Costco Grocery Haul: Large Family Staples & Organic Finds!

I'm Danielle Murray, mom to eight of these kids, but we only have three with us today, but I'm going to show you our favorite staples, like what are the core things that our family, who's gluten-free, tries to eat mostly organic, and obviously there's 10 of us to feed, what do we get from Costco at the bare minimum. I have intentionally not come here for a while because I'm trying to be intentional about what we are making to eat, not buying excessive snacks, just really trying to like trim down our grocery budget. And again, when you meal plan, I feel like it just stretches everything so much further. So I've been trying to just come bulk shop maybe once a month instead of it like every other week or every week we were at a point where we were getting most of our produce, if not all of it here. And I feel like it just isn't sustainable because it is about a 45 minute drive from our house. So anyway, this is the first time we've been to Costco for, it's been a month and a half easily. While I could go crazy and get a lot of things, I'm not, I'm going to be a good girl and get what is in my mental list. That's not on it. It's not on the list. Okay, these are some of our favorite beefsteaks, the Epic brand. They are really great. I feel like they have really high standards. So we do love this brand. 12 strips for $15.39. That's not horrible for an eight ounce like, you know, wagon. Actually, pause. This is on sale $12.99 instead of $18.69. So it's $5.70 off the Archer Mango Habanero. This is 16 ounces. This is 9.6 ounces. So maybe we get that instead of this this time. When these are on sale, we'll grab these. Hold the phone. These are gluten and my kids can't have them and they're probably not the, well, they're organic. Okay. And they're non-GMO, but these, this with some cream cheese, chef's kiss. Like I love dipping it in cream cheese and they're on sale for $4.99. That's $3.80 off. I'm going to get a bag for me instead of chocolate. I put the chocolate back. I'll get this and that's it. I said, I'm not going to get a bunch of snacks. I meant it. Okay. One other thing to note is that we are on a really limited time budget because my mom is at home with three of our youngest kids and our oldest two are home by themselves. And we also have to go to BJ's. So we got to make this snappy and it's also closed today. Okay. Two things here. One, these are, it's chicken and egg whites and it's not chips. It's chicken egg whites. But what I saw over here is my favorite crackers are on sale. There is a limit of 10 dropping some. Sorry. I'm just going to grab a few more of these while I can. This might seem crazy, but when they're, there is a $3 off and we eat these like all the time. We do charcuterie lunch. I don't know. Just they're the best gluten-free crackers. They have minimal ingredients. They taste good. So whenever they're on sale, I just stock up like I would, if we're going to be in this area again, I would come back before this month sale ends to get 10 more boxes. Um, just because it's that much cheaper. I mean, you think about it. I've just saved $30 buying them all now instead of buying a couple. And we probably go through at least two boxes a month. What'd you say a month? Oh yeah. Try like two boxes a month. Yeah. Yeah. So, so realistically, yeah. I'm saving 30. Okay. Okay. That's organic. I don't know if it's better. You know what I mean? Like it's a little less. It is one 10 per ounce. I don't know if that's better than when that's on sale. You know, 11 cents an ounce. This is probably cheaper when it's on sale, but it's not on sale and it wouldn't hurt us to have a couple more jars. Except now you're racking me up here. Just get one. We don't need to. Okay. Let's go. If we don't need it, let's go. It's only $5. But is this even enough for one? That'll be enough. That'll be one. Yeah. For one night. Are you sure? Yeah. This isn't something that we buy all the time. We love them. It's just not something I buy all the time. Um, but they're on sale for $7.29 instead of, I think it was like 10 something usually. So it's a great little treat to have. We're going to get those. This is the, that's our favorite. Oh, yes. Okay. This is a score because I was going to get this at BJ's. It's $5 for one bottle. This is on sale $7.49 for two bottles. And we usually just buy a big thing of avocado and I'm going to do it one of these days. I'm going to get a big thing of avocado oil and a like, you know, sprayer bottle that you can just refill. These are on sale right now. $10.39 instead of $14.89. So I'm just going to go ahead and do that. That's what we season our cast iron pans with and use to cook on cast iron, which is pretty much how we cook everything. Okay. I am going to grab some of their peanut butter. It has minimal ingredients. It's just peanuts and salt and it's a good price. So we're going to grab that. I'm also going to show you this. We make all of our gluten-free bread from scratch. Hands down. It is the best way to go if you're gluten-free, but if you are not do it, if you are not in a position to make things from scratch right now, um, Costco has the best price on the best brand of gluten-free bread that I've found. Canyon Bakehouse has one of the best textures out of the pre-made gluten-free breads, but it is really expensive in your regular grocery store. So if you have a Costco membership, that's the place to get it. These are our favorite oats ever. They are sprouted. They are like beyond celiac safe, certified, non-GMO, no glyphosate. And this is the best price I've found on them. However, they also go on sale here. And so last time they were on sale, I bought a few bags, so I don't actually need any, but I wanted to point them out because if you like oats, these are the, these are the best. Okay. Normally we would get the grass fed burgers, but they don't have them right now. So I'm going to grab these. If you need a chicken nugget option for your gluten-free kiddos that doesn't have a ton of junk ingredients. Um, they're not perfect, but they are better than most things out there. They are organic and they're a really great price and they're good, right? Yeah. Kids love them. These are my favorite tortilla chips ever. Just like organic corn tortilla chips for $6.89. And it is a massive, like the bag's big, but it's also heavy. 40 ounces, two pounds of tortilla chips. So we love these. Great. All right. And, and our favorite chicken sausages, organic chicken sausage, $13.99. This will last our family like probably two or three breakfasts. I am going to make the swap for these grass fed patties because I found them just on an end cap and not with the other burgers. These are organic grass fed, uncured hot dogs, beef raised humanely. I'm looking at it. Do they have a casing that's no nitrates added? Cool. They do say that a lot of like bowel cancers are related to processed meats like this. So I try to be picky when it comes to what we get and the amount of it that we eat. Um, you know, like sausages and things like that. So we're trying to get things that are kind of minimally processed. This looks like a good option, $12.99. And I think it's probably the same. We usually get those Applegate farm ones, but these might even be better. So I'm going to grab that. Yeah. $12.99 for, I don't know if it's better or not. I'll have to look. Uh, and then we got some turkey bacon. I might get two of these actually. When I find something at Costco that I like, I like to buy a good amount so that Costco knows, Oh, people like this and they'll keep stocking it because there's nothing worse than finding something you love and then like seeing it on clearance the next month because not enough people loved it. $10.99. Okay. This is a brand that we love. These are new. We haven't tried this flavor yet. It looks like lemon garlic seasoning. It's got some, come on guys. Come on. It's got broccoli, cauliflower. It looks like yellow carrots and some tomatoes. Oh, and asparagus. No seed oils ever. Tattooed chef is also great. And these are on sale. $8. This is not on my list. This always happens, but this is good because this is like half of a meal. So you just make chicken or something else and you throw it in and you're done. I am getting coconut water and not because I like it because I don't, but I have found my kids like it. They have been stealing my favorite electrolyte supplement for make wellness and cause it tastes good and I don't blame them, but there's tons of electrolytes in coconut water. So I'm going to be making them this summer. Some coconut water mixed with water mixed with, you know, lime juice or some other root, um, so that they, they will get those electrolytes and stop taking them. In another world, I would be absolutely taking advantage of the sale on the Ollie pops $14.99 for a case of 15 cans. That's a deal. And we love some Ollie pop, but it's not essential right now. One thing we always get at Costco is paper towels and toilet paper, especially with this many girls in the house. You cannot beat the price and the quality. I feel like it's, it's great. It's not like paper thin, terrible, whatever. It's still on sale. It's on sale. It's on sale. This is great. 5.50 per pound, $7 per pound. Okay. Let's look at Kerrygold. Kerrygold is not organic. That is 8.14 per pound. So we're going with the truly and could we make our own butter? Yes, we could. Do we make our own butter? Sometimes, but we sell a lot of the milk from our cow in order to pay for the hay for the cow. So we don't skim the cream off of the milk. We sell, we let people have their cream. So there's just not enough cream to make butter for a family of 10. Jude, how does this sale make you feel? Where is she? Our daughter loves these, one specifically more than the others, but they all like them. Julia. Yep. She said, yep. 10.99 instead of $15. We're going to stock up on those. The thing is we're not coming back as often. So get the things on sale while we can get the things on sale. Okay. Here's the thing. I planted 31 watermelon plants, but they're babies right now. So we don't have watermelon yet, but we will. And then we won't have to buy these, but at least they're only $5.99. That's the lowest price I've seen on watermelon for a long time. I want that one. John, can you give me that one? I can't get it. Look, see, does that look beautiful? All right, fine. I'll settle for this one. I guess. I don't know. This is actually a much better price than BJ's. It's like 10.99 for one pound at BJ's, $6.59 for a pound here. One more thing we never pass up are these chicken meatballs. They have a teriyaki pineapple one, which is my mom's favorite. And then they have this basil and Parmesan, which we love. We've made meatball subs the other week. Oh, you're fine. You're fine. Thank you. We made meatball subs the other week. And sorry, we made meatball subs for the first time, like a couple months ago. And Everly was like meat bread heaven. And so now she lovingly refers to meatball subs as meat bread heaven and thus does our entire family. So we will get some meatballs to make some meat bread heaven. These are looking kind of yucky, John. I'm not going to lie. I'm going to go a little deeper. There we go. These look better. My mom asked for a cucumber. We will just share this pack. We usually get a lot more bananas than that, but I'm going to be modest today. I'm also going to take these boxes. These are glorious. I really do like the ones like this, though. Yeah, actually, I'm not. This is like nice and sturdy, but you see how the siding is all shiny. I cannot compost that. Whereas this box, I can break that down into soil. Now I sound like weirdo, but I'm a farmer, kind of. I'm going to get some celery sticks. This is a pretty good price for celery sticks. I love to make chicken salad and egg salad with celery. My kids like to eat it with peanut butter. Going to skip that for now. I was going to get some organic strawberries. Do they have any? Oh, these are. These are. Yes, they are. I love this. This time of year when the strawberries are $8 for two pounds of organic berries. That's beautiful. I don't know if you guys saw, but there was recently a news article about Driscoll and their conventional berries and how incredibly toxic they are. So every single year, strawberries are in the top of the dirty dozens list, which means they have the most pesticides, like chemical residues left on them. So this is something we always buy organic or we really don't buy much of at all. We're in blueberry season and we bought eight blueberry bushes, which have berries on them, but they're not ripe yet. So I'm going to go ahead and pick up a shell of blueberries. $7.49 for, this is like, you know, pretty big container of them. That's not bad. And then let us get some spring mix. You always need, where are you? You always need a container of spring mix to sit in your fridge and turn into liquid. Cotton candy grapes, three pounds for $9.89. These are actually $6.99 at BJ's, but I'm thinking it might be a smaller container at BJ's. Probably. Yeah. So should I go ahead and grab them here? These aren't organic, but they taste like cotton candy. So it's kind of like a happy medium because it's cotton candy, but it's fruit. You know, that's better than regular cotton candy. So no. $9 for organic raspberries is beautiful, but raspberries are a luxury we cannot afford right now. Put the coconut water back. These are drinking coconuts. Guys, I'm sorry. This was on my list to get at BJ's, but I want to say they're really close to the same price. It might only be a five pound bag at BJ's for the same price. So I'm going to, going to go ahead and grab carrots here. I know this is so much more than I kind of, it's kind of not. Some of the things I had on my BJ's list, but since I didn't get to place it online, I'm just picking up some of it here. So typically I'd place a pickup order for BJ's with as much as I can get, as long as it's not way cheaper here. And then I will run through Costco and then just go sit in the car while they bring out the BJ's stuff and head home. And it just makes this whole process faster, easier. And my greatest Costco hack of all time, when the cart gets full, you let your husband push it with a smile too. Look at that. So this is my, this is my bare minimum trip to Costco. Um, actually I did get a few extra things, but really for the most part, only what was on sale, right? Yeah. Or a really good price right now. So it'd be good. This will last us a week or two. I'm just kidding. Some of it will last a long time. Others not like this, this will last probably one day with eight kids, maybe two days. The strawberries, what will happen is I'll put them in the fridge and then I will go to get strawberries out for breakfast and they will be gone. And I'll be like, what happened? And the kids will have gotten one at a time until they were gone. Here girls, can you hold these boxes please? Good. How was your day? Sorry, I lost the watermelon. Here she goes. Everybody be prepared to learn to help stuff in. Okay. Okay. Here's my list. Let's see how we did. You want this? We had crackers on sale. Yes. Avocado oil and spray on sale. Yes. Chicken sausage. Parmesan cheese. Burgers. Got. Chicken nuggets. Got. Didn't get frozen blueberries. My bad. Did get some fresh ones. Chicken meatballs. Yes. Tortilla chips. We got. The salsa I'm getting at BJ's. Chicken burgers on sale. We got those. DB's. I didn't even see those. Did you see them? The DB's popsicles. They're on sale for $7. For 35 popsicles or 40 I think. We might need to run back and look for those. Paper towels. Toilet paper. Cucumber for my mom. Strawberries. Okay. So we got some other stuff. But I wrote this list after I made my BJ's list which included bananas. What did I get that was extra? I got coconut water. Bananas and carrots were on my BJ's list. Butter was on my BJ's list. Although I'm glad I got it here instead. So celery was on my BJ's list. So I think turkey bacon. Some chicken sausages. Not the breakfast ones. Some other ones. These Chef Hacks veggies. And the watermelon. I think that's all I got that wasn't. Oh and your chips and my pretzels. That's not bad. That's all I got that wasn't on my list from either place. So I feel better. And the grand total was $600.50 plus whatever we have to get.