First shopping trip

To prep for this project, I looked at grocery ads for three or four days trying to figure out the best buys.  I segmented foods in three ways (the way I look at foods) at this point:

• Protein
• Carbs
• Vegetables/Fruits

For protein it was easy to calculate price per pound (because that's the way it's listed in ads) and determine the best buy.  The best deal I found initially was ham at 99 cents a pound at Aldi.  

For carbs, rice seemed to be the best buy at most stores, and also goes well with a lot of different foods-so I should buy bulk and use it in multiple dishes.  I also found the best buy on rice at Aldi, 3lbs dry for about $1.50. 

To round out my shopping trip at Aldi, I found a good deal on sweet potatoes, in 3 lbs for less than $1.

Here's a picture of my take home:

For this I spent about $11.50, pretax (9 pounds of ham, 3 pounds of rice, 3 pounds of sweet potatoes):

At this point there's more than $18 bucks left, and already have a substantial amount of food, just need to add some variety in my next few purchases.  I plan on making ham steaks, pork fried rice, plain rice, and sweet potato chips out of what I have so far, just to start out.

Only problem so far, I'm a little ashamed to admit that I intend on eating up to 9 pounds of ham in a week.