Cooking and shopping on the cheap

Ok so I will admit that I do like to cook around the household here.  I figure the cheaper the better alot of the times for the place and I do not mind it at all.  With that being said I am getting back into the coupons here for the household to drag the prices down totally for the place since the weather and the trucking are not going to lie here to me.  So now I did use a coupon last night here while I was at Walmart and saved 55 cents on the total here at the check out lane.  With tomarrow coming up soon here I will have the coupons along with the sales on my side here and my Husband knows this.  That leads up to what I have to say with the sales here with the cooking on the cheap.  Normally if you can get something on sale it is even better on the grocery budget.  This is why I go for the potatoes, flour, onions, butter, pastas, some cheeses, milk by the gallon and or powdered, baking powder, and shortning here for the household as a starter.  In what I do is hike out of the household early in the morning some time during the week here and catch the sales on the meats at the stores.  That also helps out on the budget here for my place.  It was at least a month ago that one of the news channels had a run on the dollar store foods here in the area and how you can pretty much eat out of them totally.  With that being said you have to watch prices totally in the dollar stores nomatter in what you do.  This is why I kept a notebook for the prices where I shopped at totally for the first 6 months for the dollar stores, discount stores, and the supermarket at first.  After I wrote down the size of the item and the price at one store for the month here, then I moved to the next store for the next month here and did the same thing.  With that part said here some items are not that bad at all from the dollar stores.  Some of the stuff that is there you have to get use to the taste.  Since I like the off brand cherrios at one of the stores it pretty much stuck at the trailer then here to the house.  Also we all found out that the box stuffing with the off brand is better than the name brand things and alot cheaper also.  What I am trying to say is if you are on a very tight budget for the household do not knock the dollar stores and discout stores at all for food.  I still laugh at times since I have shopped at the dollar stores here for years and noticed that I can get better deals at times there than anyplace else in the area for some of the things here for the house.  Some of the folks that have came over to the house and walked into the kitchen have seen the tags on the items that I have bought and shake their head.  With budgets getting tighter here for alot of things in every household the food budget gets nailed the first it seems nomatter where you go.  All I can say is take a look around for alot of things at the dollar stores and see what you can get out of them to your advantage here.  They also take internet coupons now days for alot of things that they have.