Stop and Shop- Back to Posting My Shopping Trips!

In my quest to buy more healthy (and to figure out what my grocery budget should be) I am going to be posting all of my shopping trips. Here we go...

Special K Cereal $2.50 - .62 in-ad coupon and .70 MC (doubled)
Ritz Whole Wheat Crackers $2.50
2 Cheerios and 2 MultiGrain Cheerios $10.00 - (2) .85 MC (doubled)- had to buy 4 to get the sale price
5 lb Red Potatoes $3.49
3.82 lbs Pears $5.69 ($1.49/lb)
2 Avocados $3.00
1 lb Strawberries $3.49
Star Fruit $1.99 (wanted to buy something new- the kids kind of liked it)
Stop and Shop Salad $1.00
1.97 lb Apples $1.95 (.99/lb)
1.20 lbs Bananas .71 (.59/lb)
.44 lb Red Pepper $1.32 ($2.99/lb)- for the chili I am making next week
Garlic .50
2 Juicy Juice @ $2.50 each (I thought I had coupons for them, but the coupons were for different ones)
Motts Natural Applesauce Cups $2.00
2 Stop and Shop Candy Bags @ $1.00 each (treats for the kids- bribery still works!)
2 Sargento Shredded Cheese @ $2.50 each
Stop and Shop Ricotta $3.29
Heinz Ketsup $4.88 (terrible price, but we ran out- grrrr)
4 Progresso Soup @ $1.50 each - $1/4 MC (my husband likes these for lunch when he's home)
2 Cans Stop and Shop Kidney Beans @ .67 each- for chili
Chi-Chi's Whole Wheat Tortillas $2.39
3 Ronzoni Smart Taste Pasta @ .79 each
Tutturosi Tomato Puree $1.00- for chili
Stop and Shop Sugar $ 2.39- thought we needed this but I had a whole bad already in my pantry
Stop and Shop Milk $2.49 - .50 in-ad coupon
2 Simply GoGurt @ $2.99 each - .85 MC (doubled)
4 Yoplait Simplait Yogurt @ .50 each - (2) .30 MC and 2 .40 MC (all doubled) ***.80 overage***
6 Yoplait Yogurt @ .50 each - .40 off 6 MC (doubled)- this is the only yogurt I like
2 Land O' Lakes Omega-3 Eggs @ $2.50 each - $1/2 MC
Florida's Natural Orange Juice $2.79
Sara Lee Whole Wheat Bread $2.50
Stop and Shop Pretzels $2.29
Packing Tape $1.99

Total: $90.90

I feel like I did pretty well health wise- nothing stands out as too junky to me. My kids love wheat Ritz- not the healthiest but if that is the worst thing they are eating then I think we're doing pretty well.

Money wise I don't think I went too crazy- everything I bought was stuff we needed. I figure we'll most likely need one or two more gallons of milk before next Friday which will add maybe another $7 at most and possibly another loaf of bread which will be about $3. With all of that my weekly grocery total will be right at $100 (my week goes from Friday to Thursday).

As for meat, we have enough in the freezer to get us through the week. I am planning on making a Whole Foods run next week but if the opportunity comes up I may just do it this week. I really am not sure how much buying higher quality meat will cost us each month- once I get a better idea I should be able to come up with a set in stone grocery budget that won't make me feel like a failure each week.

Along with posting all of my shopping trips, I am also going to be getting back to menu planning. I really hate menu planning but I think it will help me see where I am spending my grocery money and how I can maybe streamline things.