store has a filler in it that makes it not cake together not stick together um we I’m not a huge fan of that ingredient one but then two it UPS the carb content on it so we I just shred all of our cheese I have like a hand crank cheese Shredder and I shred it and put it in containers and freeze it and then we have it for the rest of the month also I picked up a little bit extra this time even though we didn’t need quite this much I still have um some of both of these in the freezer and I still have I think a couple of blocks in the refrigerator uh it was on sale this week from $1.99 it was $1.79 per block so uh that was worth it for me to go ahead and pick up a little bit extra and that’s where that little squeaky bit extra that we have in our grocery budget came in a gallon of milk uh strawberry whipped cream for on pancakes waffles anything like that that I do we’ve also been doing the kids will go out and pick malber and for dessert I will put malber and a Sprinkle of chocolate chips and some whipped cream on top and call that a dessert in the middle of the week heavy whipping cream I used for several things casserole soups um and then I also make a like a a low carb ice cream for me with it two things of butter three things of Greek yogurt for breakfast cottage cheese is a quick snack that sometimes the kids will eat it with applesauce for breakfast something along those lines the moo tubes was a very sweet little toothless boy was asking very kindly for some moo tubes so I said yes knowing full well those will be gone in a matter of two days um sliced cheese to make those sliders with and then also I will use the provolone as my favorite and it was on sale this week so I went ahead and got it um I use it in like if I do a wrap or sometimes I’ll just do like lunch meat and cheese rolled up um and have that for lunch the kelasa is my um backup meal I do not have a meal planned for this but if I have a night where I don’t feel good or we’re running late or something comes up where I just I didn’t get meat fed out or whatever this is my go-to backup I will pull out this and do like peas and box mac and cheese and call it good or I’ve done like sausage sheet pan meal um sausage fajitas is really good it’s just a nice quick and easy pull it out and use it I already said what the egg life wraps are for um lunch meat for lunches uh we do a rotation of lunch meat and cheese with fresh veggies um chicken nuggets summer sausage or salami cheese quesadillas or grilled cheese sandwiches um and then another lunch meat and then leftover pizza is our Saturdays so we just kind of rotate through those um the kids know every day what’s going to happen because of that uh the sausage for breakfast for dinner I picked up 10 lbs of ground turkey I use this we get ground beef and ground deer meat from the food pantry and then we also got a couple of small deer this fall um that we did most of it as ground meat and I don’t like the taste of red meat I’m trying it’s growing on me but it’s just never been my thing I actually did not eat red meat for a long time um so I mix whenever I do like ground deer meat I will do half and half with ground turkey and that kind of dulls it down a little bit makes it not quite so potent um so I use that anytime that I am making something with half ground beef half ground turkey and at this point we usually go through 2 lbs with left over from that if I do one pound of meat it’s it’s pushing it to not be enough for us um especially if my husband’s home so uh that’s what that’s for uh a bag of chicken wings I have been doing this uh we do pizza night every Friday night and I haven’t been in the mood for pizza for like making me my own low car Pizza um so I’ve just been doing uh some chicken wings in the air fryer and I can make that bag last usually three meals worth um that’s like like 8 to 10 chicken wings um so yeah that’s what I’ve been doing uh the burgers for Burger night um two bags of the boneless skinless chicken thighs for all of those recipes that called for chicken pretty much these are a rare thing that they don’t usually have and when I see them I pick them up they are my popsicles they get the mo tubes I get the Popsicles right I do share uh some frozen so the kids eat fresh fruit to begin with when the fresh fruit runs out then they can have frozen or canned fruit so that’s what these are for smoothies in oatmeal in um yogurt whatever however they want to use them strawberries tropical blend and then two things of blueberries a whole chicken because this is not the cheapest way to get a whole chicken Unfortunately they that price has gone up so much used to be able to get them as low as like 65 cents a pound uh then they were like9 9 cents a pound and now this was a dollar something a pound um but I’ve been craving whole like whole roasted chicken that is like my favorite thing so and then my husband wanted to pick up some steak for him so that’s what that is well not just him but um he’s been craving steak so he is he would gladly be a like meat and potatoes kind of guy so um yeah all right excuse me that is round one I am going to put all these cold things away and I’ll be back with round two fruits and veggies all right we got a thing of peaches avocados are technically a fruit just notic that one got a little damaged on the way huh uh avocados uh everybody jokes about the fact that they all get ripe at the same time they do I put mine in with my bananas that help actually helps ripen them faster for some reason some chemical that the bananas put off or something about some some science thing uh as soon as they are just just about ripe then I put them in the refrigerator and they will last like that for a couple of weeks at least I have no issues with that they will ripen in the refrigerator slowly so don’t leave them in there for a super long time but that helps them last a little bit longer uh the cantaloupe was a decent price I think it was $1.99 not great but the kids all were like please so I picked up one of those a bunch of Bunches of bananas because my kids are monkeys and uh we use them in smoothies and whatnot um we still have apples lemons and limes and then like I said canned and frozen fruit so uh that’s why there’s just not a whole lot there we are also getting raspberries right now from our bushes uh which I need to go pick by the way GH it’s it’s 5 o’ y’all and I don’t have dinner done or have even thought about dinner all this food uh all right cauliflower for random sides cherry tomatoes for snacky lunches I feel like there was one of the meals that I had planned that was going to use some of those too uh I’m so ready for our garden to start producing cherry tomatoes these six cherry tomato plants that I planted um broccoli I just got a little bit this time because I have some in the freezer from where we got those two big bags of broccoli from the food pantry and I blanched and froze those two things of the mini bell peppers for kids for lunches uh some cucumbers for lunches carrots for lunches um or um meals lettuce for the for sure the one salad the big mac salad and then we will probably have lettuce one other or a salad one other night just as a side salad the spaghetti squash are coming to the end of um being available because they are a fall crop and they over winter um so yeah I’m sad to see those go but I have ones planted and I’m going to put up the good fight against those stupid um zucchini bugs this year the spinach is for that um can’t think now brain dying uh the Crock-Pot tuskin chicken and then I probably won’t use all of it for that I don’t think it called for the entire thing I put this in the freezer just as it is and then you can pull out handfuls of frozen spinach crunch them up if you have a recipe that calls for chopped spinach just crunch it up while it’s frozen and it works great or you can throw that right into um your smoothies Frozen works great uh and then sweet potatoes because I was craving sweet potatoes and I thought um one of those Burger nights we’ll probably do sweet potato fries and then like sausage seat pan meal with some sweet potato or something I don’t know I really like sweet potato it’s obviously not super low carb so I watch how much I eat of it but they’re so good so so yeah um I don’t know that I could ever give up vegetables and even like the carb vegetables completely you can get rid of potatoes for me that’s not the end of the world but sweet potatoes I would miss all right that is round two once again I’m going to go put all of this stuff up and then I’ll be back with the last of it which shouldn’t be too terribly much because it’s all the Shelf stable stuff all right last round and this is the Shelf stable items and like I said this is a lot of what we get from the food pantry so that’s why you don’t see a whole lot L of like Pantry Goods is because we really do get a lot of this from the food pantry so all right snack stuff wise these are actually not for a snack these are for one of those meals hey Stacks uh and then that we won’t eat the entire bag although we’ll probably get close to it um so the rest of them will just be for whatever we use them for uh these are snacks one time a day at 3:00 in the afternoon my kids get to get into the what we call the snack box which is just kind of like the snack area in the pantry and anything granola bar anything like that that we get from the food pantry is where that goes and they get to pick one thing so that’s what these are for these were the special requested items so the mini iced oatmeal cookies these alphabet cookies are delicious uh these are the best animal crackers that exist on the market and you will not convince me otherwise I don’t care nope these are the best they have a light lemon flavor to them and they are so so good and as weird as it may sound they’re even better when they get stale and are slightly soft that’s my take uh I picked up the clubhouse crackers to do with the um that goat cheese that was the garden herb whatever a garden vegetable one uh some peanut butter cups for um sweet treat usually with lunch I let the kids pick like they’ll get like a Hershey Kiss one of these anything like that like the little pieces of candy that we get from the food pantry as well uh cured meats um shelf staish Meats uh for lunch one day we will do summer sausage or hard salami the um summer sausage will last us more than one meal and the the hard salami will last us more than one meal so this is probably two meals worth and this is probably two meals worth uh a thing of pepperoni for making homemade pizzas we still had some of that on hand this is a mom treat um if I if I snack and I rarely snack a lot of times I will actually end up eating like a decent sized breakfast and then I’ll just snack for lunch and I’ll have like a piece of this and a cheese stick and like maybe some like a couple of those crackers with the goat cheese on it and and call that lunch and then I’m fine until dinner so um that’s kind of what that is for is that that’s just a kind of that’s their snacks this is my snacks uh once again if the kids are hungry after a meal meat stick is what these are cheese sticks spoonful of peanut butter you know my uh we were out of butterscotch chips we Ed these for um in oatmeal in yogurt uh making muffins just Randomness like that two things of flour tortillas um we use these These are what I use to make the the kids quesadillas for lunches uh my daughter also likes to do like egg burrito for breakfast in those a lot of times some sweet and sour sauce I did not have Chinese food on the menu but um we saw that they had it and I wanted it for the pantry so I went ahead and picked one up barbecue sauce Italian dressing I like to make a cucumber tomato salad and put this on it or even just a cucumber salad or just a tomato salad no matter what it’s delicious so that’s what that is for and I’m really really looking forward to those cherry tomatoes from the garden uh mint ice cream or mint ice cream mint chewing gum for the kids I hate chewing gum I’ve never enjoyed chewing gum um some Nutella As a treat for the kids they will put um this on like Bagels on uh my one daughter likes to put it in her um yogurt that kind of thing uh mint tea is everybody’s favorite around here so we go through that I need to get the mint out of our we have mint plants growing and so I need to get out there and get it harvested because it’s growing right now uh this I use for making smoothie popsicles for the kids uh these are we normally buy the the fla drink flavors it’s a great way of getting your kids to drink water without too terribly much junk in it they don’t put a whole lot in there um so these are all zero calorie uh one carb for um the one squirt of it or whatever and we tried these flavors last year and everybody really liked them I think the strawberry lemonade was the favorite but um flour and for just having on hand sugar because I used quite a bit of sugar last week I made two different batches of Jam one of them I did low sugar so it didn’t use a whole lot but the other one was not low sugar so uh I put a dent in my sugar and then brown sugar I picked up two of because I went to make um chocolate chip cookie bars for a church get together last month and realized I had no brown sugar um it’s not something that I use too terribly often and so I ended up having to make brown sugar with you can make didn’t know if you knew this brown sugar is just regular sugar with molasses stirred in and I just happen to have molasses on hand from like who knows when this stuff lasts forever so I just made my own really quick but I wanted to go ahead and get some of that when Co was going on and they were having the food restriction I I set back some extra things um I was not hoarding food by any stretch of the imagination but um I did have like an extra bag of flour on hand an extra bag of sugar an extra bag of brown sugar and um I didn’t realize that I had used my backup bag of brown sugar and had none and like I said it’s something that I use probably once every 3 months but now I have it and I don’t have to worry about not having it again because I took those chocolate chip cookie bars to that group that meal and they went over really well they were gone really fast so um next time I think I need to do a double batch um so yeah I will have that on hand for that because that’s a nice quick and easy dessert to take so all right that is everything give me just a second for you a couple minutes for me I need to go find my receipt and then I’ll be back with the total okay I don’t have my receipt um I I know it was 418 is what we spent um and like I said our goal is to stay under 500 a month um we have that Flex of up to $600 a month and like um there a couple of things that we order from Amazon that fit into the food like a specific protein powder um bacon bits that are cheaper to buy through them per ounce those kind of things that uh some of that will come out of and then also usually uh at toward the end of the month uh we will do another small run of like fresh fruits and vegetables to um the grocery store and a lot of times I actually just have my husband pick that up on his way home um so that’s where at 4:18 we have up to uh preferably to get to that 500 we’ve got another what 70 $80 yeah 7580 to spend um that’s what that will be for and then like I said then I watch for um there is the the one town that we go to to get to go to the food pantry has a Save A Lot in it which is like a a grocery store chain um and they run deals sometimes on different meats and those kind of things so I watch their sales ad if I’m going to be in there for that food pantry I will um pop in there if they have any good deals so that kind of gives me that little bit of flex there to possibly to fit in a deal if it you know if it works out during that time period oh I’m rambling okay I’m going to put this the these things away and then I got to go figure out which of those meals I’m making for dinner I have some ideas I have some ideas all right thank you so much for watching this I’m sure this was a long one I can’t tell because I put it into separate pieces but yeah okay thank you so much for watching this I hope you have a great day goodbye and God bless