Frugal Friday

GROCERIES

1. So, David and I are trying to eat more whole/real foods, but we still love some soda. I know it isn't good for you, but sometimes I just want some carbonated beverages. My drink of choice is Diet Coke, but that is expensive and has caffeine, which isn't good when pregnant or nursing (which I have done both for about 3 years now). We had been buying the caffeine free Diet Coke, but not often because it was expensive. Just recently I decided too that I wanted to cut aspartame out of my diet completely. SO, all that together gave us the idea for me to buy the grocery brand sprite. It is 77 cents for a 2-liter, has no caffeine, no aspartame and might be my gateway drug to a soda free life in the future :-)

2. We shop at three different grocery stores. We go to Trader Joes, Dierbergs/Schnucks, and Aldi. We love Aldi. When we decided to be careful with the type of food we eat (cut out artificial stuff) I spent almost two hours reading every label at Aldi. Now I know what we can buy to stick to our commitment and what we can't. I was surprised at how much we COULD buy at Aldi. So, when we grocery shop, we always go to Aldi first to get everything we can on our list and then go to the other stores to fill in what Aldi doesn't have.

I save as much as Aldi as I did when I used to coupon a lot - with a lot less hassle. I do want to get into couponing to help save more at Whole Foods (my neighbor is a pro at frugally shopping at Whole Foods) and maybe cut out Dierbergs/Schnucks all together.