Meal Planning

I have successfully made myself a 4 week plan of meals including snacks, breakfasts, and lunches.  I finished earlier this week the grocery list as well, and then while my AWESOME friend Sarah had my kids (we swap babysitting for 3 hours once a week, I love it!) I went to the commissary and started my adventure.  I don't tend to shop at the commissary seeing as it is no longer near my house, it is closed on Mondays, and I have to tip the baggers or look cheap, which I am.  But I decided to give it another try, and after finding everything I needed, with some help, since I never understand why the olives or the pepperoni gets put where it does, I headed off to check out.  Now I did learn one thing from this experience, mass grocery shopping and WIC shopping at the same time is a REALLY BAD IDEA!!!  You try to keep milk, bread, baby food and cheese separate from everything else in an overflowing grocery cart! I got to the cash register and successfully found all my WIC items, but sadly, as I often find, the Commissary is the last place to have WIC figured out very well, and seeing as how they recently changed it, that didn't help.  She had to enter 31 bottles of baby food individually, and then all my other WIC, which consisted of milk, cheese, bread, 32 more jars of baby food and some produce.  Let me put it this way, it took me a total of 20 minutes to get through check out, way fun let me tell ya!  When the lady that bagged my stuff and I got outside it was raining, and a freezing cold rain too, so we got to run to my car and load it with all the stuff while trying not to get soaked, I definitely tipped well, and was grateful that I had a garage at home.  All in all it was successful, I just have to decide on a grocery store to consistently shop at, since here are my issues at the moment with each.

Publix - too far and like an Albertsons, so a bit pricier, but amazing service and wonderful coupon policy
Food Lion - close and cheap, but I can't drink their WIC milk, makes me nauseated
IGA - creepy!!!  And last time I went a package of crackers fell out of the box and the girl crammed them back in and put them in my bag, plus the bag boy just randomly stacked all my groceries and placed the eggs on top, scary.
Walmart - the one nearest to us is a test walmart, so they don't carry the more rare items I sometimes need, but other then that, they are my first pick.

So I think I will just have to find a happy medium, and shop commissary for WIC  and Walmart or Food Lion for everything else, we'll see.