After 23 weeks of tallying my food expenses, I'm pretty confident in saying that our $194 food bill this past week is above average for the 5 of us; the average is hovering at $141.
We spent money on both what I'd call "short-term" and "long-term" kinds of groceries. The short-term purchases included $63 at a grocery store to buy commercial vitamin water, bread in plastic bags, processed cereal, etc., (not that I would ever judge what my husband buys, mind you). It also included a $19 trip to our local market for milk in a reusable glass jar, ginger packaged in our own glass jar, apples from a local orchard dumped straight into my market basket, and local cider -- unfortunately in a plastic jug. (See? I'm not perfect, either. On the other hand, I'm so smug, it's a small miracle that my husband can tolerate me).
In a scene of true marital harmony and devotion, my husband made a detour on our long Saturday drive on the way home from visiting C-son -- more details tomorrow -- to take me over to Miller's Amish Store for the first of what I think of as my "long-term" purchases: $64 for 50 lbs of unbleached flour and 2 lbs of pecan pieces. From there, I went solo to the southern end of the county and forked over $15 for $25 lbs of peaches, and then -- finally -- bought 3 dozen more canning jars from our local hardware store. And with this, the shopping was done.
Earlier this week, I'd moved the canning jars into my shelves, sorted by month.
And I defrosted the freezer and sorted all the food into month-based bags before filling it up again.
This exercise showed me that we still have a few gaps in the bulk summer purchases. Salsa is on its way, thanks to the garden. Applesauce will be next; that's also in the plans. With the shortage of corn this year, I'm not sure how intensely I'll work to stock up this year.
But we're missing leafy green vegetables -- I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for a good deal on kale. And meat -- I've stocked up 1 pound/week between now and May. That'd be plenty for me, but my husband will waste away under such a regime, even if I try to fortify him with vitamin water and cereal. So a visit to the Turkey Lady for a large, large order of turkey kielbasa is in order. Plus, the Pirate Dinner is on the horizon (ahoy there, matey!), and I want to enlist her help with the menu. More on that later.
The hope is, if I can stock up on kale and kielbasa, that over the winter we'll pretty much be set for the main part of our meals, and all we'll have to go out to buy will be the short-term kind of stuff. You know, dairy products and vitamin water. We'll see how well that plan works out.
We spent money on both what I'd call "short-term" and "long-term" kinds of groceries. The short-term purchases included $63 at a grocery store to buy commercial vitamin water, bread in plastic bags, processed cereal, etc., (not that I would ever judge what my husband buys, mind you). It also included a $19 trip to our local market for milk in a reusable glass jar, ginger packaged in our own glass jar, apples from a local orchard dumped straight into my market basket, and local cider -- unfortunately in a plastic jug. (See? I'm not perfect, either. On the other hand, I'm so smug, it's a small miracle that my husband can tolerate me).
In a scene of true marital harmony and devotion, my husband made a detour on our long Saturday drive on the way home from visiting C-son -- more details tomorrow -- to take me over to Miller's Amish Store for the first of what I think of as my "long-term" purchases: $64 for 50 lbs of unbleached flour and 2 lbs of pecan pieces. From there, I went solo to the southern end of the county and forked over $15 for $25 lbs of peaches, and then -- finally -- bought 3 dozen more canning jars from our local hardware store. And with this, the shopping was done.
Earlier this week, I'd moved the canning jars into my shelves, sorted by month.
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| The pantry is in the red, so to speak. Wish I had more greens there. |
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| On top of the freezer: September, October, butter, and cheese. |
But we're missing leafy green vegetables -- I'm going to have to keep my eyes open for a good deal on kale. And meat -- I've stocked up 1 pound/week between now and May. That'd be plenty for me, but my husband will waste away under such a regime, even if I try to fortify him with vitamin water and cereal. So a visit to the Turkey Lady for a large, large order of turkey kielbasa is in order. Plus, the Pirate Dinner is on the horizon (ahoy there, matey!), and I want to enlist her help with the menu. More on that later.
The hope is, if I can stock up on kale and kielbasa, that over the winter we'll pretty much be set for the main part of our meals, and all we'll have to go out to buy will be the short-term kind of stuff. You know, dairy products and vitamin water. We'll see how well that plan works out.
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