Weekly Meal Plan #4 + Grocery Haul!

I'm back with another weekly meal plan with grocery haul. This week, I went shopping at Wal-Mart again... it was my goal that I would test out shopping at Wal-Mart, Target, and Kroger to definitely prove my belief that Wal-Mart is not necessarily the cheapest option, like many people believe... It has been tough trying to work that in to regular life though, to be honest.

The first week I went shopping at Wal-Mart, my husband needed household items and that drove the price up to $240 - but that wasn't a typical grocery run. This week (second week trying to grocery shop at Wal-Mart) the bill came out to around $160 and was mainly food - I did have to buy two Kleenex boxes for Bella's fairy house project at school - however I realized that unless I was buying exactly the same items at all three places, then it was going to be tough to do a one to one comparison.

So that is my idea going forwards, it will take some time - but I would like to pick 10 of our most commonly purchased items and purchase them at Wal-Mart, Target, and Kroger. Then after picking them out, compare the receipt total prices to see which was cheapest and also have a dicussion about the quality vs. price topic that comes into play as well. At Kroger, I had typically been picking up a Peach Sparkling Water that was the "generic" brand, something we had gotten into the habit of doing because it seemed like the sensible thing to do. At both Target and Kroger, the generic brand seems to be on par if not better in some cases, then the major brand offerings at the store! We use a number of Market Pantry items (Target brand) and also really like the Up & Up brand that Target offers.

However, I found after trying a few Great Value Wal-Mart generic brand items, and a few generic brand cosmetic items, that I felt the quality/taste was definitely inferior to their name brand counterparts. So how do you account for a one to one comparison  between stores, if there is a difference in the availability of like products based on quality? This is what I'm wrestling with, and I've got to decide whether i'm going to pick only "name brand" items or if I'm going to allow the store brand items in my comparison and then go from there. I'll be sure to update in a blog post after I do the comparison to see which store ACTUALLY was the cheapest (if any difference at all?) when buying the same 10 items at each place!

Anyhow! On to the grocery haul...

I purchased the typical items. We have number of crock pot meals this week and the only unusual thing we have going on is I am starting to get supplies for another movie party night! I'm planning on doing a Moana movie viewing party next, since that just came out on DVD!

Here is what we bought on the grocery run this week:

And the meal plan for the week is...

Here's this week's Meal Plan (3/12/17 - 3/18/17):

Sunday: Spaghetti with homemade meatballs
Monday: Baked Chicken with gravy
Tuesday: Crock Pot Tortelini
Wednesday: Crock Pot Mac & Cheese with Ham
Thursday: Crock Pot Pork Roast
Friday: Fish & shrimp ** Moana viewing party
Saturday: Pizza

I'll keep you post on what we end up finding out with our comparisons!

** This is not a sponsored post. All opinions are my own.