August Assessment

Are you watching the 6 of us eat on less than $10.00/day? 

If so, here are the numbers for August.

Total: $9.25/day --> 302.36 minus 25.00 for entertainment/birthday costs= 277.36. This divided by 30 comes out to $9.25/day.

Breakdown:
Produce: 90.84 (that's including our 27.00 CSA cost)
Dairy: 71.30
Sweets/sugars/chocolate chips: 36.04
Grain: 33.94 (you know it's bad when your sugars are costing more than the staff of life)
Fats (butter, oil, cocoa, etc.): 25.45
Nuts/Legumes/Beans: 22.45
Meat/Eggs: 20.52
Misc/Condiments: 1.82

If you're dying for more specifics because you are a sickly anal person, have a look at Costs.

I must confess I relaxed a little this month. We ate chips once and crackers a couple of times. I bought strawberry milk stuff for my kids (gross). I didn't always buy things from the cheapest place (meaning if we were at Walmart already and I didn't want to make a special trip to Aldi for a few things I knew would be cheaper, we sometimes didn't.) We celebrated a birthday. And we seem to have celebrated August in general with way too much ice cream. I will say that Kip has accused me of trying to make a vegetarian out of him a couple of times, but these accusations have come with a smile (usually). It's true that we've eaten less meat than usual and we already don't eat tons, but there have just been so many vegetables in the house; I've got to do something with them, right?

We've seriously been eating tons of fruits and vegetables (many of them local). I wish I'd kept track of the whole family's intake this month because I'm confident that we got a lot more than usual. For a look at how much I consumed, have a look at Jean's Food Journal. All told, we've eaten between 80 and 100 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables this month plus some canned things. (This is a rough estimate. I've bought approximately 40 pounds and the CSA generally supplies between 10 and 15 pounds/week, for a total of 40-60. Admittedly, some has gotten frozen or preserved. However, we've also gotten a bunch from the garden and I have no idea how much of that we've gotten/eaten.) Chiggers be darned; summer is good.

What We Wasted: 

1 1/2 popovers
lots of bread crusts; also an unpleasant number of half or partially eaten sandwiches
2 bowls raw corn soup--it just didn't work for any of us; I couldn't bring myself to eat the rest
several cups/sippy cups of partially drunk milk
1/2 C tomato sauce
Also: We had our refrigerator stop working for a day. That's frustrating. We saved most of the food by throwing it in the freezer for a few hours and rotating it like that, but we did lose our mayo, Miracle whip, half a loaf of bread (that got taken out of the freezer to make room for our fridge things and that went bad earlier than it would have had it remained frozen), Ranch dressing. Those things weren't our fault, but they did go in the garbage.

My goals for next month:

More fish. We've never eaten it the 2-3 times/week that you're supposed to, but we used to have it several times a month and haven't since I started this Cheap Eat Challenge. That's a shame because if one can buy Nestle Strawberry Yuck Drink, then one can buy a little more fish.

Heads Up:

We'll be out of town for the next several days. Consequently, I won't be counting those days and I probably won't be posting much either, though I'll try to get it together enough to have a few things post.

Look for menus when I get back.