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Grocery Spending/Menu Plan | I give up.

On Saturdays, I share my menu plan for the upcoming week along with a photo of my groceries and a tally of my spending. My goal is to spend $100/week for our food, toiletries, and cleaning products. I’m currently in the midst of trying to buy more local, sustainably-produced food while sticking to my budget. Can it be done? I don’t know, but I’m going to try, and I’ll share what I learn as I go along.

I did finally make it to the grocery store this week. I spent $48.01 at Weis, and $64.08 at Aldi. At his point, I’d spent $112, so I was already over the $100 I had left to spend.

(I had $150 for two weeks and spent $50 last week).

And I still needed chicken. So, I decided that I’m going to give up on my goal of spending $75/week thru the end of the year (I’d set that goal to make up for my bulk beef expenditure). I managed it for a few weeks, but if I try to keep it up, I’ll probably end up sacrificing the quality of food we buy to do it.

So, newly freed from my $75/week goal, I marched myself to the local organic store and plopped down $18.99 for local (from a neighboring state), no-packaging chicken. I bring my own glass container to carry it home in, and that makes me very happy…there’s no yucky meat trash to dispose of this way!

My total is $131.08 for the week, which means that for this two-week period, I spent $181.08. That’s $31.08 over my original $75/week goal, but $20 under my usual $100/week goal, so I feel pretty happy about that.

I didn’t get a photo of my groceries, but just so that this post won’t be all sad and picture-less, here’s a food-related photo from my busy day of shooting yesterday.

Saturday

  • Frozen pizzas! Wondering why? I’ll tell you later this week. 😉

Sunday

  • Chicken Noodle Soup
  • Grilled Cheese Sandwiches
  • grapefruit

Monday

  • Shrimp Veiness (a shrimp and rice dish)
  • Mandarin Orange Salad (a green salad)

Tuesday

  • Sloppy Joes on buns
  • steamed broccoli

Wednesday

Thursday

  • Thanksgiving! We’re sharing a meal with my in-laws and I am contributing rolls (duh!), pie, and jello.

Friday

  • Takeout date night for Mr. FG and me, something easy for the kids

That’s all from me today, but do check back tomorrow because I want to share a few more pictures of my sweet little niece (and my sister has given me permission to share her first name with you as well.).

Today’s 365 post: Tagging Along

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Kari

Wednesday 24th of November 2010

How do you and Mr FG do date night and not ha ve it get expensive?

Jennifer

Wednesday 24th of November 2010

I know you can get pretty inexpensive sushi takeout around here in the grocery stores, which I think is what you guys do, right? But Kristen, have you ever considered making your own sushi since it seems like that's something you guys really enjoy? It's really not that hard to make. My personal favorite? Raw scallops. All you really need is 1 large sea scallop per person. Sooo yummy and much easier to butcher and put together than even the cucumber rolls!

Pam

Tuesday 23rd of November 2010

You mentioned here that you were going to post more pics of your baby niece and tell us her name, but I didn't see that--or did I miss it somehow?

Jenny

Monday 22nd of November 2010

Way over this week, too. Holiday extras, plus stocking up on some expensive things we'd run out of (like maple syrup and balsamic vinegar), plus my husband went along on the shopping trip. And we have a bulk beef purchase coming up at the end of this month. Ouch. Time to rein in and plan some pantry based meals for the next few weeks.

Jennifer

Monday 22nd of November 2010

Kristen, how's the 2 week shopping going? Did you mention that elsewhere and I missed it?

PaulJohn

Monday 22nd of November 2010

I know you post everything here weekly, but do you also keep track of the grocery spending in a spreadsheet, or other software? So frequently you are a little under, Just curious how close to your $100/week budget you've managed to stay for the entire year even with the beef purchase.

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