I hadn’t gone shopping in two weeks given that I was out for the count last week becoming Bionic woman. (An aside here – thank you to my dear friends Carmen, Cassandra, and Kerifor supplying my family with beautiful meals delivered to my home while I was recovering – you guys rock!)
Terry and I recently upped our grocery budget to $400 a month as we’re making an effort to eat more organic produce, whole foods, and reduce our eating out costs. So far, this seems to be working well for our family of four. I took $100 cash out today and started my trip at WinCo:
I spent $10.21 on everything pictured above – just bulk items! I refill our Quaker Oats bin about twice a month with the old-fashioned oats from bulk at WinCo ($1.32 to refill it!). A few other notables:
- Pinenuts for a pesto: $1.23! Buy in bulk, buy just what you need and pine nuts will not break the bank!
- Forbidden rice for $2.06! I’ve seen this for some time and have been curious to try it. I’ll be using it in this Forbidden Rice Salad recipe I pinned. (It’s vegan and GF for my specialty diet followers.)
- Raw Sugar for $1.74! Another inexpensive way to save on a specialty item.
I then proceeded to hit up Trader Joe’s and Fred Meyer for the remainder of my whirlwind shopping:
It’s hard to see everything here, but I’d guess a good 60-70% of what I bought today was produce, and at least half of that was organic. I also purchased some organic meat for my family (though I won’t be eating it), along with tons of greens, pizza dough from Trader Joe’s, cereal, stuff for my son’s lunch, and a few treats to boot.
The grand total was $104.87, which is exactly $4.87 more than I wanted to spend this week. I’ll cut back a bit next week to even things out.
Here’s my meal plan this week:
- Chickpea Tacos (Vegan; From Happy Herbivore’s cookbook – Amazon link)
- Mushroom Burgers for Me (Vegan; From Happy Herbivore’s cookbook - Amazon link) & Lean Ground Beef Burgers for everyone else
- Tamale Casserole (Vegan; From Happy Herbivore’s cookbook - Amazon link)
- Forbidden Rice Salad (Vegan/GF; probably will make this as a light lunch recipe)
- Pizza (Arugula Pesto for hubby & me; cheese & pepperoni for the kiddos)
- Asian Slaw with Peanut-Sesame Dressing (Vegan; probably as a lunch or side dish)
I also bought plenty of smoothie fixins’ including some new greens I’m excited to try from Trader Joe’s. I’m also thinking of trying a strawberry-basil concoction later today.
I know some of you are thinking that $100 sounds like a lot of money, so let me explain how this is actually pretty affordable for my family:
- We eat out less these days and made small cuts in other areas that add up.
- I have worked to avoid those middle of the week shopping trips – this is SUCH a money zapper if you’re not careful. Seriously, folks. Try focusing your shopping to one day per week and be amazed by the savings.
- Every item has a purpose. I always start with a meal plan these days and then break the meals down into ingredients. I still work to sort through ads/coupon deals to see what could be built around those items for cost savings. For instance – the chickpeas were $0.50 last week at Fred Meyer. Perfect, I just added chickpea tacos to the menu this week!
I will say that given how much fresh greens we now eat, I am all the more eager for our garden to start growing, growing, growing so we can start saving, saving, saving! For more on how and why I’m eating this way, check out my recent post on my diet.
Did you do any shopping today? Have you moved to more healthful eating and if so, how have you offset any jump in cost?
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