Flour Sack Monday: October Grocery Challenge

For the remainder of the month, I will be joining Heather at Beauty That Moves in a grocery challenge.  Heather's challenge to herself is to spend as little as possible while making it as "whole food" as possible and to move away from living off of what is already in the pantry. 

Here, that won't be entirely the case.  While I do strive to cook with many fresh ingredients, I also rely on what is in my pantry and the stockpile of food items that I have built up.  And although we eat as organically as we can, I'll be the first to admit that not everything we consume is of the "whole" foods variety.

Heather has set a $400 budget for her family and I plan to try that, too.  In the past we've combined all household/personal/pet expenses in the monthly gorcery budget, but for the purposes of this challenge I plan to separate that out and just report on the actual cost of the food we buy.

So....drum roll....so far we've spent $307.36.  Wow.  I suppose the good news for us is that I have already purchased meat for the month, so the rest of my budget will mainly be for produce and dairy.  Only $92.64 left.  Think I can make it?

Some goals for the week:

-To make pesto with this lovely basil before it wilts up....

and to serve my family some homemade applesauce and fresh banana bread!

Anyone in interested in joining in?

Comments

[Kymberlie R. McGuire]

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[Jen]

I would love to participate... but I feel like I should kind of sit this one out simply due to all the other stuff in life going on for me. School and student teaching and mommy-ing are kicking my butt right now. I haven't even cut a coupon or used one since school started. But I think it's still OK. I'm kind of living off all the stuff I got at Wags and CVS the past year b/c I haven't set foot in those stores either since early august. Good luck. I feel bad complaining about my lack of time when you have 3.9 kids, soon to be 4.0.

[Ellen]

I saw this on Heather's blog, but decided to watch from the sidelines and sort of participate unofficially too. I AM trying to use up what I have and use stuff that's been in my freezer (to make room for newer stuff). It is difficult since meal planning is the problem for me...

Hope you're feeling a bit better. Countdown begins! As for Wed...probably not yet.

[Heather]

I am unofficially participating, since we typically try to keep our grocery budget at about $300/month not including our CSA share. I eat a lot from my pantry as well. I tend to take the abundance of summer and preserve it so that I can have good, homemade meals throughout our long cold winters in Maine :-) And we typically spend most of our grocery budget up front going to Sam's club, and then the regular grocery store. We have about $80 left for the month and it will be spent at the farmers' market for eggs and hopefully some root veggies to take us through the end of the month.