Dinners:
1. Dinner Beans
2. Chili, Cornbread, & salad
3. Curried Chicken with Apricots
4. Tomato Vegetable Soup with french bread
Lunches:
1. Pear & cheese tortilla, Sweet Potato Fries, fruit
2. Fried egg sandwich, frozen peas, applesauce
3. Additional snacks for Gracie's lunch: roasted pumpkin seeds, mint savory pancake with yogurt, fruit
Breakfast:
1. Soaked oatmeal
2. 5 Grain Porridge (soaked)
Extras/Deserts:
1. Applesauce cookies
2. Gingerbread
3. Yogurt
4. Halloween treats (Nooooooo!)
At $5 for 60 lollipops, this actually wasn't too bad a deal. And they're organic & made with real fruit juice, no HFCS. And very tasty!Our neighborhood goes all out for Halloween, so we've invited friends of ours to go trick-or-treating with us. They're going to come over Saturday morning, and we're going to spend the day assembling our costumes and carving pumpkins. And hopefully, roasting (not burning, ahem) pumpkin seeds. If I don't forget. The whole tedious idea was Gracie's. And, since we've recently had a cold snap (40s at night!), I thought it would be nice to have chili before going out with the kids that night.
Notice only four dinners. This is more in line with our usual week. We tend to have leftovers on two of the remaining days and the other night is our weekly get together with friends.
Cost of groceries: $126
Beer & wine: $12
Trick-or-treat candy: $20
Total: $158
This is $38 dollars over budget. Obviously, the candy is not a normal purchase. Without that, it would have been much closer. This is somewhat amazing to me, given that my dairy and egg purchases were at Whole Foods.
I've been reading more about the benefits of raw milk, and so I thought I might give it a try for the family. Ross grew up on raw milk, but the kids only had it when they were nursing - from me (ha, ha, ha!). Actually, a lot of what I've been reading about raw milk dovetails with what I read about the benefits of nursing, which makes sense in a way. Namely, the importance of milk as a "living" substance, and all the benefits that entails. I got most of my information from Nourishing Traditions, and you can read about it here.
I've also been reading about the benefits of pasture raised beef & poultry, and how the result is higher omega-3 fatty acids. If you haven't read about the omega-6 vs. omega-3 debate, here's a very accessible document on that. Basically, the thinking is that one of the major factors in our obesity epidemic is the fact that the ratio of omega-6 to omega-3 in our diet has gone from being rather low to extremely high, due to cooking with seed oils.
Since I couldn't possibly afford to buy all raw milk, I also purchased a half gallon of organic milk from grass-fed cows. Because it's from grass-fed cows, it will also be higher in omega-3s. Did you know that milk from conventionally raised cows is lower in omega-3s because their diet is grain and soy? The pasteurized milk will be used for making yogurt, where it's not important to start with "living" milk, since you essentially pasteurize it in the yogurt-making process.
So after mulling over all of this information, I decided to bite the bullet and get myself to Whole Foods. After gasping at the $40 bill, I recovered a bit when I realized that $10 of it was from candy, not exactly a recurring expense. Here's the break-down:
Half gallon Organic whole milk - pasteurized: $3.69
Half gallon Organic whole milk - raw: $9.99 (gasp!)
Organic heavy whipping cream (pastured-fed): $3.69
Organic butter (pasture-fed): $2.99
Organic free range eggs: $3.39 (times 3 for 3 dozen)
Total: about $30, or 1/4 of my budget
This does not seem an unreasonable percentage to me. What do you think? I also get quite a bit of my produce organic. So to be able to be close to $120 for the week is rather impressive to me. I know that I realize a huge savings by not getting very much processed food. And, as usual, not a single coupon was used. I don't find that they offer coupons for whole foods, and I don't tend to purchase the items that they offer coupons for.
What factors control your food-purchasing decisions?
you might want to join the OB food co-op. i never went there when i was there, but i really like our food co-op up here. it will be cheaper than whole foods. also Organic Valley (dairy, eggs) has coupons off of their website, and they are pretty widespread in availability.
ReplyDeletei've been getting grass fed beef at the co-op, and also the farmer's market. buffalo from trader joe's is also good; lower in fat, and i think there is a law that buffalo have to be fed on grass.