How I Buy Groceries and Eat Healthy for under $25 a Week!

Hi everyone!

This is a little bit of a different blog post, but I received a lot of requests for a what I eat in a day/week post, and I thought this would be a good way to start!

Recently I’ve been making an effort to eat a lot healthier. I live with my family right now, but will most likely move out within the next couple of semesters and I knew I had to learn to start buying my own groceries, cooking on my own, etc. I’ve always loved to cook, so this has been a lot of fun for me!

To start, I always buy my groceries for the next two weeks, with a little bit of extra money allotted for things I might run out of or produce that might not last two weeks. It is genuinely SO easy to eat healthy on a budget, which I wasn’t expecting! For this post I went all out and bought everything I wanted while looking for good deals to see how much it would cost. My total grocery bill for two weeks with a few splurges was about $48! 🙂 Even though I live with my parents, I try to eat all my own food so this should be a complete grocery list.

One tip I have for buying groceries is to go to multiple stores. I LOVE Aldi, they’re honestly the reason I can get most of my groceries for so cheap. Most of their products are very cheap, great quality and are made with all natural and not too many ingredients, and they usually have weekly sales on produce, hummus, cheese, and meat.

I try to make meals that have a lot of rice or pasta. Those ingredients are always cheap (Aldi has 79 cent boxes of pasta) and they allow you to splurge more on meat, sauce, and cheese to go in the dishes you make.

My grocery list this week:

• Fruit – I bought nectarines and kiwis this week, but I love apples, pears, mangoes, plums and oranges which are usually pretty cheap.
• A loaf of french bread – Walmart sells these for $1!
• Lunch meat – This week I bought ham and Italian sub sandwich meat.
• Chicken – I get my chicken at Kroger from the butcher for 2.79 a pound, and usually spend about 7.50 for 6-7 chicken breasts.
• Crackers – I get the Roasted Veggie Crackers at Aldi for $1.39 a box.
• Hummus – I also get my hummus at Aldi. Super cheap and good and they have a bunch of flavors!
• Pasta – I get this at Aldi as well for 79 cents a box!
• Asparagus – This was an extra item for me but it was on sale so I decided to try it! I usually try to buy at least two veggies so I’m cooking with them regularly.
• Broccoli – I got this at the Fresh Market for 2.99 a pound but could have gone somewhere else, I just love their produce. 🙂
• La Croix – I love these to bring with lunch!
• General Tso chicken stir-fry sauce – another extra thing but it’s SO good with chicken!
• Cheese – I get the largest block of extra sharp cheese Kroger has for $3, but Walmart’s cheese is great too.
• Chicken seasoning – I bought a bottle of Kickin Chicken seasoning at Kroger, but I could have gone to Walmart and paid at least a dollar less. I just didn’t feel like going, Walmart stresses me out lol!
• I forgot to get these today, but I also usually buy a bag of everything bagels at Aldi for $1.39 and cream cheese there as well to supplement having fruit for breakfast.
• Rice – I already had some at home but this is SO cheap!

That’s everything I buy! This is actually the most I’ve ever spent on groceries for myself, so you can definitely cut out a few of the extra things I added and cut the price even more.

For my meals, I’ll definitely post recipes in a separate post because that would make this post sooo long! But I do want to list out a few meals I make with these ingredients during the week.

Breakfast:

I’m not a huge breakfast person, so I typically have a piece of fruit or a bagel with cream cheese. I don’t actually drink coffee often which is why it isn’t on this list!

Lunch:

I usually have a ham and cheese sandwich on french bread, an Italian sub, or some kind of pasta salad. Kale chicken caesar salad is my favorite and makes lunch for about 4-5 days for me!

Dinner:

This week I’ll probably make a lot of pasta with cheese and seasoned chicken, stir-fried chicken with rice and broccoli, or lemon chicken and asparagus. 🙂

 

That’s everything for this post! I hope this helped you some if you’re a college student like me who doesn’t have too much to spend on food. 🙂 Let me know if you’d like to see recipes in another post, I’d love to post some!

Thanks for reading!

xo,

Gabby

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