I really should have posted this trip last Saturday, because that’s when I made this trip.  But the clock has not been my friend lately.  I paid right at $55 for everything pictured including 5 Pepperidege Farm Breads, 2 Stayfree, 2 Carefree, 1 Ragu, 30 BirdsEye Veggies, 4 V8 Fusions, 4 Ultra Grain Flour, 8 Kraft Fresh Taste, 10 French’s Fried Onions, 1 bag white rice, 4 Wishbone Ranch Dressings, 1 Hellmann’s Mayo, 1 Smithfield Bacon, 2 Silk Fruit & Protein, 5 Pepperidge Farm Cakes, and 2 Alexia Breads.

I realize there may be some controversial items from this trip that alot of you may not think of as healthy.  Remember, sometimes the budget dictates what we can buy/not buy and that includes my clock budget.

I go to school full time, homeschool my son, blog, write, and I do all of this on my own as a single mom.  I do most everything I can from scratch when I have the ingredients around.  For the most part, all of our meals include mostly organic, real food.  There may be condiments or other extras that are not.  I feel better knowing the bulk of it is though.  That’s what I can do for now.

There were several items on sale at Publix this past week that hit our guilty pleasure buttons:  bacon, cheese, ranch dressing, fried onions, V8 Splash and mayonnaise.  Not just ANY mayonnaise, Hellmann’s.  Thanks for that addiction, Grandma! LOL

I do not have the resources to make all of these things from scratch all the time.  For example, ranch dressing.  I have a powder mix I made from scratch so that when I do have the dairy products I need to make it homemade, that’s what I do.  More times than not, I don’t have organic dairy to do this.  And I cannot afford the organic versions of the salad dressing.  So this is one of those Catch 22 situations.

The cakes are for church fundraisers.  I am donating them as part of Sunday dinners we will be selling for mission trips throughout the summer for the youth department.  I don’t bake, first of all, unless it’s roasting chicken.  Secondly, we have window air conditioning units and both are on the opposite ends of the house from the kitchen.  You turn the oven on in my house, it better be below freezing outside.  Otherwise, you will be in a full sweat like it’s 100 degrees!  So for energy usage it just makes sense for us to contribute this way.  Plus with the coupons I was able to get five cakes to donate.  If I had made it from scratch, there would have just been one to donate most likely.

I am stocking up on fried onions because they never go on sale BOGO WITH a coupon out, too.  I love them.  My favorite way to eat them is lightly sprinkled on a bowl of split pea soup.  I am watching my diet lately even more than normal to break through this plateau with my weight loss and will be eating a bowl of split pea soup every day.  I will be making fresh fried onions for that.  These fried onions I bought are for when everything breaks loose in the world and I just need a fried onion. LOL!

This next week I am starting to make all our bread from scratch from now on.  The 15 year old eats at least a sandwich a day.  When you buy nothing but whole grain bread, the good kind, it gets expensive.  Someone gave me a breadmaker so I don’t have to worry about not using the oven anymore.  I found some coupons for Ultra Grain flour and it’s on sale at Publix right now making it $1.69/5 lb bag for the whole wheat kind.  I have 20 coupons and I’m buying 20 bags!  So maybe in the future I will be making more of our guilty pleasures from scratch after all…

What you can barely see in the picture is 30 different bags of BirdsEye frozen vegetables, too.  Other than them not being organic, you can’t beat .50/bag for fresh frozen vegetables!

But the best trip in a while, at least in my opinion, was my trip to Aldi this week.  I was able to get everything pictured for under $23!!!  Here is a list of everything:

• 4 dozen eggs
• 4 celery
• 2 onions
• 2 carrotts
• 4 bags of beans
• 10 lbs potatoes
• 2 pineapples
• 3 broccoli
• 3 cauliflower
• 1 bag sweet potatoes

So now I don’t feel so bad about some of the things I bought at Publix!

Do any of you buy guilty pleasure items sometimes?

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