Publix: Cheap junk food

This week at Publix, I bought a lot of carbohydrate-laden food. Two kinds of pasta, cereal, and granola bars.

That is one of the problems with couponing - junk food ends up being so cheap, it's tough to say no. But since most of my family's diet is healthy - we get lots of veggies from Penn-Dutch and from-scratch cooking ingredients from ALDI, I think our diets can withstand a little junk now and then.

I had a little trouble finding the Hormel Country Crock pasta sides in the store - it turns out that they are located in the meat department cases, near the precooked entrees. Since I don't buy meat at Publix, I don't think I had ever looked at the meat case before. I was happy to use the $1/1 Hormel Country Crock Side Dish printable coupons, which made the price $1.00 per container.

And I love the Buitoni fresh pasta - it's so quick and easy and better-tasting than dried pasta. So I was glad to see it was on sale, and with the $1/1 Buitoni Refrigerated Pasta or Sauce printable Facebook coupon, it only cost 15¢ each!

And to go with the pasta, I was happy to see a sale on grated Parmesan cheese. Even without coupons, the price was 65¢ less than the regular price at ALDI.

For the cereal, I bought Frosted Mini-Wheats, which were on a BOGO sale, and used two copies of the $0.70 off any 1 Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats coupon. The end price was right at my target price of $1.50 per box of cereal. I was happy to find the deal because we are starting to run low - at my house, that means we have less than 10 boxes of cereal left. (The eldest eats cereal for breakfast, snack, and late-night snack. We go through a lot of cereal.)

As for the real snacks, I bought Philadelphia Indulgence chocolate cream cheese. The kids love to smear this over my homemade challah as a snack. I used this $0.75/1 Philadelphia Indulgence Spreads printable coupon to get a good deal. And I bought South Beach diet bars with this $1/1 South Beach Diet Bars printable Facebook coupon, and Kashi granola bars by combining this $1.50/1 Kashi Layered Granola Bars Vocalpoint coupon with a $1/3 Kashi Product Target printable coupon.

And lastly, I discovered I was running out of yeast this morning. For some reason, ALDI doesn't carry yeast, though it carries lots of other from-scratch baking ingredients. I had printed out a $1.50/3 Fleischmann's Pizza Crust Yeast printable coupon, but my store didn't carry it. So I bought a jar of Fleischmann's yeast for $4.99 without a coupon. But, no worries - that purchase took me over $50, so I was able to use this $5 off $50 Publix coupon and get it for free.

Here's the details on my trip:

4 Hormel Country Crock pasta sides @ BOGO $3.99 = $7.98
- 4 $1/1 Hormel Country Crock Side Dish printable
= $3.98 for four, or $1.00 each

2 Philadelphia Indulgence chocolate cream cheese @ $1.67 = $3.34
- 2 $0.75/1 Philadelphia Indulgence Spreads printable
= $1.84 for two, or 92¢ each

4 Buitoni fresh pasta (fettuccine and linguini) @ BOGO $2.29 = $4.58
- 4 $1/1 Buitoni Refrigerated Pasta or Sauce printable
= 58¢ for four, or 15¢ each

2 Kellogg's Mini-Wheats Touch of Fruit Raspberry @ BOGO $4.39
- 2 $0.70 off any 1 Kellogg's Frosted Mini-Wheats
= $2.99 for two, or $1.50 each

4 Kashi layered granola bars @ $2.99 = $11.96
- 4 $1.50/1 Kashi Layered Granola Bars
- $1/3 Kashi Product Target printable
= $4.96 for four, or $1.24 each

4 South Beach bars @ BOGO $2.99 = $5.98
- 4 $1/1 South Beach Diet Bars printable
= $1.98 for four, or 50¢ each

4 Mama Francesca Parmesan cheese @ BOGO $3.49 = $6.98
= $1.75 each

1 Fleischmann's yeast jar @ $4.99

- $5 off $50 Publix coupon

Total before coupons: $50.20

Total out of pocket: $23.30
Total saved compared to Publix full prices: $63.69