Food Budgets

On this day, 4 months ago, Evangeline was born!! I can’t believe she is 4 months old already. I am just nutty about her!! She is so sweet and cuddly and chubby and cute and yummy! Sigh…she is growing up too fast!

Food budget nightmare!

Does anyone else struggle to feed their family good, nutritious food on a budget? We spend so much money (that we really don’t have) on groceries. Here is a list:

4 gallons of raw goat’s milk a week (used for drinking, making yogurt, and keifer). 20$

Sourdough bread 3 loaves a week FREE (aren’t we lucky).

3-4 dozen eggs a week (milkshakes, omelets, and ingredients to many things) $10

Produce (salad materials, seasonal fruit, bananas, potatoes, side dishes, etc.) $35 + (this has gone up $10 dollars or more a week since gas prices skyrocketed)

Meat (stew meat, chicken, hamburger meat, misc cuts of meat, etc.) $25

Other groceries (this week it was olives, taco shells, wine (marinade), chicken broth, tomato paste, etc.) $40-50 a week

This averages out to be about 140 dollars a week.

We also include a monthly expenditures of about $100 dollars to Azure (grains and other bulk foods, oils, cheese, coconut milk, nuts and seeds, dried fruit) and $50 dollars or so to Life Source, a specialty health store, (things that didn’t come in the food order, cod liver oil, soap, hot dogs and turkey bacon).

Drum roll……..we spend about 700 dollars a month on food. Isn’t this outrageous!!!!

Here is my menu:

Monday: Jamaican beans and rice with tortillas, s. cream, lettuce, and cilantro (didn’t get to this Sunday)

Tuesday: Steak (I try and have this twice a month – Phil loves it) with salad, beets, potatoes

Wednesday: Tacos with guacamole, s. cream, lettuce, olives

Thursday: Baked beans, homemade lamb sausage, salad, broccoli

Friday: Breaded chicken, oven fries, salad, asparagus

Saturday: Beef stir fry stew with salad and porridge pancakes with apricot butter

Sunday: leftovers

700 divided by 30 (days of the month) is about 23 dollars a day! YIKES!

Well, at least Evie eats for free!!!!

Comments

  1. MichelleApril 21, 2008 at 6:28 PM

    For eating as well as you do, I don't think that's too bad. However, you may have to fundraise or start a home business once your children start eating more than you!
    It's hard to find a balance between investing in health and affording it! What we're doing right now is similar to you. The only differences are that we eat a bit more simply, so less specialty foods and less meat. Luckily we were given some free salmon, so we're eating on that. Other than that I buy one small package of good ground beef a week (about $4 worth). Right now we pay for good milk ($24 a week) which is ALL our dairy (well, I guess except for butter)...I buy no cheese anymore and we have chicken expenses for our eggs. We do lots of nuts and that's it for protein. I'd love to have more meat, but we're beginning to pack away the food.
    So looking foward to moving out so we can raise beef, lambs, chickens, etc. All in His time though.
    Michelle

    ReplyDelete

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