Join the Six Ingredient Challenge hosted by Hobo Mama and Anktangle!We're on a six-week path to eat more whole foods, guided by one simple rule: Buy foods with six ingredients or fewer. And we're blogging about our journey on the way.
This week we're answering the question: How's your budget? What money-saving strategies have you been employing?
You can see all the responses to this question on March 7 at the link-up post.
To join in the Six Ingredient Challenge anytime during the six weeks, visit the sign-up page for a list of posts and to link up!
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I can't believe we are already in week 5 of this six-week challenge! No, you didn't miss a post for week 4, I actually forgot to write one. Oops! Oh well.
The budget. I've actually been trying to bring down our weekly/biweekly grocery budget some. Jason thinks we spend too much for groceries ;) but the price of organics alone are crazy-high. However, they are so worth it, in my opinion. I can't drink non-organic milk any more without stomach issues and that means I'm spending $6.29/gallon for milk (store brand!). We have cut back our milk drinking some though so I'm usually buying 1 1/2- 2 gallons for a two-week period. This week I budgeted and spent $80 less than I typically do for the next 2 weeks. I will of course have to buy bread and milk next weekend as well as possibly some more fruit. We also didn't need a whole lot of other stuff (dog food, diapers, toilet paper, cleaning supplies, etc) so that saved us a lot this week.
Eating from the pantry as well as finding recipes that use some of things we have and only needing one or two things for the meals has definitely helped lower the budget some. For example, we are having "spaghetti surprise" - we have rice, cream cheese and cheddar so I just bought sour cream, spaghetti sauce (which was on sale!) and ground beef. Since I always buy the organic ground beef from Costco and it comes in a three-pack, I was able to figure out 3 more meals with ground beef for the week from that! We also have lentils so I looked for a recipe that I could use them in and I found an awesome sounding one. It doesn't need meat, we have frozen homemade chicken stock and all we needed was some kale! $3 and there's a quick dinner! I'm going to also finally use some of the chia seeds we have in the cupboard as well as use up some more of our quinoa in a crockpot breakfast cereal. I hope it turns out good.
I try to use coupons when I can and our local grocery stores - Kroger and Meijer - have e-coupons that you can "clip". I especially love Meijer's mPerks program because you can use both e-coupons and paper coupons on the same product and they double any paper coupons up to 0.50! Sometimes they even have specials for loyal customers and tailored-to-you coupons for items you buy often. I actually set up separate accounts for my husband and myself.
I'm not always good at buying things on sale, but this week I just planned to buy "fruit" and ran across strawberries for 10/$10 and bought 2 packs of them, and some others that were on sale. That way we have fresh fruits for snacks and to go with lunches. It's funny, I didn't buy granola bars again this week and the boys didn't even ask about them, as well as the gogurt! They are really doing well with this new change. I'm so proud of all of us!
Sounds like you're making some big effort with respect to your food budget, and I'm glad your family is adjusting so well to the changes. I agree with you that organic food is worth it—but the price tags can still sting a bit! We have also been eating more from the pantry and freezers lately, which serves dual purpose: saving money AND Spring cleaning. =)
ReplyDeleteYes! Definitely worth it, but OUCH! There are few things I refuse to buy conventional, and a few (bananas, for one) that I don't buy organic - I figure, in the case of bananas, the peel is thick and protective, and if it's from another country like Chile or Mexico, even if it's "organic", I've heard when it's imported they have to spray it anyway, so what's the difference? :(
DeleteI really want a deep freezer because I think that would help so much with the budget and meal planning. We would so buy a half of a cow and lots of other truly bulk things (re: meat) from local farmers and have somewhere to put it then!
I'm proud of you all, too! Your boys are doing a lot better than ours. :)
ReplyDeleteI never remember to use coupons. I should see what's available for us.
It sounds like you did great budgeting for the week. We often have to have those "shopping from our pantry" days to use up all the stuff we have instead of just buying new things!
Thanks! Let me just say, it has gotten easier to get them to try things as they've gotten older. But we've always attempted to just serve one thing for everybody. Although I'm sure when they were younger, we let that slide sometimes, and at grandparent's houses, they were almost always given "special things" like frozen chicken nuggets, hot dogs, etc (just thinking about gives me that ick feeling, HA!)
DeleteCoupons really can be nice. I wish there were more for organic items or produce, although the mPerks always has several for produce which is nice. Just depends on what we need or will eat ;)