Do yall always make a list before grocery shopping? My shopping trip realllly suffers if I don’t. I never fail to 1. Buy too many snacks and not enough meals and 2. Forget one tiny but crucial ingredient for the meals I do cook. So, I’m a list gal all the way. Sometimes they are hand written and sometimes on my phone. When they are paper I even walk around with a pen and check them off as I go! Old school. One time right out of college a group of friends and I were out on a Saturday night. A friend found a sticky note on the floor with a grocery list including the words “broccoli florets.” She brought it over to our table and said it HAD to belong to Taylor. Ha! I haven’t changed my ways yet. Add in the two kids who like to distract me and I am even more reliant on my list than that 22 year old me. As promised, I have created the simple grocery list I will use for my Aldi project. You can read the specifics on my idea here. This list, for my family, is enough groceries for the kids’ breakfast (hubby and I don’t really eat week day breakfast), Sam’s packed lunches for 5 days, 4 really basic dinner meals for all of us, and some snacks plus one weekend breakfast. Here is the “meal plan”: Night one: tailgate sandwiches Night two: taco Tuesday Night 3: chili Night 4: frozen pizza (I’m not trying to convince you guys I’m a chef…just go with this) Night 5: just kidding. I hate cooking on Fridays, we go to Mexican. Kids breakfasts: cinnamon pop tarts OR toast with strawberries and/or grapes, milk Sams lunches: peanut butter sandwiches, cheese quesadillas, OR ham and cheese as main. Goldfish, fruit snacks, strawberries, grapes, yogurt, applesauce (combo of any of these 3) as sides. And a juice box to drink. Side note: About 6 months ago when Sam started school and I looked into packing lunches you should have seen my lists. Very ambitious. Now it’s usually peanut butter 4 days a week at HIS request. These handy little things SAVE me each morning though. Just fill in each area. The idea of dealing with multiple baggies and lids, etc sound like too much extra work for mornings. Moving on… Weekend breakfast: we usually pick up or go out to eat one weekend breakfast. The other day in we do easy like cinnamon rolls, blueberry muffins, pancakes or sometimes eggs/bacon/biscuits. I picked blueberry muffins for this list. Snacks: grapes (go to snack for me and kids), cheese sticks, goldfish, apple sauce and chips and salsa Throw in an extra frozen pizza for the weekend. The exactrocery list will look like this: Goldfish Fruit snacks Peanut butter Salsa Tortilla chips Loaf of bread Sweet rolls Strawberries Grapes Milk x2 Shredded cheese Sour cream Butter Moo tube 2 lbs 80% lean ground beef 1 onion Can black beans Can kidney beans Can chili beans Can tomato sauce Chili seasoning Tortillas Taco seasoning Ham Swiss cheese String cheese Pop tarts Juice boxes Frozen pizza x 2 Muffin mix Apple sauce squeeze K cups I am not good at this part but I think I will estimate the Aldi total at $68 and the Walmart total at $92? I can’t wait for the results! Stay tuned!