Saturday, February 2, 2013

Grocery challenge


I am so excited about this challenge... the challenge to decrease the food budget. I think we spend roughly the same amount of money on food every month as we do on rent... and I think we spend waaaay to much on rent. My goal is to cut the spending by $400 a month. (I know, I said we spend a lot.) This leave us with roughly $200 a week for food for a family of 7. I try and get most of our produce at the farmer's market, along with our meats and eggs (although the chickens are doing way better than i hoped they still only give us about 9 eggs a week and we eat over two dozen a week.) I am lucky, we still have some of our mini freezer pack of beef in the freezer, some salmon, a couple chickens, and some chicken parts as well as a couple pounds of beef bacon. I went thru the pantry and we have lots of canned salmon, some canned beans, rice, a couple kinds of flour, oats, pasta, chocolate chips (VERY important), coconut oil and olive oil. I was able to do the grocery shopping today, mostly at the farmer's market. I picked up our CSA share (which $25 a week), bought lots more greens, carrots, green beans, broccoli, and some very strange looking vegetable which I do not have the name of, but it looked awesome. I hit Trader Joe's for a few staples and spent a total of $150 for all of that stuff. So we have $50 for things like milk, water, bread and the Wednesday trip to the farmer's market for whatever we run out of... usually apples and carrots. I think we can totally do this!
If you want to join in as well, head over to Gypsy Forest and sign up!




3 comments:

Unknown said...

That chard looks mighty tasty! One of my favorites! This challenge is a great idea!

Unknown said...

I wanted to talk to you more about this. I thought about posting to the hsing group, but was unsure. I think it is good to tap each other's brains for tips on cutting the spending without sacrificing quality.

Nicole said...

heather, i am working on this myself. good luck! i just tried to spend 200 bucks a week on everything but bills and that did not work. juts trying things out.