The Grocery Game Challenge for June is drawing to a close this week and what a month it has been for us. Considering our small budget for grocery and health and beauty I must say we are happy with the progress we are making. We are no longer stockpiling food as we did the past year and this has helped put us in a better place. We are now spending that money on products to make food from scratch or testing new recipes. We are also staying on top of knowing prices at most of the shops in town and which have the best prices. We seem to believe that the more you allocate to spend, you will spend it. We want to see if we cut our budget to $190 a month if we can we actually stick to it. Will the fact that we have less money in our grocery budget impact our shopping habits? Truly it has and I’m sure we will continue to think twice before tossing something into the shopping trolley. I know many of our grocery game posters have said that their budget has significantly improved since posting their shop each week and I believe […]


The Grocery Game Challenge June 18-24-Garden Fresh!
We are thrilled to see that our garden is taking shape and our herbs,vegetables and fruits are growing better than expected. We hope to cut our grocery bill once we start to eat more from the garden in the upcoming months. This month has been a bit of a set back with the mail in rebate error that we made earlier in the month. We are trying to stay focused so we stick to the budget and not beat ourselves up that we messed up. What we learned from that experience was: The error was caught and documented but sometimes mistakes are made. Don’t sweat the small stuff, but make sure you catch it! We won’t let it happen again by making sure we read everything. Last week I asked my fans for some Rhubarb Recipes and one fan posted a recipe on the Canadian Budget Binder Facebook page for “Rhubarb Sour Cream Pie”. I shocked at the grocery shop price of $3.99lb for this vegetable (now considered a fruit) that we have in abundance in our back yard. This pie is fresh and tangy and a perfect ending to nice meal topped with vanilla bean ice cream. Did you know […]


The Grocery Game Challenge June 4-10 Name Your Price?
We’re back with a new month and a new Grocery Game Challenge.. can you believe it’s June already? This month I want to talk about prices and what you are willing to pay for a product. Name your price… what are you willing to pay for a product to take it home for your family. Since Mrs.CBB and I have been using coupons and have stockpiled many items we now know what a good price is and what a not so good price is. Does this hamper our grocery shops? Sometimes it does especially when an item we need is not on sale nor do we have a coupon. Sales cycles happen every few months so you start to know what items will be on sale and when. Unfortunately when you need something, you simply can’t wait a few months down the line until the next $dollar sale happens. Other options for us is to wait until Shoppers Drug Mart has a 20x points event or Spend $75 get 18,500 points. Although most will say Shoppers Drug Mart is overpriced to begin with if you shop wise on these bonus days you can come out ahead. Since we know pretty much […]

The Grocery Game Challenge May 28-June 3 Hot Hot Hot!
We are now in the last week of May and it sure has been abnormally HOT for most of us in Southwestern Ontario. Please let it rain mother nature! We’ve been using the barbeque quite a bit for the past couple months. Nothing like a bbq, and nice cold beer and having your mates around. Since purchasing a new gas barbeque earlier this year we are happy with our decision of buying one with the side burner and rotisserie. We use the side burner to boil potatoes, corn and small fry ups. This saves us money rather than using the electric stove in the house with the added bonus of not heating up the house. We have yet to put our Central Air on likely around July same as last year although we hardly use it. We have also been cooking from scratch lately and rather enjoying the recipes I’ve developed in the kitchen. Recently I made Mr.CBB’s Slammin Chili with a Spicy Cheddar Bacon Corn bread which was so good and paired well with the chili. I’ll be posting the chili recipe later this weekend. With that being said, this week was a slow week in terms of shopping as it […]

The Grocery Game Challenge May 21-27-What’s Your Best Score?
No hockey isn’t the topic of this post and I truthfully have no idea how the game is played. Perhaps I should ask my readers for some tips on the great Canadian Sport and maybe visit a game one day in Toronto,Ontario. Yet Another week is upon us which means more money-saving in the grocery budget, so we hope. Let’s see how creative we can be with the rest of our budget. I think we’ve done well this month especially keeping away from any convenience foods. It can be difficult to do because we come to rely on quick meals but now we have to meal plan and think ahead. We now have chives, spring onions,rhubarb,lettuce and mint in the garden that we have been using daily. What else are we growing? We have tomatos, green peppers,radishes,figs,spinach,parsely,raspberries and swiss chard growing in our garden as well. Meal Planning I hope to blog about how we make our family meal plan shortly but for the most part we take into consideration sales,coupons, pantry items, freezer items and fresh veg. Obviously I’ll go into more detail but for now it’s a learning phase with us just like budgeting was the past few […]

