Disclaimer: there are only two of us...if we had a bigger family I'm sure we'd have to shop a lot more... also, if we had more space for food storage or freezer foods I may get away with major shopping a little less often. It just kind of depends on your situation...but here's what works for us.
-I do a big shop about every month, a “little shop” (for produce and things) halfway between big shops, and milk runs as needed.
-I plan about 5 “big meals” for about every three weeks. By “big meal” I mean like a big crock pot of stew, a crock pot of café rio pork for tacos, a big pan of Thai Curry (served with rice), etc. On the other days we either eat leftovers, “small meals”, an occasional date out to eat, or at our parents’ house once in a while.
-Examples of "small meals": spaghetti, sandwiches, canned soup and grilled cheese, Costco Potstickers, homemade egg mcmuffins, etc.
This seems to work out pretty well for us. If I shop mostly at WINCO and go for good deals, use a few coupons here and there (by no means do I go coupon crazy,) and try to plan ahead, we get by on about $100 a month in groceries. Some months this is more if we're doing a lot of entertaining or something (as in watching Star Wars with friends and feeding them all Cafe Rio style tacos), and some months it's a lot less.... but that's how we do it!
Another disclaimer: Bryan loves milk more than basically any other food. It's an entire food group for him. He drinks whole milk and goes through probably 2 gallons a week. I drink 1% and go through about a gallon every two weeks... my point is that if you don't go through this much milk, that'll cut out like $15 out of your monthly bill... just sayin'. :)
You have a much better system than mine! It feels like we go every week, and it's just two of us.
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