I actually talked dh into saving all of the receipts for February to see what our grocery bill runs. He did it! So, our monthly grand total for February is..............(drum roll please).......
$224.00

this is for 5 people (which breaks down to 44.80/person).
This does not include any meat (beef, chicken, fish) as we are getting it through a program to help us out right now...It does include cheese - which is very expensive.

What do you think? how did we do?

:thumbsup: I think you did awesome!
but I am not too good at savings! LOL! I still say you did great though!

Wow...you did better than me!! I'm going to have to try to save my receipts for March so I can see where I stand. Not as good as you I bet! :thumbsup:

woops - I found one more receipt - that brings my total up to 244.00

wow! thats wonderful! I wish I could do that..there's only 3 of us....well 3 and a half...

Thats great! What program provides kosher meats and cheese? I am interested.

HIndy, not such a great thing...It's because my dh hasn't had a job since May so we are getting assistance from the community. For a while we were getting ready made shabbos food from the rav of our shul, but i got sick of the same thing week after week. And it felt soo weird to not be making shabbos on my own - but to have it just walk into my house all done. So my dh went back to the Rav and told him that we wanted to try on our own -and that I needed to make food for shabbos so it would feel erev-shabbosdik (you know?). So a while after it was suggested to us that we get food from Rabbi F. who runs a program (I suppose like Tomchei Shabbos) where we get boxes of food every 5 weeks or so. We usually get 5 or 6 whole chickens and some legs and thigs, maybe a pound of ground beef and a package of cholent meat, and one of those big stacks of amer. cheese. The boxes also contain pasta, tuna (tons and tons of tuna - which we don't eat much of - I think right now we are holding around 50 cans of pesachdik tuna + nonpesachdik), a cake mix or two, a couple boxes of cereal, 2 packages of cookies, cholent beans, grape juice, oh and a package of shabbos candles (which we don't use too many of because I light oil - although I light two candles for the Melava Malka). The thing about the food packages is that we don't have a say in what we get - so frequently it's not what we need - so the food just sits and sits.
Really the most help is with the chicken and meat and cheese. They are just so expensive ! The stack of cheese in the grocery here runs 12.00- 14.00 dollars. It definitely is a help.
The big thing is to daven that my dh should get a good job with good benefits - we need the parnassa. B"H , HaKodesh Baruch Hu has provided very nicely for us during this time - it's amazing how we are taken care of!
Sorry got off on a tangent.
In any case, I think that most larger communities have some such program for the families that need it.

That is wonderful that your community helps out. We do have tomchei shabbos in our area, but like you mentioned, many people don't want to use it since everything comes cooked.

Kosher Meat and Cheeses, etc can break everyone's bank. Both meat and cheese are treats for us. I buy chicken bottoms for shabbos and a small package of cholent meat. Otherwise we buy meat very sparingly.

I make 'fleishig' meals during the week. I usually use 1/2 lb. of beef for a meal that lasts the 5 of us 2 meals. The meat is more for flavor; the meal is really packed with vegetables...