spending $200 a month on groceries for our family of 7 meat and dairy tips

I was posting on a facebook page I belong to, and we were talking about grocery budgets, I said for a family of 7 we spend about $200 a month on groceries... The uproar was amazing... everyone asked how we do it, what our tips are. I don't usually coupon, so that made it even more interesting for people. I thought I'd share some of our tips in a series of posts.

We shop between five stores. The majority of our shopping is done at Hannaford grocery store and our local IGA. IGA has the best prices on meats, cold cuts, deli cheese and bakery breads. Hannaford is good for everything else, unless IGA has a sale. they frequently do 10 for 10 or something similar. When those sales are going on we stock up.

Meat and dairy are the most expensive things in our grocery budget. We go through at least two gallons of milk each week. That's $16 off the top of our grocery bill, we generally buy milk at the gas stations that sell at state minimum pricing, and get the generic of our favorite brand. They are bottled in the same place, and are the same milk, but Smileys is sold at gas stations for state minimum, and Oakhurst is sold at grocery stores for more.

Meat, we buy pork at no more than $1.99 lb. pork chops or cutlets we can often find for less, but tenderloin or other pork roasts we buy when its on sale for 1.99 and stock up. We buy boneless chicken breasts at no more than $1.99lb as well. Lately I've been getting it for 1.79 lb and stocking up. Hamburger we only get when it goes on sale, and we buy the large family pack to get additional savings. Beef roast we can get for 2.99 lb sometimes and we stock up then. we often buy the reduced steaks (the ones that are about to expire) and cook them that night, other than that we buy London broil or sirloin steak cuts that are less expensive but not as tender and we marinate them.

The biggest sales on meat are generally around Thanksgiving (turkey), Christmas (ham, roasts), and Easter (Ham) we stock up seriously around these times. one good sized turkey can feed our family for a week easily, often longer than that, same goes for a ham. I'll post more about tips on making a turkey last here and more about making a ham last here.