$25 a week grocery challenge

When I first started my doing my research on how frugal people live, I noticed there is a common theme. They all started by shaving off their grocery bill. Last week, I suggested to my husband that we should try to keep our grocery budget under $25 a week. He  readily agreed. Of course this challenge is for food that we're going to eat for that week, it doesn't include spices or oil that we need to cook with. With just $25, it limits the food we can buy, so junk food is the first to go. It was pretty easy for us the first week, because we had food in the freezer and our pantry. It's a great way to get rid of the foods you've been stocking up because you're not buying much new foods. When my freezer begins to empty, I found a few bags of ground beef in sandwich size zip lock bags ( I totally forgot I even had them).
A lot of creativity is required when you're saving money. One of them is on how to stretch one food. For example, I bought a two pound package of beef, that goes to make dumplings (chop and dice vegetables and mix it with your meat), tacos (use black bean and you'll use less meat) and spaghetti sauce. Meat is often more expensive than vegetables, so use them sparingly. My spaghetti sauce is pretty healthy. I use vegetables to fill up the thin jar of Ragu, Prego or what store brand sauce I happen to have.
A few of these items always ends up in my sauce: mushrooms, celery, pepper, onions, diced squash, zucchini, and even spinach and black beans.  My trick to a good sauce is to add a bit of sugar (about 1/2 tablespoons) to off set the tartness of the sauce.

The pepper, onion and mushrooms and cheese that go in to your spaghetti can go into the quesadilla for your next meal. 

Husband said it was really good. 

Budgeting is not hard, all it takes is some planning and you'll be on your way to saving. 

Anyways, we both feels so much healthier because we cut off junk food. We're feeling great knowing we're saving money and not wasting food. The best part of this is that we're doing this as a team. Isn't that what marriage is all about?