$50 dollars on weekly groceries... and its paleo based!

I've been asked by so many people how I get my groceries for typically around $50-$60 dollars each week while also living in the city. Nashville ain't cheap, let me tell you! I have become a huge food lover and I am trying my hand at whole food eating.
Cooking is a pretty big passion of mine, in fact I almost went to culinary school instead of nursing school. During my cooking research, I have come to find out that you really do not need to go to culinary school to become a great cook. I am also an incredibly picky eater so it gets pretty tricky buying all these whole foods and trying to make them taste something like a nice pasta dish from Maggiano's little Italy. I had to start branching out a bit if I wanted to start eating better and feeling better about what I decided to put in my body. However, I still will not touch a green bean (my worst nightmare) or red-meat... that's for a later discussion.

Back to the $50 dollar grocery trips that I love to drag my husband with. This is the trick to keeping cost low while still trying to eat whole foods, do not buy so many meals. Of course there is just two people in the house (the hubs and I) so I imagine that this might be a little hard to keep with a family but if you are trying to cut corners while you pay off that student debt then here ya go!

We only buy three dinner meals and we usually try to buy two different meats and use those meats in all the dinners. For example this week we are eating a garlic/chicken/pesto flatbread but we will also use that chicken with our turmeric chicken no noodle soup. We will make extra so that we can eat some for lunch or another dinner one night. Our other meal this week is spaghetti squash with meat (ground turkey) spaghetti with a spinach salad.
As for lunches we only buy one meal for lunch that we will eat each day of the week. An example of this would be that we are eating deli turkey, spinach, tomato on healthy grain bread (I know this is where its not completely paleo) with sweet potato chips. Our snack that we will take with us to clinical and to school is going to be homemade paleo blueberry muffins. Last week I made banana muffins (the healthy version of course) and they were to die for! And lastly but certainly not least is breakfast. I'm not huge on breakfast so this week we are just doing green smoothies which include kale, spinach, banana, orange juice, and maybe an apple or if we have time and don't want the smoothies we have eggs and turkey bacon. We save all of our leftovers. We also account for going out to eat or not being home for dinner which is why we only buy three dinners. We know how our lifestyle works and we know there is usually left overs and that we won't be home for at least one night of the week.

You might be thinking that I shop as Whole Foods or the Turnip Truck to get all of these foods but I certainly do not. I am a die hard Aldi fan. Their fresh produce is actually amazing and they have a lot of organic food there as well. I do a lot of shopping at Kroger as well. I am a proud owner of Kroger card as of today! Bring on those gas points! We also live very close to Nashville's Farmer's market which is a new (to us) place that we are starting to shop more often at. 75 cents for a head of cabbage ... what the heck.

Believe it or not this is how we keep our grocery list so cost effective... and it actually works! I have found this all to be a stress relief from the busy lifestyle of being in nursing school... I am suppose to be going over dysrhythmias instead of writing this blog. I can only do so much!