HEB Update

So I'm sure all of you are wondering how my experience with the HEB Meal Planner went.
So far - so good. It took me roughly 15 minutes to print all the recipes, meals and shopping list to the sizes I wanted (for storing in my cookbook).
I spent between 30 and 45 minutes shopping, which could have been shortened had I known the store better. And limited the number of trips to one side of the store before returning to the other side.
I spent $61.34, at HEB, on the entire weeks menu. Now that doesn't include most of the meat products. I either had the meat at home or substituted one type for another (i.e. ground venison for ground turkey, etc.). I also purchased extras of some items that I knew I'd use more of on snacks or other meals.
I wonder if the store plans the meals to fit a certain price range or not. It will be interesting to track.
Wal-Mart or IGA may be priced differently as well. I bought store brands were possible - not because of price as much as I wanted to have plenty of store brand items to enter HEB's 100th Anniversary game.
I spent roughly 20-30 minutes on preparing last nights meal - which was fabulous.
I probably made roughly three servings worth, but that gave me plenty for dinner and lunch today.
I'm not super good at following recipes. I know how and I can, but when cooking a meal if it calls for mushrooms or shrimp, or something else I enjoy, I tend to just go with the flow and add more of the things I like.
Because of the shrimp, mushrooms and pre-seasoned rice in last nights meal, I figured the meal probably cost me around $10. Which isn't too bad considering I made two meals out of that -- and the vegetables and other ingredients weren't all used and will be used later.
Another thing I've enjoyed about the menu planner is I know exactly what I'm having for dinner that night. And if I forget - I can easily pull it up off the website.
tonight's menu: Breaded Chicken Marinara sandwiches, Tossed Dinner Salad and desert.
But if anyone knows me - the desert will probably get left off. I'm not a big fan of buying deserts unless I have the priviledge of a lovely lady joining me for dinner.
Any takers?
Oh and one more great feature on the HEB website.
You can now upload your digital camera photos straight from your hard drive to your local store. If you turn them in by 9 p.m. they say they will be ready by the next day. I uploaded 25 photos today, all but two of them were 4x6 and the other two were 8x11. It only cost me $10 or so. That's about the same as what I was paying with www.kodakgallery.com, but I can pick the pictures up the next day, rather than waiting and paying for shipping.
We'll see tomorrow if the quality is the same.
Well I think that's about it for this update. Time to wrap up the paper so I can go home and enjoy dinner.