Let me start by saying that December is a tough month to keep track of. Here are the numbers I have. Our total for the month of December was 240.30--that's including the $17.00 for our milk share and the 27.00 for our CSA (even though we received no food this month). That, divided by 29 (I didn't count the 30th or 31st since my sister and her family plus my father and his partner were here and that just messes any cost tallying way up) takes our daily cost to a mere $8.29/day. Which seems really low for the most decadent year of the month.
Here are a few reasons I think this may be so:
1. I didn't count the cost of ingredients I used to make cookies or food given away. That might seem like cheating because you just know we ate some of those cookies (who?us?), but you'll notice above that I didn't give us any kind of entertainment bonus (I usually give us $20-25 for entertaining), so I think it's pretty fair because we really did give a lot away.
2. I didn't count the candy given as gifts to kids or husband. And trust me, they managed to fill up on this plenty.
3. For our church Christmas party, I said I'd make one of the turkeys and I did. The turkey was provided by the church and I got all the leftovers (there were many) plus some ham, potatoes, and rolls. This fed us dinner for 3-4 days and gave us a boost in the leftover department as well. As a matter of fact, I still have about 3 cups of chopped turkey hanging out in the freezer.
4. In addition to this, there were friends who shared food with us.
5. As stated in the first paragraph, I didn't count the last 2 days of the month (which can be pricey days) because my sister and her family plus my dad and his partner were visiting. It's just too much to try to tally, so I didn't. I counted our food purchases up through the 29th.
6. I'm sure I missed a few things here and there, especially things I brought up from food storage in the basement. I'm usually pretty meticulous about getting these things counted, but this month, I'm not so sure; it was easy to get busy and crazy. And yes, double crazy.
Here's the breakdown for you:
Grains: $36.12
Dairy 34.90 plus 17.00 for our milk share- 51.90
Produce: 41.86 plus 27.00 for our CSA- 68.86
Meat/Eggs: 30.73
Nuts/Beans/Legumes: 23.03
Fats: 7.96
Whew! And it's finished. An entire year of eating on the super cheap--shooting for $6/day for our family of 6 for 6 months and then shooting for (and succeeding at) eating on less than $10/day for our family of 6. Am I relieved? Yes, I am. Mostly, I'm just relieved I won't have to keep track of each thing purchased and used each month. It was really interesting for me at first and then, these last few months--well, it's just been painful. I thought you might want to know some of the key things I've learned from this as well as what I plan to continue doing. Here goes.
What I learned:
1. I learned what we ate. That sounds odd, but it was the first thing I really learned from this. I had these rough ideas in my head about what we ate, but when I really started looking at it, I noticed how wrong I was in certain areas.
2. Along that line, it was easy to see where we needed to improve.
3. The cheaper we ate, the less we wasted. For this, you have to know what's in your fridge and freezer and use it up. Which means you've got to be a little creative with food prep sometimes. Or at least have some tortillas on hand to wrap things up in.
4. Homemade food is almost always always always cheaper than processed stuff. Almost. Motto: Takes more time (sometimes); tastes more better (most times). And all that mumbo jumbo about how eating healthy is so expensive, well, you can probably tell what I think about that. To a very small extent this is true (whole wheat flour is more expensive than white, but sugar is more expensive than both, and a candy bar is costliest of all; and let's not even talk about soda, okay).
5. You've got to at least sort of plan if you want to eat really cheap. A general meal plan is good (I didn't actually find a neurotic meal plan necessary). Possibly even more important is the idea of stocking up a bit on really really good deals (I'm thinking mostly of fresh fruit in the summer and some of the baking items in December, that sort of thing).
What I wish never to return to:
1. Wasting a bunch of food.
2. Going into the store, wandering around, and buying stuff. I've noticed a little slippage here at the end of the year and I hate it. At the beginning of the year, I'd go in with a mission and not fudge and buy impulse-y things. It was so refreshing, so freeing, so...fast. Of course, if there's a really really good deal, you can go for it, but that doesn't happen all that often (at least not when you're surprised about it).
3. Never planning a meal. I was really bad about this before, but it's been fun and nice to be just slightly more organized. Yeah, we still do an ingredient run here or there, but it happens a lot less.
4. Not buying extra fruit in the summer when it's fresh and so cheap. I froze a LOT of fruit this summer and it has been awesome this winter. It's provided some variety for us in our winter eating and I paid about half in the summer what I'd pay in the winter (and that's for the frozen not the fresh stuff).
What 2012 Will Bring to The Tasty Cheapskate:
-I'm not entirely sure, but I know that after the abundance of December I'm ready for some simple, delicious, and cheap stuff.
-I'm also toying with the idea of using Friday as a Food Essay Friday where I write my own essay or link to somebody else's.
-There may be a little less posting than last year. I'd like to do just a wee bit of networking. And I'd like to spend a bit more time writing on things that aren't food. As much as I like eating and writing about food, there are other things that go through this little brain.
-I'd say it's fair to say some chocolate will cross these plates, wouldn't you?
-Hope to put up total costs of monthly food receipts in Costs section, but no more breaking anything down and some months will be notably more expensive than others as they may be months when I'm stocking up.
-I hope to do some blurbs where I show places or ways in which you can get/make expensive foods for cheaper. (For example, right now I'm thinking about cheeses. There are some lovely and expensive ones out there. What would be reasonable substitutions for them or places where you can find them a bit cheaper? And what to do if your city, ahem, doesn't even carry some of them? That sort of thing.)
-I hope to do more recipes for the time crunched--more crock pot recipes and super quickies. I think I'm going to shoot for 1 per week. Maybe, like, Work-a-day Wednesday. What do you think?
A Conclusion/Sermon (If you don't like sermons skip it, because I can't help myself.)
Most Americans live abundantly. I'm not saying we all do, okay. But most of us do. And, frankly, I've started to get a little annoyed every time I hear otherwise. Maybe we don't live as abundantly as the guy next door. But I'm talking about abundance in a historical context and in a world context. The sooner we realize how much we have; the sooner we'll be able to take more control over it and make the most of it. A little gratitude can go a long way. A little remembering what our grandparents ate on a daily basis, and what they went through to get it. A little remembering how food was rationed during WWII. These are things my generation hasn't known (and hopefully won't), but they're really not so far away from us and I think it helps to remember/realize that once they were. And to prepare and consume our food with that sort of mindfulness and gratitude. This might not be easy exactly, but it's very possible--for those with time and for those with less time. Let's face it, most of us waste a good bit of food or spend our money on sodium and high fructose corn syrup more often than we really need to. Maybe I'm just begging to be criticized here because I am at home enough to prepare many of our foods from scratch. And I'm not saying everyone should be me and eat on the super cheap, but a little cheaper, a little less wasteful--it's something most of us can manage if we wish. If we don't wish, I'm okay with that. Just don't look at me all weepy-eyed and tell me how it can't be done. Because for most of us, with a little more preparation, a little more mindfulness, and a wee bit of effort, almost all of us can save a little more money than we do if we have a look around and prepare just a bit. Whether that means breaking out the rolling pin or breaking out the angel hair pasta, there's a cheap hot meal waiting to be on our menu this week.
Showing posts with label monthly assessment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label monthly assessment. Show all posts
Monday, January 2, 2012
Thursday, December 1, 2011
November Assessment, Well, Sort Of
Can anyone else believe it's already the 1st of December? I know I can't. Why only yesterday I was writing checks dated November 28th. Hmmm. So that's the kind of month it's been. Not bad, but busy. And a little confused.
I have all my food receipts in random places and I haven't kept track while I go along in the month as I usually do. Furthermore, we had family in town for several days this month and left to go out of town one day ourselves on our anniversary. And truly, I just really have no idea how much we spent on those days per person.
And then, finally, today, I realized it was December. We had a sort of blow-out leftover night and managed to eat, organize, and freeze much of the delicious holiday foods we'd enjoyed. Though I must confess that we also ended up throwing out more in one night than I've wasted in, I believe, any of the other months of this Cheap Eat Challenge year. Which is what happens when you get a little overwhelmed and lose track. After dinner, I re-introduced myself to my counter tops (we'd been growing distant). And then began The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with my kids and tucked them in and thought a little about my priorities this season. They didn't really involve sorting through last month's receipts.
So while I have my receipts from the food we bought in November, well, probably, somewhere in this pile of junk on my desk, I thought it might be interesting--for you and for me--to tally up how much the big Thanksgiving dinner actually cost. In time, money, and life-saving sanity. Because, you know, those things are much easier to tally than my messy pile (er, sort of pile) of monthly receipts.
Here goes nothing.
We fed 6 adults and 6 children. The food we made lasted, thank goodness, more than one day.
We ate turkey, stuffing, potatoes with gravy, sweet potato yummy casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, croissants, sparkling cider, pumpkin pie, and chocolate pie.
I think I might have to dedicate this meal and perhaps a Thankful prayer to Aldi. It made this a lot cheaper than it would have been, while also tending to have, not local, but not super far away items either as it's a mid-western centered store.
Free range, local-ish (meaning it was raised in IN) turkey, about 13 lb.: $26.00 (Rivertown Butcher in Newburgh)
Red potatoes, 5 lb bag: $1.49 (sale at Aldi)
1/2 bag sweet potatoes, about 1.5 lb: $.49 (another sale at Aldi)
12 oz bag cranberries: $.99 (Aldi)
1/2 bunch celery: $.30 (Aldi)
3 carrots: $.25
sugar, approximately 5 C: $1.00
brown sugar, approximately 1 1/2 C: $.50
butter, 7 sticks or nearly 2 lb butter: 1.99 per pound at Aldi sale: $3.98
chocolate, 4-5 oz: $.80 (Aldi)
cream, 3 1/2 C or nearly 1 quart at 1.89/pint Aldi sale: $3.78 (embarrassing isn't it, to admit these things)
sour cream, 1 pint (for potatoes): 1.39 (Aldi)
dozen eggs: .89 sale at Aldi
2 apples: .20 (Aldi)
2 lemons (one in a crust, 1 in turkey cavity): .50 (Asian store)
pumpkin puree, about 15 oz.: .99 (Aldi)
walnuts, 1-2 oz: 1.00 (Aldi)
onions, 1 lb or so: .65 (Aldi)
white flour, 14 C or about 5-6 lb: 1.50 (Aldi)
salt, 2 C for brine plus seasoning: .30
3 bottles sparkling cider at 1.99 each: 5.97 (Aldi)
used mostly fresh herbs from garden: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme--yup.
And the total is: $52.97 for the whole meal and several meals (though not as many as you'd think) thereafter or $4.41/per person, which still isn't bad--which is, in fact, a veritable miracle, until we realize that some of those small people weren't eating very much. Still, even if you just count the adults you're only looking at $8.82/person. Denny's can't even compete with that, and I'm not afraid to say, it was a good step better than Denny's.
How much time did it take? Well, a lot. I started making food the Wednesday before and started thinking about food a day or two before that. Also, as you may notice from the menu, I tried to keep it pretty traditional and simple, which was one of my goals this year. Also, I'm used to cooking, which you may have ascertained from the fact that I have my own food blog. However, I did do most of the cooking myself since other grown-ups were either not in town yet or entertaining children or running around fetching me things--both utterly essential duties. Had I had a kid in my arms for the making of the meal (my oftentimes method of cooking), it would have taken approximately 79 trillion hours plus baking times for this meal.
Did it make me crazy? Did I wish I'd just gone to Schnucks or Bob Evans for help. I'm struggling not to curse here when I give an emphatic "HECK no." Okay, it did make me a little crazy (but isn't that just part of making a Thanksgiving meal) and I've hosted Thanksgiving for a few years in a row now, so it was easier this time. But there were no tears, although a moment of watery-eyedness after the meal when I was cleaning up and broke a glass. But the food was so delicious and the company and ritual so divine, I wouldn't have traded it for any grocery or restaurant-made food. If I'd needed to, I would have scaled back on how much we made. I probably could have gotten away with turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, 1 pie, and the sparkling cider. We would have still been way full and plenty happy and things would have tasted great. But I had the time and will to do more so I did. I also wouldn't have felt too bad about cheating and buying a few prepared foods like pre-made croissant dough or pie dough or maybe even cranberry sauce if I'd had a big crowd or a big need. But, again, I didn't, so I did it myself.
And now, on to cookies, food gifts, ideas for the cheap and the fast, and at some point in time, Kip's fudge. Happy December. Here we go.
I have all my food receipts in random places and I haven't kept track while I go along in the month as I usually do. Furthermore, we had family in town for several days this month and left to go out of town one day ourselves on our anniversary. And truly, I just really have no idea how much we spent on those days per person.
And then, finally, today, I realized it was December. We had a sort of blow-out leftover night and managed to eat, organize, and freeze much of the delicious holiday foods we'd enjoyed. Though I must confess that we also ended up throwing out more in one night than I've wasted in, I believe, any of the other months of this Cheap Eat Challenge year. Which is what happens when you get a little overwhelmed and lose track. After dinner, I re-introduced myself to my counter tops (we'd been growing distant). And then began The Best Christmas Pageant Ever with my kids and tucked them in and thought a little about my priorities this season. They didn't really involve sorting through last month's receipts.
So while I have my receipts from the food we bought in November, well, probably, somewhere in this pile of junk on my desk, I thought it might be interesting--for you and for me--to tally up how much the big Thanksgiving dinner actually cost. In time, money, and life-saving sanity. Because, you know, those things are much easier to tally than my messy pile (er, sort of pile) of monthly receipts.
Here goes nothing.
We fed 6 adults and 6 children. The food we made lasted, thank goodness, more than one day.
We ate turkey, stuffing, potatoes with gravy, sweet potato yummy casserole, cranberry sauce, rolls, croissants, sparkling cider, pumpkin pie, and chocolate pie.
I think I might have to dedicate this meal and perhaps a Thankful prayer to Aldi. It made this a lot cheaper than it would have been, while also tending to have, not local, but not super far away items either as it's a mid-western centered store.
Free range, local-ish (meaning it was raised in IN) turkey, about 13 lb.: $26.00 (Rivertown Butcher in Newburgh)
Red potatoes, 5 lb bag: $1.49 (sale at Aldi)
1/2 bag sweet potatoes, about 1.5 lb: $.49 (another sale at Aldi)
12 oz bag cranberries: $.99 (Aldi)
1/2 bunch celery: $.30 (Aldi)
3 carrots: $.25
sugar, approximately 5 C: $1.00
brown sugar, approximately 1 1/2 C: $.50
butter, 7 sticks or nearly 2 lb butter: 1.99 per pound at Aldi sale: $3.98
chocolate, 4-5 oz: $.80 (Aldi)
cream, 3 1/2 C or nearly 1 quart at 1.89/pint Aldi sale: $3.78 (embarrassing isn't it, to admit these things)
sour cream, 1 pint (for potatoes): 1.39 (Aldi)
dozen eggs: .89 sale at Aldi
2 apples: .20 (Aldi)
2 lemons (one in a crust, 1 in turkey cavity): .50 (Asian store)
pumpkin puree, about 15 oz.: .99 (Aldi)
walnuts, 1-2 oz: 1.00 (Aldi)
onions, 1 lb or so: .65 (Aldi)
white flour, 14 C or about 5-6 lb: 1.50 (Aldi)
salt, 2 C for brine plus seasoning: .30
3 bottles sparkling cider at 1.99 each: 5.97 (Aldi)
used mostly fresh herbs from garden: parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme--yup.
And the total is: $52.97 for the whole meal and several meals (though not as many as you'd think) thereafter or $4.41/per person, which still isn't bad--which is, in fact, a veritable miracle, until we realize that some of those small people weren't eating very much. Still, even if you just count the adults you're only looking at $8.82/person. Denny's can't even compete with that, and I'm not afraid to say, it was a good step better than Denny's.
How much time did it take? Well, a lot. I started making food the Wednesday before and started thinking about food a day or two before that. Also, as you may notice from the menu, I tried to keep it pretty traditional and simple, which was one of my goals this year. Also, I'm used to cooking, which you may have ascertained from the fact that I have my own food blog. However, I did do most of the cooking myself since other grown-ups were either not in town yet or entertaining children or running around fetching me things--both utterly essential duties. Had I had a kid in my arms for the making of the meal (my oftentimes method of cooking), it would have taken approximately 79 trillion hours plus baking times for this meal.
Did it make me crazy? Did I wish I'd just gone to Schnucks or Bob Evans for help. I'm struggling not to curse here when I give an emphatic "HECK no." Okay, it did make me a little crazy (but isn't that just part of making a Thanksgiving meal) and I've hosted Thanksgiving for a few years in a row now, so it was easier this time. But there were no tears, although a moment of watery-eyedness after the meal when I was cleaning up and broke a glass. But the food was so delicious and the company and ritual so divine, I wouldn't have traded it for any grocery or restaurant-made food. If I'd needed to, I would have scaled back on how much we made. I probably could have gotten away with turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, 1 pie, and the sparkling cider. We would have still been way full and plenty happy and things would have tasted great. But I had the time and will to do more so I did. I also wouldn't have felt too bad about cheating and buying a few prepared foods like pre-made croissant dough or pie dough or maybe even cranberry sauce if I'd had a big crowd or a big need. But, again, I didn't, so I did it myself.
And now, on to cookies, food gifts, ideas for the cheap and the fast, and at some point in time, Kip's fudge. Happy December. Here we go.
Monday, October 31, 2011
October Assessment
I feel a little bad about not having a treat for you today. Though, as a mother, I really must say that I think you've had quite enough, don't you? Yeah, I have too. I'm a little Halloween'd out.
If, however, you're still in need of a little something, have a look at my favorite pumpkin muffins/bread. They come in three flavors: not so healthy, very healthy, and in between. Or if you're in need of a little detox, take a look at my smoothies (under the 'drinks' label). Here's a good one.
And now on to our Cheap Eat Challenge monthly assessment. I must admit I'm getting sick of all the food we buy/eat.
This month our total--with CSA and milk share came up to $283.80. Subtract $25.00 for entertaining and you get $258.80, which comes out to $8.35/day. More details in Costs.
Here's the breakdown:
Produce: 52.61 plus 27.00 for the CSA
Grains: 39.23
Dairy: 46.27, plus 17.00 for the milk share
Sugars/sweets: 18.39
Fats: 26.69 (whoa, we went a little butter crazy this month)
Meat/Eggs/Fish: 33.80
Beans/Nuts/Legumes: 22.56
Condiments: .25
You may have noticed that last month I kind of sort of promised a Food Waste Friday. It just didn't happen, mostly because when we did waste, I just couldn't handle hanging on to it until Friday--like all those partially eaten sandwiches Emma (quite literally) picked through, or the half drunk sippy cups I found in the girls closet (though, really, what's another day or 2 to week-old milk). When I found them, I tossed them. And we didn't waste much refrigerated food, so that wouldn't have made for a very interesting Food Waste Friday. Here's the skinny on what we did waste:
1/2 beet
bread crusts
milk
1 egg
several parts of sandwiches that Emma didn't finish
1 nearly whole bagel with PB that Mark didn't finish
a small bit of cilantro, though I managed to freeze most of the leftover
Two months to go. What will be different or amazing about them? Um, turkey. And then a whole lot of cookies. I'll probably be giving myself $30.00 for entertainment for the next couple months because we give away/share more food. And in November, we've got family coming for Thanksgiving, so I'm not going to be counting the days they're in town, though I will give you a head's up on how much we spent on our humanely raised turkey (note to self: order that).
Be sure to come to the blog tomorrow. It's our One-Year Anniversary and not to blow any surprises, but I'll probably be giving something away.
If, however, you're still in need of a little something, have a look at my favorite pumpkin muffins/bread. They come in three flavors: not so healthy, very healthy, and in between. Or if you're in need of a little detox, take a look at my smoothies (under the 'drinks' label). Here's a good one.
And now on to our Cheap Eat Challenge monthly assessment. I must admit I'm getting sick of all the food we buy/eat.
This month our total--with CSA and milk share came up to $283.80. Subtract $25.00 for entertaining and you get $258.80, which comes out to $8.35/day. More details in Costs.
Here's the breakdown:
Produce: 52.61 plus 27.00 for the CSA
Grains: 39.23
Dairy: 46.27, plus 17.00 for the milk share
Sugars/sweets: 18.39
Fats: 26.69 (whoa, we went a little butter crazy this month)
Meat/Eggs/Fish: 33.80
Beans/Nuts/Legumes: 22.56
Condiments: .25
You may have noticed that last month I kind of sort of promised a Food Waste Friday. It just didn't happen, mostly because when we did waste, I just couldn't handle hanging on to it until Friday--like all those partially eaten sandwiches Emma (quite literally) picked through, or the half drunk sippy cups I found in the girls closet (though, really, what's another day or 2 to week-old milk). When I found them, I tossed them. And we didn't waste much refrigerated food, so that wouldn't have made for a very interesting Food Waste Friday. Here's the skinny on what we did waste:
1/2 beet
bread crusts
milk
1 egg
several parts of sandwiches that Emma didn't finish
1 nearly whole bagel with PB that Mark didn't finish
a small bit of cilantro, though I managed to freeze most of the leftover
Two months to go. What will be different or amazing about them? Um, turkey. And then a whole lot of cookies. I'll probably be giving myself $30.00 for entertainment for the next couple months because we give away/share more food. And in November, we've got family coming for Thanksgiving, so I'm not going to be counting the days they're in town, though I will give you a head's up on how much we spent on our humanely raised turkey (note to self: order that).
Be sure to come to the blog tomorrow. It's our One-Year Anniversary and not to blow any surprises, but I'll probably be giving something away.
Friday, September 30, 2011
September Assessment
Time for September's assessment.
This month began for us with my sister in the D.C. area and then my sister in WV. Thus I didn't start counting our money until the 7th of September. For that portion of the month we spent $262.70 on food. After subtracting $25.00 for entertainment costs, it came to $237.70 which, divided by the 24 days of the month we're counting is: $9.90/day.
Here's the breakdown:
Produce: 69.01 (that's including our 27.00 CSA cost)
Grains: 34.35
Dairy: 65.90 (that's including the 17.00/month for our raw milk share)
Meat/Eggs: 24.23
Beans/Legumes/Nuts: 25.95
Sugars/Sweets: 21.65
Fats: 13.95
Condiments: 7.66
It's the most expensive month for us so far, though I have to say we didn't eat out at all until tonight and I've been making more of an effort to prepare snacks for Kip to take to work, so he doesn't eat the free junk food that is hanging around. That said, we wasted more than usual this month. I'd like to tell you what I wasted and I have a partial list over here in costs, but truth be told, I did a horrible job keeping track this month. I'll try to do better next month. In fact, maybe I'll do a food waste Friday like some of the other bloggers out there and show you what we end up throwing out.
Goals:
We did a much better job eating more fish this month. For next month, I hope to continue and to add some more omega 3's. And I do hope to add a food waste Friday just for this coming month. I would also like to take that evaluation day and use it to make my shopping lists--something along the lines of 'This is what I've got in the fridge; this is what we plan to make with it.'
How'd We Cheat:
We didn't that I know of, although I did lose at least one large receipt. I remember prices pretty darn well, having been a keeper of them for the better part of a year now, but I do have a few question marks in my costs. They're at least really close to right.
This month began for us with my sister in the D.C. area and then my sister in WV. Thus I didn't start counting our money until the 7th of September. For that portion of the month we spent $262.70 on food. After subtracting $25.00 for entertainment costs, it came to $237.70 which, divided by the 24 days of the month we're counting is: $9.90/day.
Here's the breakdown:
Produce: 69.01 (that's including our 27.00 CSA cost)
Grains: 34.35
Dairy: 65.90 (that's including the 17.00/month for our raw milk share)
Meat/Eggs: 24.23
Beans/Legumes/Nuts: 25.95
Sugars/Sweets: 21.65
Fats: 13.95
Condiments: 7.66
It's the most expensive month for us so far, though I have to say we didn't eat out at all until tonight and I've been making more of an effort to prepare snacks for Kip to take to work, so he doesn't eat the free junk food that is hanging around. That said, we wasted more than usual this month. I'd like to tell you what I wasted and I have a partial list over here in costs, but truth be told, I did a horrible job keeping track this month. I'll try to do better next month. In fact, maybe I'll do a food waste Friday like some of the other bloggers out there and show you what we end up throwing out.
Goals:
We did a much better job eating more fish this month. For next month, I hope to continue and to add some more omega 3's. And I do hope to add a food waste Friday just for this coming month. I would also like to take that evaluation day and use it to make my shopping lists--something along the lines of 'This is what I've got in the fridge; this is what we plan to make with it.'
How'd We Cheat:
We didn't that I know of, although I did lose at least one large receipt. I remember prices pretty darn well, having been a keeper of them for the better part of a year now, but I do have a few question marks in my costs. They're at least really close to right.
Wednesday, August 31, 2011
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.
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.
Monday, August 1, 2011
July Assessment
It's late, so July is going to get a fairly quick run-down.
We spent a total of $287.97 (that's including our milk share and our CSA). I subtracted $25.00 for entertaining costs, which took us to $262.97. That leaves us at $8.48/day. And for the record, we've all be eating a booty load of fruits and vegetables. Even Kip and the kids are getting a lot more than usual.
Here's the breakdown:
Produce: 80.30
Grain: 41.45
Dairy: 54.39
Sweets/sugars: 27.58 (yes, I'm embarrassed every time)
Fats: 19.71
Meat/Eggs: 18.52
Nuts, Legumes, Beans: 31.76
Condiments/Other: 14.26 (whoo, I must have been postponing some of those purchases earlier in the year)
I'm pretty proud of how we've done. That said, fruits and vegetables are super cheap this time of year and plentiful. The garden is helping out, as are my friends' gardens and the CSA is pumping stuff out right now too. Also, we generally get more milk from our milk share in the summer.
How'd we cheat?
I don't think we did, although I must admit this: I felt like my record-keeping was a little sloppier this month. I didn't try to omit anything, but we've been busy and it's possible a few things got forgotten.
My goals for August?
Hello, menus, where are you? Okay, I do cook a little more off the cuff in the summer--as in, "What's ripe in the garden today/this week?" But seriously, I've got loads of food ideas and I'm just not writing them down. I will try to rectify that this week (though it may be near the end of the week as I'm a little busy right now).
We spent a total of $287.97 (that's including our milk share and our CSA). I subtracted $25.00 for entertaining costs, which took us to $262.97. That leaves us at $8.48/day. And for the record, we've all be eating a booty load of fruits and vegetables. Even Kip and the kids are getting a lot more than usual.
Here's the breakdown:
Produce: 80.30
Grain: 41.45
Dairy: 54.39
Sweets/sugars: 27.58 (yes, I'm embarrassed every time)
Fats: 19.71
Meat/Eggs: 18.52
Nuts, Legumes, Beans: 31.76
Condiments/Other: 14.26 (whoo, I must have been postponing some of those purchases earlier in the year)
I'm pretty proud of how we've done. That said, fruits and vegetables are super cheap this time of year and plentiful. The garden is helping out, as are my friends' gardens and the CSA is pumping stuff out right now too. Also, we generally get more milk from our milk share in the summer.
How'd we cheat?
I don't think we did, although I must admit this: I felt like my record-keeping was a little sloppier this month. I didn't try to omit anything, but we've been busy and it's possible a few things got forgotten.
My goals for August?
Hello, menus, where are you? Okay, I do cook a little more off the cuff in the summer--as in, "What's ripe in the garden today/this week?" But seriously, I've got loads of food ideas and I'm just not writing them down. I will try to rectify that this week (though it may be near the end of the week as I'm a little busy right now).
Friday, July 1, 2011
June Assessment
Let's start with a drum roll. For the first time this year, we have broken the $7 hump. This month we spent about $6.87/day. It's not perfection, but I'm pretty pleased nevertheless.
You'll also recall from last month that I determined this month to buy cheap regular grocery store meat as opposed to more humanely raised meat. Wow. That made a difference. I also counted our CSA and milk share as though I was buying produce and milk from the store. That made a difference too.
Here's the breakdown:
Produce: $62.00
Grains: $29.96
Dairy: $45.49
Sweets and sugars: 30.17
Fats: $26.54
Meat/Eggs: $21.31
Beans/Legumes/Nuts: $18.73
Condiments/Other: $3.19
Did we cheat at all?
Besides not counting the days my sister visited (which I actually don't consider cheating), no, not really. I did buy some milk with credit I'd gotten by using CVS extra bucks. So I bought things like toothpaste, got extra bucks, and bought milk with the extra bucks. This sort of slanted the budget in favor of food (since I wasn't using the extra bucks on the exact same things I'd gotten them from--i.e. extra bucks from non-food items to buy more non-food items), but a girl can only use so much toothpaste.
What'd we waste?
The usual excessive amounts of bread crusts and milk left in children's cups and sippy cups.
Also, 1/2 a deviled egg and 4-5 kiwi that were so shockingly unripe that they were truly inedible.
What will be different for July?
As I said in May's assessment, starting July we'll be shifting to $10/day. However, we'll be counting our CSA (for better or for worse) and we'll be counting our milk share (for better or for worse). Come November, even if we're not getting a bunch of foods from them, we'll be counting the money I put into them anyway. I think this is going to give us a more real idea of exactly what we're spending toward food when at least a portion of it is more local/sustainable/humane.
What are my goals for the next month?
Next month I have decided that I really want to see how much bread and milk we're wasting. It sounds tiny when I include it here as a little blurb--oh some bread crusts and some milk. But it really is more than it sounds and I wanted to see visually how much it actually is. (I'm a little afraid.) I wanted you to see it too. Besides those two foods we waste practically nothing (in the food department; I won't go into how my children use toothpaste and toilet paper--we'll work on that another year), and I wanted to include some posts and ideas about how we can more easily avoid waste by using, extending, or saving foods.
A Large Lesson Learned as I bid adieu to $6/day:
I have a few words to say. Tell me that's a shock. Eating on $6/day, or--shall we say--in that general neighborhood, has been difficult. To do it with humanely raised meats was even harder. And adding a CSA would have made it even harder. However. And this is a very big however, so I hope people have come this far in the post. However, we ate very very well. The food we had was delicious. We dined on butters, sugars, too much chocolate, even cream and sometimes breakfast cereal. We included meats in our diet and lots of milk, eggs, and other proteins. We ate more fruits and vegetables than normal because I was more conscious of how much we were getting and because we reduced our meat intake slightly. We ate many many whole grains--much more than the average American. I spent some time cooking, but nothing Herculean (in March when I kept track, it averaged at under an hour a day). And I spent plenty of time cleaning up my kitchen, which I don't love, but which I believe is, or should be, part of the ritual that is eating and part of the ritual that is belonging to a family.
Eating cheap required a basic, though not gourmet, knowledge of cooking. It took a little bit of adventurousness in the form of a willingness to deviate somewhat from a recipe and use what I had. And, yes, I did get bored sometimes of the same cheap-ish dinners that my picky family would eat. And, yes, I did want to go out sometimes and splurge on a fancy cheese or try something new and interesting that just wasn't in the budget cards. But as far as eating and even nutrition, we never went without.
Furthermore, we could have cut back even more if necessity or hunger had been driving forces. We could have eaten oatmeal (even with a little sugar) for breakfast each morning and saved ourselves another $.50/day. We could have cut out (or down) the shocking amounts of both sugar and chocolate that our family considers normal (or sometimes even paltry). We usually bought at least 4 bags of Aldi chocolate chips each month and in June I bought 10 pounds of sugar. Had we cut that even in half, which would still have rendered a dessert or few possible, we would have saved another $6.17, or $.20/day. We could have eliminated meat, or at least cold cuts (which admittedly, we did reduce). Frankly, I'd rather not even talk about how much we spent in butter (although I do love you butter--xoxoxo).
And, yet, even with all of these privileges staring us in the face, my husband remarked--rather grumpily in fact--that he was ready to be done with the $6/day. And I was ready too. I miss fish and some cheese and just a little bit of flexibility or ease in our eating. In pointing all of this out, let me also say that Kip and I live on one middle or low-middle class income. It's easy sometimes to consider ourselves poor, or even to start to feel that we deserve to have more. Which is a lot how spoiled children sound. I believe that we are spoiled. As a family, as a nation, and as a culture. Which isn't to say that real hunger and real need don't exist. Which is only to say that in a wealthy time in a wealthy nation in a wealthy world, one in which movie stars and gluttony blink at us from all corners, it's easy to feel we have less. Politicians and businesses take advantage of this and sometimes even exploit it. The biggest lesson I have learned from the Cheap Eat Challenge--from being unable to feed my picky, definitely-not-too-hungry children oatmeal for breakfast because most of them refuse to even try it, from hearing (or seeing) my husband disappointed about not having more meat with our dinner, from my own frustration with a meal not working out and having to eat less-than-amazing leftovers; from the fresh fruits on the counter, from the butter in the dish, from the whole wheat in a bag pre-ground and ready to go, from the candy and cakes we've enjoyed--is how very much we have--even on 6 or 7 dollars a day. And how very grateful I should be for that. Indeed, I am grateful. I believe that in this gratitude there can be a lot of power over my food, my nutrition, and my money. And a lot of ability to improve and enjoy the many many things that the Lord and my predecessors and mentors have given to me.
A Large Lesson Learned as I bid adieu to $6/day:
I have a few words to say. Tell me that's a shock. Eating on $6/day, or--shall we say--in that general neighborhood, has been difficult. To do it with humanely raised meats was even harder. And adding a CSA would have made it even harder. However. And this is a very big however, so I hope people have come this far in the post. However, we ate very very well. The food we had was delicious. We dined on butters, sugars, too much chocolate, even cream and sometimes breakfast cereal. We included meats in our diet and lots of milk, eggs, and other proteins. We ate more fruits and vegetables than normal because I was more conscious of how much we were getting and because we reduced our meat intake slightly. We ate many many whole grains--much more than the average American. I spent some time cooking, but nothing Herculean (in March when I kept track, it averaged at under an hour a day). And I spent plenty of time cleaning up my kitchen, which I don't love, but which I believe is, or should be, part of the ritual that is eating and part of the ritual that is belonging to a family.
Eating cheap required a basic, though not gourmet, knowledge of cooking. It took a little bit of adventurousness in the form of a willingness to deviate somewhat from a recipe and use what I had. And, yes, I did get bored sometimes of the same cheap-ish dinners that my picky family would eat. And, yes, I did want to go out sometimes and splurge on a fancy cheese or try something new and interesting that just wasn't in the budget cards. But as far as eating and even nutrition, we never went without.
Furthermore, we could have cut back even more if necessity or hunger had been driving forces. We could have eaten oatmeal (even with a little sugar) for breakfast each morning and saved ourselves another $.50/day. We could have cut out (or down) the shocking amounts of both sugar and chocolate that our family considers normal (or sometimes even paltry). We usually bought at least 4 bags of Aldi chocolate chips each month and in June I bought 10 pounds of sugar. Had we cut that even in half, which would still have rendered a dessert or few possible, we would have saved another $6.17, or $.20/day. We could have eliminated meat, or at least cold cuts (which admittedly, we did reduce). Frankly, I'd rather not even talk about how much we spent in butter (although I do love you butter--xoxoxo).
And, yet, even with all of these privileges staring us in the face, my husband remarked--rather grumpily in fact--that he was ready to be done with the $6/day. And I was ready too. I miss fish and some cheese and just a little bit of flexibility or ease in our eating. In pointing all of this out, let me also say that Kip and I live on one middle or low-middle class income. It's easy sometimes to consider ourselves poor, or even to start to feel that we deserve to have more. Which is a lot how spoiled children sound. I believe that we are spoiled. As a family, as a nation, and as a culture. Which isn't to say that real hunger and real need don't exist. Which is only to say that in a wealthy time in a wealthy nation in a wealthy world, one in which movie stars and gluttony blink at us from all corners, it's easy to feel we have less. Politicians and businesses take advantage of this and sometimes even exploit it. The biggest lesson I have learned from the Cheap Eat Challenge--from being unable to feed my picky, definitely-not-too-hungry children oatmeal for breakfast because most of them refuse to even try it, from hearing (or seeing) my husband disappointed about not having more meat with our dinner, from my own frustration with a meal not working out and having to eat less-than-amazing leftovers; from the fresh fruits on the counter, from the butter in the dish, from the whole wheat in a bag pre-ground and ready to go, from the candy and cakes we've enjoyed--is how very much we have--even on 6 or 7 dollars a day. And how very grateful I should be for that. Indeed, I am grateful. I believe that in this gratitude there can be a lot of power over my food, my nutrition, and my money. And a lot of ability to improve and enjoy the many many things that the Lord and my predecessors and mentors have given to me.
Tuesday, May 31, 2011
May Assessment
Well, folks, the most recent numbers are in for the Cheap Eat Challenge this month. After adjusting for the vitamin credit ($20) and the entertaining credit ($25--you can have a look at the rules here), we spent $225.22, which comes up to $7.26/day. We tend to hover around there, don't we?
The breakdown is as follows:
Produce: $75.97
Dairy: $40.70
Grain: $29.80
Meat/Eggs: $31.06
Sweets/Sugars: $21.96
Beans/Nuts/Legumes: $31.37
Fats/Condiments: $19.71
Misc: $5.65
If you long for obsessive compulsive info about what we spent or what we ate, check out the links.
What we wasted:
A bit more than normal actually, though still very little.
-Several hard-boiled eggs--they just got too old after Easter. Sigh.
-a serving of bean dip that wasn't that good, but that I intended to eat anyway, but then it just got too old. I was a little relieved.
-Several mostly uneaten pieces of naan--we had kids over and they didn't like the dal. I knew I should have started people out with half pieces
-Oodles of bread crusts, though the geese that come to our backyard have gotten lots this month too.
-Crackers with PB--bits here and there. it drives me a little crazy, but what to do.
-A little bit of applesauce from kids' lunches.
How we cheated:
-I didn't count foods I bought specifically for my birthday. It was a gift to me.
-I'm not counting full milk share or CSA costs, as at this time of year there's not a whole lot of food coming in from these sources. The cows milk supply is quite low right now and the CSA just barely started getting a crop (naturally). I counted $8.00 from our milk share and $6 from our CSA. This, of course, is total cheating, but by way of making excuses for myself, part of the reason I do these things is to be involved in my local food scene, not just to be a cheapskate. However, the cheapskate within is expecting that they will also prove to be financially beneficial as well.
A realization and a change:
A realization: When I began this blog, I really wanted to do the whole $6/day thing by using some local sources and by eating humanely raised meats. I think we've done pretty darn well in this department, but we have not yet been able to hit $6/day or even get in the $6 range (even with our cheating ways as noted above). I still believe that this is humanly possible to do while eating nutritiously and perhaps even including a little bit of meat. We could cut out at least $10 of chocolate/chocolate chip costs in the month, for example. And we could probably reduce our milk intake somewhat without ill effect. However, I don't think it's something my family is willing to do.
A change: However, I'm still curious to see if we can do the $6/day thing (or at least hit the $6/range). I've put some thought into it. For the month of June I'm going to be buying regular old meat from the regular old grocery store. I can't, at this point, get rid of my CSA (nor do I wish to), but I'm going to count the produce I get from it at grocery store costs--meaning that if I get 3 lb of peaches in June, I'm simply going to see how much they're costing at the regular grocery store that week and count them for that price. Same thing with milk. My purpose in this is to see how much our food each month would cost us if we were just regular old Joes buying regular old food from the regular old Walmart (or Aldi as it were).
And from there on: In July, we'll go back to our humanely raised meat. Also, I'll start counting the full milk share cost (regardless of how much milk I get from it) and the full CSA cost (regardless of how much produce we get from it). And see how much we end up spending while using and supporting these local resources. I believe that this is how we'll do it for the rest of the year. It won't be $6/day, but I expect it will be well under $10.
Here's to good food that doesn't break the bank!
The breakdown is as follows:
Produce: $75.97
Dairy: $40.70
Grain: $29.80
Meat/Eggs: $31.06
Sweets/Sugars: $21.96
Beans/Nuts/Legumes: $31.37
Fats/Condiments: $19.71
Misc: $5.65
If you long for obsessive compulsive info about what we spent or what we ate, check out the links.
What we wasted:
A bit more than normal actually, though still very little.
-Several hard-boiled eggs--they just got too old after Easter. Sigh.
-a serving of bean dip that wasn't that good, but that I intended to eat anyway, but then it just got too old. I was a little relieved.
-Several mostly uneaten pieces of naan--we had kids over and they didn't like the dal. I knew I should have started people out with half pieces
-Oodles of bread crusts, though the geese that come to our backyard have gotten lots this month too.
-Crackers with PB--bits here and there. it drives me a little crazy, but what to do.
-A little bit of applesauce from kids' lunches.
How we cheated:
-I didn't count foods I bought specifically for my birthday. It was a gift to me.
-I'm not counting full milk share or CSA costs, as at this time of year there's not a whole lot of food coming in from these sources. The cows milk supply is quite low right now and the CSA just barely started getting a crop (naturally). I counted $8.00 from our milk share and $6 from our CSA. This, of course, is total cheating, but by way of making excuses for myself, part of the reason I do these things is to be involved in my local food scene, not just to be a cheapskate. However, the cheapskate within is expecting that they will also prove to be financially beneficial as well.
A realization and a change:
A realization: When I began this blog, I really wanted to do the whole $6/day thing by using some local sources and by eating humanely raised meats. I think we've done pretty darn well in this department, but we have not yet been able to hit $6/day or even get in the $6 range (even with our cheating ways as noted above). I still believe that this is humanly possible to do while eating nutritiously and perhaps even including a little bit of meat. We could cut out at least $10 of chocolate/chocolate chip costs in the month, for example. And we could probably reduce our milk intake somewhat without ill effect. However, I don't think it's something my family is willing to do.
A change: However, I'm still curious to see if we can do the $6/day thing (or at least hit the $6/range). I've put some thought into it. For the month of June I'm going to be buying regular old meat from the regular old grocery store. I can't, at this point, get rid of my CSA (nor do I wish to), but I'm going to count the produce I get from it at grocery store costs--meaning that if I get 3 lb of peaches in June, I'm simply going to see how much they're costing at the regular grocery store that week and count them for that price. Same thing with milk. My purpose in this is to see how much our food each month would cost us if we were just regular old Joes buying regular old food from the regular old Walmart (or Aldi as it were).
And from there on: In July, we'll go back to our humanely raised meat. Also, I'll start counting the full milk share cost (regardless of how much milk I get from it) and the full CSA cost (regardless of how much produce we get from it). And see how much we end up spending while using and supporting these local resources. I believe that this is how we'll do it for the rest of the year. It won't be $6/day, but I expect it will be well under $10.
Here's to good food that doesn't break the bank!
Saturday, April 30, 2011
April Assessment
This month we spend a total of $269.38. After subracting $20.00 for our vitamin allowance and $25.00 for our entertaining allowance, that came to $224.38. Which takes us to $7.48/day.
That's not our best number ever. However you'll recall that last month I decided to calculate our spending differently. Before I was estimating how much food exactly we were eating--that meant if we used a little ketchup here or a couple eggs there, that's what I calculated. It was a headache and it's also not how people spend. We spend on items we open, and even if we don't finish the package in a month, it must still be figured into our budget. So this month I've calculated the costs of what we buy (and open). (There are some pantry items or sale items that I buy and don't open--I don't count those.) I occasionally "shop" from the pantry and when I do, I add in the costs of those things as well.
Here's the breakdown of where we spent our money. It's a little different than usual too.
Produce: $69.16
Dairy: $59.52
Meat/Eggs: 40.43
Grains: 35.24
Sweets/Sugars: 28:04 (oh, the shame)
Legumes/Beans/Nuts: $20.61
Fats/Cocoa: 10.91
Condiments/Misc: 5.47
What I'm Proud Of:
Admittedly, I'm always proud that even with some of our less healthful habits (another Robin's Egg, anyone?), we do spend the most on the thing that's the most important (in my eyes). Additionally, although there are some canned tomato sauces and a very occasional juice, it's almost entirely from whole fresh fruits and vegetables. (Want details? You can check out exactly what I bought in 'Costs.')
What I'm Not So Proud Of:
Seriously, I'm sure you don't even need to ask. We eat too many sweets. Way too many. Embarrassingly too many. And yet. I'm not quite sure how to pull the plug. Especially where the number one beloved is concerned. Because he loves them. And he's been a super sport about this whole cheap eat challenge thing. And Easter candy is his super best very favorite candy in the whole wide world. Not that I'm without any guilt in this department myself. But I have a slower metabolism than the rest of the family, so there's a wee bit more willpower from my end.
Also, I feel our dairy is a little out of control. I am not a member of the school of milk. I enjoy milk thoroughly (especially my yummy raw milk), and I do believe it's good for you (especially my yummy raw milk). However, I think we drink it in excess and I think we could get a lot of our calcium, etc. from cheeses and other sources that we also eat. Additionally, and I hesitate to even make the following confession, we tend to drink milk with sweets (especially Kip) and so when our sweets consumption goes up, so does our milk consumption. That makes it a bit less virtuous, now doesn't it.
Where We Cheated:
Don't I know that cheaters never prosper? What if they confess their cheating ways? That must be good for something, right? I said, 'Right?'
I didn't count the candy I bought for Easter. I considered it a gift and therefore did not count it. It was a gift, but still...I did count the candy we bought after Easter on sale. It wasn't a gift, more of an impulsive snacking choice.
I only counted a little over half ($9) of our $17.00 milk share. I, uh, count the other part as my contribution to local eating (see, it's a cause and all).
And just as a head's up on some pre-meditated cheating: My birthday's in May and I have no intention of counting anything extra we buy for the cake/party (possibly some almond paste and ice cream).
What We Wasted:
We waste very little. Except in the bread crust department. We waste obscene amounts of bread crusts. I'm not proud of that, but my kids won't eat them, and there's only so much you can do with 100's of leftover crusts. We also wasted a tiny bit of regular bread this month. Also, my kids tend to leave a bit of milk in their cups, which goes bad. My sour cream and spinach both got a bit on the edge. I threw them in the freezer. I know I can use the spinach in green smoothies that way, but I'm not sure if the sour cream will go freezer funky or not. We didn't waste any candy so don't worry your little heads about that, okay.
What Are My Goals for Next Month?
1) I want us to find a way to eat fish at least once a month, but hopefully two.
2) I want to make green smoothies every other day. I really think this will benefit my kids in their fruit/veggie consumption and they/we need that. I think I'll be keeping track our our fruit/veggie intake again this coming month because it helped me to know how much we were getting and it forced me to do better because I had this blog to account to. I'm a little afraid of how much this will cost, but I'm going to give it a nice organized shopping (hopefully) try.
3) I'm going to try to shop only once a week--for all things, not just food. I noticed this month that I went shopping more. And the more times I went, the more I spent. Why do I shop a lot sometimes? Because I have small children and going to more than 2 places in an outing makes me want to poke my eyes out. However. It is just that emotion that makes me not want to take too long or spend too much. If well used, it can be an excellent strategy. But if it just causes me to shop 4 times a week (which is definitely its own type of torture), then I spend more (and I'm still pretty miserable, so what's the point). Shopping less requires a little more organization. So I'll get right on that. Speaking of which: I'll hopefully have menus and shopping lists up Monday.
That's not our best number ever. However you'll recall that last month I decided to calculate our spending differently. Before I was estimating how much food exactly we were eating--that meant if we used a little ketchup here or a couple eggs there, that's what I calculated. It was a headache and it's also not how people spend. We spend on items we open, and even if we don't finish the package in a month, it must still be figured into our budget. So this month I've calculated the costs of what we buy (and open). (There are some pantry items or sale items that I buy and don't open--I don't count those.) I occasionally "shop" from the pantry and when I do, I add in the costs of those things as well.
Here's the breakdown of where we spent our money. It's a little different than usual too.
Produce: $69.16
Dairy: $59.52
Meat/Eggs: 40.43
Grains: 35.24
Sweets/Sugars: 28:04 (oh, the shame)
Legumes/Beans/Nuts: $20.61
Fats/Cocoa: 10.91
Condiments/Misc: 5.47
What I'm Proud Of:
Admittedly, I'm always proud that even with some of our less healthful habits (another Robin's Egg, anyone?), we do spend the most on the thing that's the most important (in my eyes). Additionally, although there are some canned tomato sauces and a very occasional juice, it's almost entirely from whole fresh fruits and vegetables. (Want details? You can check out exactly what I bought in 'Costs.')
What I'm Not So Proud Of:
Seriously, I'm sure you don't even need to ask. We eat too many sweets. Way too many. Embarrassingly too many. And yet. I'm not quite sure how to pull the plug. Especially where the number one beloved is concerned. Because he loves them. And he's been a super sport about this whole cheap eat challenge thing. And Easter candy is his super best very favorite candy in the whole wide world. Not that I'm without any guilt in this department myself. But I have a slower metabolism than the rest of the family, so there's a wee bit more willpower from my end.
Also, I feel our dairy is a little out of control. I am not a member of the school of milk. I enjoy milk thoroughly (especially my yummy raw milk), and I do believe it's good for you (especially my yummy raw milk). However, I think we drink it in excess and I think we could get a lot of our calcium, etc. from cheeses and other sources that we also eat. Additionally, and I hesitate to even make the following confession, we tend to drink milk with sweets (especially Kip) and so when our sweets consumption goes up, so does our milk consumption. That makes it a bit less virtuous, now doesn't it.
Where We Cheated:
Don't I know that cheaters never prosper? What if they confess their cheating ways? That must be good for something, right? I said, 'Right?'
I didn't count the candy I bought for Easter. I considered it a gift and therefore did not count it. It was a gift, but still...I did count the candy we bought after Easter on sale. It wasn't a gift, more of an impulsive snacking choice.
I only counted a little over half ($9) of our $17.00 milk share. I, uh, count the other part as my contribution to local eating (see, it's a cause and all).
And just as a head's up on some pre-meditated cheating: My birthday's in May and I have no intention of counting anything extra we buy for the cake/party (possibly some almond paste and ice cream).
What We Wasted:
We waste very little. Except in the bread crust department. We waste obscene amounts of bread crusts. I'm not proud of that, but my kids won't eat them, and there's only so much you can do with 100's of leftover crusts. We also wasted a tiny bit of regular bread this month. Also, my kids tend to leave a bit of milk in their cups, which goes bad. My sour cream and spinach both got a bit on the edge. I threw them in the freezer. I know I can use the spinach in green smoothies that way, but I'm not sure if the sour cream will go freezer funky or not. We didn't waste any candy so don't worry your little heads about that, okay.
What Are My Goals for Next Month?
1) I want us to find a way to eat fish at least once a month, but hopefully two.
2) I want to make green smoothies every other day. I really think this will benefit my kids in their fruit/veggie consumption and they/we need that. I think I'll be keeping track our our fruit/veggie intake again this coming month because it helped me to know how much we were getting and it forced me to do better because I had this blog to account to. I'm a little afraid of how much this will cost, but I'm going to give it a nice organized shopping (hopefully) try.
3) I'm going to try to shop only once a week--for all things, not just food. I noticed this month that I went shopping more. And the more times I went, the more I spent. Why do I shop a lot sometimes? Because I have small children and going to more than 2 places in an outing makes me want to poke my eyes out. However. It is just that emotion that makes me not want to take too long or spend too much. If well used, it can be an excellent strategy. But if it just causes me to shop 4 times a week (which is definitely its own type of torture), then I spend more (and I'm still pretty miserable, so what's the point). Shopping less requires a little more organization. So I'll get right on that. Speaking of which: I'll hopefully have menus and shopping lists up Monday.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
March Meltdown, um I mean Breakdown
We kind of sort of almost did it. Don't know what I'm talking about? Check out the Cheap Eat Challenge.
This month our total came up to $237.49.
After subtracting the $20.00 for our vitamin credit, that's $217.49.
Which (when divided by 31 days) takes us to a daily total of $7.01.
Which is just so close to being in the 6 dollar range that it almost hurts.
The breakdown from highest to lowest:
Produce: $59.57
Dairy: $39.97 (plus $8.00 for the cow share)
Grains: $36.79
Sweets/Sugars: $29.14 (I won't pretend that that's not a little embarrassing for me, especially since I know that we usually eat more.)
Beans/Legumes/Nuts: $24.05
Meat/Eggs: $15.54
Fats: $13.55
Condiments/Yeast: $5.90
What'd we waste?
Very little.
-Milk from sippy cups carried around all day and from leftover cereal milk.
-1 small piece lasagna
-2 eggs
-millions of bread crusts and some bits of sandwich that the kids didn't finish
Were we hungry?
No. We've never been hungry or even close, although I think that we have felt a little deprived of some of our favorite things at times. However, I tried to plan better this month and we had more meat and I'd say that while not completely always satisfied, Kip felt a little less deprived this month than in previous months. However, this was the first month I started to feel a little bored. I'm going to work on that in April.
Are we sacrificing nutrition for some masochistic gimmick?
No. This month in a bout of obsessive compulsive record keeping, I decided to record how many cups of fruits and vegetables the kids and I ate. I used the guidelines from mypyramid.gov, which recommended 4.5 C for me, 2.5 C for Mark, 2 C for Elizabeth, and 1.5 C for Savannah. It had no recommendations for children as young as Emma and I therefore did not record her fruit/veggie intake. (Kip does not get enough fruits and vegetables, but this is by choice and I'm not going to nag or pester him because he is a grown up and can make his own decisions.) We didn't all make the recommendations, but I doubt we did much worse than average Americans (not that that is something to be proud of) Additionally, I don't feel like any lack of vegetable consumption was too much the result of the foods we bought (or didn't) as much as personality and pickiness. Don't get me wrong; I feel that as a mother, it's my responsibility to teach my kids how to eat well and to make that as easy/accessible a goal as possible, but I'm not going to jam it down their throats either.
You can check out the daily details here if you enjoy reading the records of obsessive compulsive people. Otherwise, you'll find our averages below (to come to this average, I threw out the highest and lowest numbers for each person). Remember: these are cups, not servings. A cup is often (though not always) more than a single serving.
Me (goal 4.5 C/day): 4.49 cups/day. As my mother would say--close enough for government work.
Mark (goal 2.5 C/day: .88 cups/day. This is probably not close enough even for government work. It is, in fact, a bad number indeed, though I will not take full responsibility for it. (I must take some as I did not help Mark develop very healthy eating habits when he was younger, but...) Mark, like his father, is a man of will. He is a very picky eater and does not like many fruits and almost no vegetables. He does love potatoes and I should definitely try to incorporate more of these in our weekly diets. I know that potatoes have gotten a somewhat bad rap in recent years, but I believe they're perfectly nutritious and if nothing else, they're better than nothing.
Elizabeth (goal 2 C): 1.28 cups/day. Elizabeth is the only child who I felt I sort of short changed. She loves bananas and sometimes we were out when she wanted one. She also loves strawberries, which I tried to buy, but which at this time of year are often out of our league. She also loves green drinks and often wanted more when there wasn't more to have. I'm going to try to make more of those so she can get her daily dose of fruits and veggies.
Savannah (goal 1.5 C): 1.6 cups/day. Savannah is a great eater, and the only one I've got. She also loves fruits and sometimes even vegetables, so she was fairly easy. (Thank you, my sweet.)
Did I spend all day cooking?
No. I kept the numbers for those as well in my food journal. (Yes, I am crazy compulsive; please don't call the shrink yet.)
I often made breakfast, lunch, and dinner entirely from scratch (we only ate about 6 boxes of cereal this month, which gave me about 8-10 breakfasts off). I spent on average 31 minutes of active cooking time (time when I was actually doing something) and 26 minutes of passive cooking time (time I needed to be home because something was in the oven or on the stove, but where I wasn't in the kitchen doing anything) for a total of 57 minutes/day in food related endeavors (you can add another 5 minutes/day because I forgot to tally the time I spend making school lunches). Again, I made almost all of our meals from scratch; I made bread (though not all of it; thank you day-old bread store); I made more sweets than is wise. This fairly low number of minutes spent in cooking has been one of the pleasant surprises of the Cheap Eat Challenge. I figured I'd be in the kitchen a lot more than that.
Where'd we cheat?
1. I only counted half the cow share we have. It's $17.00 and I only counted $8.00 of it. Why? Because we're not getting much milk from it. I could have cancelled it and then gotten it again in the late spring and summer when milk supplies were higher. But I wanted to support the farm (and by way of full disclosure, I certainly didn't want to lose my spot), so I only counted a portion of it. If I had counted all of it, we would have been at $7.30/day, which still isn't too shabby. You may call me a weanie cheater if you wish.
2. I bought Kip a couple candy gifts. Gifts are allowed under our rules. Of course, if we buy each other "gifts" all the time, then we could get away with quite a lot, couldn't we? In my defense, Kip has been a super sport and has given up a lot for this challenge; I wanted to thank him. And it's really not out of the ordinary for me to buy Kip gifts of candy when I go out, especially if it's without my children.
A note on the future of the Cheap Eat Challenge:
I think I'm going to change the way I tally costs. I've been trying to estimate exactly how much food we actually eat each month, which in some ways is a record-keeping nightmare (even for the OCD among us) because I'm trying to figure out how much of something like ranch powder or ketchup I used and about how much that might cost. So the partially used stuff is being very roughly estimated. Furthermore, people's budgets don't work that way. It's not like if someone used only half a can of peaches in a month, they could count only that 1/2 can; they'd have to pay for it all and count it all in their budgets. Thus. I'm going to begin tallying all I buy, though I won't be including the leftover foods from the month before (does that make sense?). In other words, if I've got ketchup and peanut butter left over, I don't have to count them (because in theory I counted them the month before), but I will end up counting things I open even if I don't use them all this month. The exception will be if I buy things in huge bulk and divide them up and freeze them. Then I only have to count the portion I pull out of the fridge. Also, if I buy something, but don't crack it open that month, it'll go onto the next month's tab. This new process of record keeping might throw me off for a month or so as far as keeping it at $6/day while I build up a cheap-ish stockpile, but we're not quite keeping it at $6/day anyway.
Along with this, I'm going to be giving us a $20 entertainment food fund--a little boost of extra money so that we can afford to have our generous and wonderful friends over without feeding them beans and rice (unless they love beans and rice...). If we go through the month without having anyone over, I won't be allowed to count this.
I'm still shooting for the $6/day, but in the coming months, I'm going to try to be less stressed about it. Last week when I realized we wouldn't quite make it, it bummed me out. I don't want to go through life bummed out about a few cents a day. In coming months I might even raise (um, lower) the bar so we're eating more around $8-10/day so that I can experiment with some different types of foods and participate in a CSA, which is a cause I find worth supporting (and which I expect to deliver some yummy foods). I'll keep you posted.
This month our total came up to $237.49.
After subtracting the $20.00 for our vitamin credit, that's $217.49.
Which (when divided by 31 days) takes us to a daily total of $7.01.
Which is just so close to being in the 6 dollar range that it almost hurts.
The breakdown from highest to lowest:
Produce: $59.57
Dairy: $39.97 (plus $8.00 for the cow share)
Grains: $36.79
Sweets/Sugars: $29.14 (I won't pretend that that's not a little embarrassing for me, especially since I know that we usually eat more.)
Beans/Legumes/Nuts: $24.05
Meat/Eggs: $15.54
Fats: $13.55
Condiments/Yeast: $5.90
What'd we waste?
Very little.
-Milk from sippy cups carried around all day and from leftover cereal milk.
-1 small piece lasagna
-2 eggs
-millions of bread crusts and some bits of sandwich that the kids didn't finish
Were we hungry?
No. We've never been hungry or even close, although I think that we have felt a little deprived of some of our favorite things at times. However, I tried to plan better this month and we had more meat and I'd say that while not completely always satisfied, Kip felt a little less deprived this month than in previous months. However, this was the first month I started to feel a little bored. I'm going to work on that in April.
Are we sacrificing nutrition for some masochistic gimmick?
No. This month in a bout of obsessive compulsive record keeping, I decided to record how many cups of fruits and vegetables the kids and I ate. I used the guidelines from mypyramid.gov, which recommended 4.5 C for me, 2.5 C for Mark, 2 C for Elizabeth, and 1.5 C for Savannah. It had no recommendations for children as young as Emma and I therefore did not record her fruit/veggie intake. (Kip does not get enough fruits and vegetables, but this is by choice and I'm not going to nag or pester him because he is a grown up and can make his own decisions.) We didn't all make the recommendations, but I doubt we did much worse than average Americans (not that that is something to be proud of) Additionally, I don't feel like any lack of vegetable consumption was too much the result of the foods we bought (or didn't) as much as personality and pickiness. Don't get me wrong; I feel that as a mother, it's my responsibility to teach my kids how to eat well and to make that as easy/accessible a goal as possible, but I'm not going to jam it down their throats either.
You can check out the daily details here if you enjoy reading the records of obsessive compulsive people. Otherwise, you'll find our averages below (to come to this average, I threw out the highest and lowest numbers for each person). Remember: these are cups, not servings. A cup is often (though not always) more than a single serving.
Me (goal 4.5 C/day): 4.49 cups/day. As my mother would say--close enough for government work.
Mark (goal 2.5 C/day: .88 cups/day. This is probably not close enough even for government work. It is, in fact, a bad number indeed, though I will not take full responsibility for it. (I must take some as I did not help Mark develop very healthy eating habits when he was younger, but...) Mark, like his father, is a man of will. He is a very picky eater and does not like many fruits and almost no vegetables. He does love potatoes and I should definitely try to incorporate more of these in our weekly diets. I know that potatoes have gotten a somewhat bad rap in recent years, but I believe they're perfectly nutritious and if nothing else, they're better than nothing.
Elizabeth (goal 2 C): 1.28 cups/day. Elizabeth is the only child who I felt I sort of short changed. She loves bananas and sometimes we were out when she wanted one. She also loves strawberries, which I tried to buy, but which at this time of year are often out of our league. She also loves green drinks and often wanted more when there wasn't more to have. I'm going to try to make more of those so she can get her daily dose of fruits and veggies.
Savannah (goal 1.5 C): 1.6 cups/day. Savannah is a great eater, and the only one I've got. She also loves fruits and sometimes even vegetables, so she was fairly easy. (Thank you, my sweet.)
Did I spend all day cooking?
No. I kept the numbers for those as well in my food journal. (Yes, I am crazy compulsive; please don't call the shrink yet.)
I often made breakfast, lunch, and dinner entirely from scratch (we only ate about 6 boxes of cereal this month, which gave me about 8-10 breakfasts off). I spent on average 31 minutes of active cooking time (time when I was actually doing something) and 26 minutes of passive cooking time (time I needed to be home because something was in the oven or on the stove, but where I wasn't in the kitchen doing anything) for a total of 57 minutes/day in food related endeavors (you can add another 5 minutes/day because I forgot to tally the time I spend making school lunches). Again, I made almost all of our meals from scratch; I made bread (though not all of it; thank you day-old bread store); I made more sweets than is wise. This fairly low number of minutes spent in cooking has been one of the pleasant surprises of the Cheap Eat Challenge. I figured I'd be in the kitchen a lot more than that.
Where'd we cheat?
1. I only counted half the cow share we have. It's $17.00 and I only counted $8.00 of it. Why? Because we're not getting much milk from it. I could have cancelled it and then gotten it again in the late spring and summer when milk supplies were higher. But I wanted to support the farm (and by way of full disclosure, I certainly didn't want to lose my spot), so I only counted a portion of it. If I had counted all of it, we would have been at $7.30/day, which still isn't too shabby. You may call me a weanie cheater if you wish.
2. I bought Kip a couple candy gifts. Gifts are allowed under our rules. Of course, if we buy each other "gifts" all the time, then we could get away with quite a lot, couldn't we? In my defense, Kip has been a super sport and has given up a lot for this challenge; I wanted to thank him. And it's really not out of the ordinary for me to buy Kip gifts of candy when I go out, especially if it's without my children.
A note on the future of the Cheap Eat Challenge:
I think I'm going to change the way I tally costs. I've been trying to estimate exactly how much food we actually eat each month, which in some ways is a record-keeping nightmare (even for the OCD among us) because I'm trying to figure out how much of something like ranch powder or ketchup I used and about how much that might cost. So the partially used stuff is being very roughly estimated. Furthermore, people's budgets don't work that way. It's not like if someone used only half a can of peaches in a month, they could count only that 1/2 can; they'd have to pay for it all and count it all in their budgets. Thus. I'm going to begin tallying all I buy, though I won't be including the leftover foods from the month before (does that make sense?). In other words, if I've got ketchup and peanut butter left over, I don't have to count them (because in theory I counted them the month before), but I will end up counting things I open even if I don't use them all this month. The exception will be if I buy things in huge bulk and divide them up and freeze them. Then I only have to count the portion I pull out of the fridge. Also, if I buy something, but don't crack it open that month, it'll go onto the next month's tab. This new process of record keeping might throw me off for a month or so as far as keeping it at $6/day while I build up a cheap-ish stockpile, but we're not quite keeping it at $6/day anyway.
Along with this, I'm going to be giving us a $20 entertainment food fund--a little boost of extra money so that we can afford to have our generous and wonderful friends over without feeding them beans and rice (unless they love beans and rice...). If we go through the month without having anyone over, I won't be allowed to count this.
I'm still shooting for the $6/day, but in the coming months, I'm going to try to be less stressed about it. Last week when I realized we wouldn't quite make it, it bummed me out. I don't want to go through life bummed out about a few cents a day. In coming months I might even raise (um, lower) the bar so we're eating more around $8-10/day so that I can experiment with some different types of foods and participate in a CSA, which is a cause I find worth supporting (and which I expect to deliver some yummy foods). I'll keep you posted.
Monday, February 28, 2011
February
We did a little better this month.
Our total came out to $230.71. When you subtract the $20.00 for our vitamin credit, it comes to $210.71.
Which brings our daily figure up to $7.53/day.
But February was a really weird month. It started out with sickness. For the first 10 days of the month, someone in the family was sick. I was getting up 4-6 times a night with various children and was just a wee bit tired. This really shot the planning side of my month. Which would have wrecked our month, except that we were eating less because we weren't feeling great. Being tired also may have affected my record-keeping--as I wasn't always recording things right away, which meant that there was a little more guesstimation going on this month. I think it is still very accurate, but it is possible that there are more errors in my record-keeping.
I did make 2 smallish changes in the way I do things also. I didn't count the vitamins I buy--deciding that they weren't actual food. And I only counted a portion of our $17.00 cow share. We've been getting very little milk from them since it's the time of year when the cows aren't producing much. And, yes, we'll get more later on in the year when it warms up and they have babies and stuff. So, yes, it's kind of cheating not to count it all now in the lean month, but I'm doing it anyway.
Next month, I'm planning to go full-throttle. When I told Kip this he sort of groaned and said he thought we were already going full-throttle. Which we have been, but there's been a learning curve. In March I'm going to try to capitalize on that. I've got a menu and a more comprehensive shopping list posted.
Here's the breakdown of how we spent:
Fruit/Vegetable: $54.21
Grain: $44.10
Dairy: $39.41
Meat/Eggs: $25.07
Sugars/Sweets: $27.82
Nuts/Beans/Legumes: $16.24
Fats/Condiments: $14.86
Yeast/Leaveners: $2.00
Our total came out to $230.71. When you subtract the $20.00 for our vitamin credit, it comes to $210.71.
Which brings our daily figure up to $7.53/day.
But February was a really weird month. It started out with sickness. For the first 10 days of the month, someone in the family was sick. I was getting up 4-6 times a night with various children and was just a wee bit tired. This really shot the planning side of my month. Which would have wrecked our month, except that we were eating less because we weren't feeling great. Being tired also may have affected my record-keeping--as I wasn't always recording things right away, which meant that there was a little more guesstimation going on this month. I think it is still very accurate, but it is possible that there are more errors in my record-keeping.
I did make 2 smallish changes in the way I do things also. I didn't count the vitamins I buy--deciding that they weren't actual food. And I only counted a portion of our $17.00 cow share. We've been getting very little milk from them since it's the time of year when the cows aren't producing much. And, yes, we'll get more later on in the year when it warms up and they have babies and stuff. So, yes, it's kind of cheating not to count it all now in the lean month, but I'm doing it anyway.
Next month, I'm planning to go full-throttle. When I told Kip this he sort of groaned and said he thought we were already going full-throttle. Which we have been, but there's been a learning curve. In March I'm going to try to capitalize on that. I've got a menu and a more comprehensive shopping list posted.
Here's the breakdown of how we spent:
Fruit/Vegetable: $54.21
Grain: $44.10
Dairy: $39.41
Meat/Eggs: $25.07
Sugars/Sweets: $27.82
Nuts/Beans/Legumes: $16.24
Fats/Condiments: $14.86
Yeast/Leaveners: $2.00
Monday, January 31, 2011
Cheap Eat Challenge: January--How'd We Do
Where should I start? With the sum total? With the confessions? With the blabberings on about what I've learned and what we could do better. With the exact breakdown of the numbers: how much was spend on meat, produce, dairy, etc.
You know I want to start with the ramblings... Must. Resist. Urge.
Sum total:
$260.98. After adjusting for our $20 vitamin credit, that figured up to $7.77/day.
Are you disappointed? I was. A little. Although I knew over a week ago that we weren't going to make it. I hoped that we would stay at least close enough to our goal, so as to have this not be a complete embarrassment. And I feel like we did. And I feel good about that. For the record, $7.77 (besides seeming an incredibly lucky number) is certainly within my original concept of eating on a pack a day. Have a look over here if you've no idea what I'm talking about. Also, even though we made several sacrifices and even had a bunch of free food given to us in December, I felt like there were things I learned about how we could have done it better and maybe gotten closer to our goal. In fact, I've sort of discovered a new goal in the process: Figuring out how to get our family of 6 to be able to eat on $6/day.
What I've learned:
1. What we eat. Seriously. This is one of the best things that came from this challenge. I thought I knew what we ate. I thought I took a lot of that into account. But keeping close track made me aware of exactly what we eat and how very much of it. To site a simple example, I had a sort of vague idea that my kids ate about 2 bottles of applesauce a month. Not so--they eat at least 3/month. And a lot more of other things too. Since they're small and kind of birdlike at the dinner table, I made the assumption that my kids don't eat. Oh--they eat alright. They eat.
2. How much, exactly, what we eat costs. You know you have these vague numbers in your head. I found that sometimes they were not that close to reality. It's easy to think that 4 pounds of oranges sounds like an awfully lot, but it's usually just about 6 oranges.
3. How much of what foods we eat/spend the most on. I already said I missed my produce. And that Kip needed a bit more meat in his life.
4. Where our weak spots are. Some of them can be improved. Heck, I'm sure all of them could be improved. Do we need to eat dessert? No, we don't. Really ever. We probably don't need meat ever either for that matter. But we want to eat those things. At least sometimes. We enjoy them and in some ways they're part of the culture of our family. I don't believe there's anything wrong with that. However. Do we need chocolate every day (well, maybe one of us does). But do we need it in handful-of-chocolate-chip form, or are there better, cheaper ways to get it? I believe there are. I believe if I'd planned a wee bit better, there could have been healthy breakfast cookies and other cheap things to snack on. If a person is hungry, he/she is more likely to grab whatever. I saw that happening a lot at the end of the month. And also, there are just things we could have done without. I just don't think we need dessert every day. Or as much cereal as we eat. Could we eat more rice and beans? Yes, I think we could if it's well planned. And, yes, that planning can be hard. But I believe it can still be done.
What could we have done better?
1. First of all, I failed to accept a few inalienble truths: like that man cannot live on bread alone. My man, at least, needed a little more meat; and more chocolate. I kind of just assumed/pretended that he would be fine and dandy and didn't figure his needs in well enough at the beginning of the month. And therefore didn't plan well enough to have it work out. Instead I found us throwing in extra meat and extra cost halfway through the month. I kind of did a similar thing with the kids, although I swear they ate at least double the peanut butter they usually do.
2. I think the meals need to be more exactly planned. Out of the 20 meals I planned, we ate only 12. That's not a huge deal, but I think that to live so lean, I'll have to be more careful. I'll have to plan meals more along the lines of--Okay, so we're having a chicken and potatoes for Sunday dinner. That means we'll have some leftovers and can use them in A,B, and C meals and then we'll have waffles one night and soup another night, and finish it up with a leftover night.
3. You can't entertain on $6/day. I suppose that you could feed others--in a pot-of-beans-with-rice kind of a way. People wouldn't starve. But I don't want to invite our friends over for that. We had a few kid friends over here and there and once fed the missionaries from our church. That's it. And we still didn't make our money goal. For next month I'm going to allow us 1-3 nights to have friends over for dinner or dessert and give it to us free and clear. Because I'm the mommy. And I said so.
4. Okay, so I'm not quite sure how to do this one better, but I missed having more fruits and veggies--not even more variety, as I like to eat somewhat seasonally anyway. But just more volume. I tried very hard to keep myself at 5 fruits and veggies a day and usually succeeded. But I'm in the habit of eating more than that--and I missed my extra produce. Furthermore, I didn't like the feeling I had towards my children eating fruits and vegetables. Normally, I'd be thrilled to go through a bunch of bananas or applesauce or carrots a week, but I caught myself thinking, "How many bananas can those kids eat? We're never going to make it." And we all know that's a bad thing. Especially with my kids, who aren't exactly the fruit and vegetable eating monsters of the world.
Weird things I noticed:
1. I ate more sweets than usual. I know this sounds odd. I didn't make more sweets than usual. But I ate more. Why? Because in our culture, they're just around--at your church party or your friend's house or as a sample at the store. In recent years, I haven't been one to pass dessert by, but I usually didn't eat a whole bunch of it, and I would pass it by if I didn't much like it. This month I noticed that not only did I have dessert, but I found myself eating more of it than usual because I kept thinking, "Oh, I won't be getting any more treats this week, so I better take advantage of these." But then, two days later, there was another treat and there I was thinking the same thing.
2. At first I thought I was spending less time cooking. Perhaps to a small extent I was since I wasn't experimenting as much and we weren't eating anything fancy-schmancy. But I was making bread, and I made several foods to give as gifts, which took quite a bit of time. This made me realize that I just don't ever spend that much time cooking. Not having enough time is one of the primary reasons people give for not cooking their meals--for using processed foods or for eating out. You'll notice from Jean's Food Jounal that I rarely spent more than an hour a day cooking--usually less. Almost every meal on this site is a 30 minute or less meal. Almost. On the days I spent more time, I was usually making bread or a birthday cake. And at least some of the time I spent "cooking" was passive time when something was in the oven. Keeping a record of how much time I spent cooking surprised and pleased me. If you can make breakfast, lunch, and dinner in 45 minutes, there's no reason not to cook your meals, because it's just as easy to spend that much time at the drive thru. Yes, the cooking takes a bit of planning. And you have to clean up afterwards. But besides the cost, there are environmental and health benefits to be gained. (And mabye next month I'll start keeping track of my cleaning up time as well.)
3. It didn't kill my husband, and my kids didn't even notice (though they were missing some cold cereal at the end of the month). My husband even expressed appreciation on several occasions that we were doing it.
4. And of course this isn't weird, but we wasted very very little. The kids didn't eat their bread crusts, which they don't. And, yes, that is crazy making in case you're wondering. And they wasted a bit of milk and cereal here and there. I wasted a few egg whites. But otherwise, we really ate what we had. It feels kind of good.
Confessions:
1. We ate more boxed mac and cheese than usual. I'm not proud of this fact, but we did.
2. My kids have spend the last 2 days sick and I'm not counting our Gatorade costs. This morning my son called it medicine. I think we'll got with that. But otherwise, I've tried hard not to cheat. If you want to have a look at specific numbers you can hop on over to costs. There's been some estimating. It occurred to me partway through the month that I do have a food scale. This next month I'll try to use it at the beginning of the month so that I can get more accurate numbers on those partially used foods like olive oil.
3. Next month Kip will buy some food at work again. This was always part of my deal with Kip, but I didn't share it with you. This month I wanted to have a really good idea of what we needed to spend to eat and not be hungry, which meant no supplementing with meals out or treats at Kip's job, so Kip agreed to go with that. But he misses it sometimes. It's not like he eats dinner there (usually), but he works nights and can get hungry or snacky on the job, and occasionally there's some social let's-go-to-KFC stuff, which he enjoys. I hope that in February we can still do some cheaper things like sending him with breakfast cookies so he doesn't go out and buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's to meet his snack needs. But the restriction of nothing at all is officially off.
4. If I have to, I'll give us more of a vitamin credit. Maybe that's cheating, but I admit that it wasn't worth it to me not to eat as many fruits and vegetables as I wanted. The last few days I was craving--craving--salad.
5. I haven't got menus or shopping lists up yet for February. My kids have been sick. It's been a haze of puking, fevers, poop, and mid-night wakings where I run in wondering if someone is sick again, only to hear, "I can't sleep." I try to be sweet; I do. "Well, honey, (teeth gritting), I'm sorry you can't sleep, but if Mommy doesn't get some sleep she won't be able to take care of you tomorrow because she'll be too tired (and she'll poke her eyes out and be at the ER).
Specific Breakdown of Numbers:
Fruits/Vegetables: $65.11
Dairy: $56.47
Grains: $47.53
Chocolate/Sugars/Sweets: $26.65 (oh dear--I feel a bit embarrassed this cashes in at #4)
Nuts/ Beans: $23.13
Meat/Eggs: $19.63
Oils/fats/condiments: $13.76
Actual vitamins: $7.5
Yeast: $1.20
You know I want to start with the ramblings... Must. Resist. Urge.
Sum total:
$260.98. After adjusting for our $20 vitamin credit, that figured up to $7.77/day.
Are you disappointed? I was. A little. Although I knew over a week ago that we weren't going to make it. I hoped that we would stay at least close enough to our goal, so as to have this not be a complete embarrassment. And I feel like we did. And I feel good about that. For the record, $7.77 (besides seeming an incredibly lucky number) is certainly within my original concept of eating on a pack a day. Have a look over here if you've no idea what I'm talking about. Also, even though we made several sacrifices and even had a bunch of free food given to us in December, I felt like there were things I learned about how we could have done it better and maybe gotten closer to our goal. In fact, I've sort of discovered a new goal in the process: Figuring out how to get our family of 6 to be able to eat on $6/day.
What I've learned:
1. What we eat. Seriously. This is one of the best things that came from this challenge. I thought I knew what we ate. I thought I took a lot of that into account. But keeping close track made me aware of exactly what we eat and how very much of it. To site a simple example, I had a sort of vague idea that my kids ate about 2 bottles of applesauce a month. Not so--they eat at least 3/month. And a lot more of other things too. Since they're small and kind of birdlike at the dinner table, I made the assumption that my kids don't eat. Oh--they eat alright. They eat.
2. How much, exactly, what we eat costs. You know you have these vague numbers in your head. I found that sometimes they were not that close to reality. It's easy to think that 4 pounds of oranges sounds like an awfully lot, but it's usually just about 6 oranges.
3. How much of what foods we eat/spend the most on. I already said I missed my produce. And that Kip needed a bit more meat in his life.
4. Where our weak spots are. Some of them can be improved. Heck, I'm sure all of them could be improved. Do we need to eat dessert? No, we don't. Really ever. We probably don't need meat ever either for that matter. But we want to eat those things. At least sometimes. We enjoy them and in some ways they're part of the culture of our family. I don't believe there's anything wrong with that. However. Do we need chocolate every day (well, maybe one of us does). But do we need it in handful-of-chocolate-chip form, or are there better, cheaper ways to get it? I believe there are. I believe if I'd planned a wee bit better, there could have been healthy breakfast cookies and other cheap things to snack on. If a person is hungry, he/she is more likely to grab whatever. I saw that happening a lot at the end of the month. And also, there are just things we could have done without. I just don't think we need dessert every day. Or as much cereal as we eat. Could we eat more rice and beans? Yes, I think we could if it's well planned. And, yes, that planning can be hard. But I believe it can still be done.
What could we have done better?
1. First of all, I failed to accept a few inalienble truths: like that man cannot live on bread alone. My man, at least, needed a little more meat; and more chocolate. I kind of just assumed/pretended that he would be fine and dandy and didn't figure his needs in well enough at the beginning of the month. And therefore didn't plan well enough to have it work out. Instead I found us throwing in extra meat and extra cost halfway through the month. I kind of did a similar thing with the kids, although I swear they ate at least double the peanut butter they usually do.
2. I think the meals need to be more exactly planned. Out of the 20 meals I planned, we ate only 12. That's not a huge deal, but I think that to live so lean, I'll have to be more careful. I'll have to plan meals more along the lines of--Okay, so we're having a chicken and potatoes for Sunday dinner. That means we'll have some leftovers and can use them in A,B, and C meals and then we'll have waffles one night and soup another night, and finish it up with a leftover night.
3. You can't entertain on $6/day. I suppose that you could feed others--in a pot-of-beans-with-rice kind of a way. People wouldn't starve. But I don't want to invite our friends over for that. We had a few kid friends over here and there and once fed the missionaries from our church. That's it. And we still didn't make our money goal. For next month I'm going to allow us 1-3 nights to have friends over for dinner or dessert and give it to us free and clear. Because I'm the mommy. And I said so.
4. Okay, so I'm not quite sure how to do this one better, but I missed having more fruits and veggies--not even more variety, as I like to eat somewhat seasonally anyway. But just more volume. I tried very hard to keep myself at 5 fruits and veggies a day and usually succeeded. But I'm in the habit of eating more than that--and I missed my extra produce. Furthermore, I didn't like the feeling I had towards my children eating fruits and vegetables. Normally, I'd be thrilled to go through a bunch of bananas or applesauce or carrots a week, but I caught myself thinking, "How many bananas can those kids eat? We're never going to make it." And we all know that's a bad thing. Especially with my kids, who aren't exactly the fruit and vegetable eating monsters of the world.
Weird things I noticed:
1. I ate more sweets than usual. I know this sounds odd. I didn't make more sweets than usual. But I ate more. Why? Because in our culture, they're just around--at your church party or your friend's house or as a sample at the store. In recent years, I haven't been one to pass dessert by, but I usually didn't eat a whole bunch of it, and I would pass it by if I didn't much like it. This month I noticed that not only did I have dessert, but I found myself eating more of it than usual because I kept thinking, "Oh, I won't be getting any more treats this week, so I better take advantage of these." But then, two days later, there was another treat and there I was thinking the same thing.
2. At first I thought I was spending less time cooking. Perhaps to a small extent I was since I wasn't experimenting as much and we weren't eating anything fancy-schmancy. But I was making bread, and I made several foods to give as gifts, which took quite a bit of time. This made me realize that I just don't ever spend that much time cooking. Not having enough time is one of the primary reasons people give for not cooking their meals--for using processed foods or for eating out. You'll notice from Jean's Food Jounal that I rarely spent more than an hour a day cooking--usually less. Almost every meal on this site is a 30 minute or less meal. Almost. On the days I spent more time, I was usually making bread or a birthday cake. And at least some of the time I spent "cooking" was passive time when something was in the oven. Keeping a record of how much time I spent cooking surprised and pleased me. If you can make breakfast, lunch, and dinner in 45 minutes, there's no reason not to cook your meals, because it's just as easy to spend that much time at the drive thru. Yes, the cooking takes a bit of planning. And you have to clean up afterwards. But besides the cost, there are environmental and health benefits to be gained. (And mabye next month I'll start keeping track of my cleaning up time as well.)
3. It didn't kill my husband, and my kids didn't even notice (though they were missing some cold cereal at the end of the month). My husband even expressed appreciation on several occasions that we were doing it.
4. And of course this isn't weird, but we wasted very very little. The kids didn't eat their bread crusts, which they don't. And, yes, that is crazy making in case you're wondering. And they wasted a bit of milk and cereal here and there. I wasted a few egg whites. But otherwise, we really ate what we had. It feels kind of good.
Confessions:
1. We ate more boxed mac and cheese than usual. I'm not proud of this fact, but we did.
2. My kids have spend the last 2 days sick and I'm not counting our Gatorade costs. This morning my son called it medicine. I think we'll got with that. But otherwise, I've tried hard not to cheat. If you want to have a look at specific numbers you can hop on over to costs. There's been some estimating. It occurred to me partway through the month that I do have a food scale. This next month I'll try to use it at the beginning of the month so that I can get more accurate numbers on those partially used foods like olive oil.
3. Next month Kip will buy some food at work again. This was always part of my deal with Kip, but I didn't share it with you. This month I wanted to have a really good idea of what we needed to spend to eat and not be hungry, which meant no supplementing with meals out or treats at Kip's job, so Kip agreed to go with that. But he misses it sometimes. It's not like he eats dinner there (usually), but he works nights and can get hungry or snacky on the job, and occasionally there's some social let's-go-to-KFC stuff, which he enjoys. I hope that in February we can still do some cheaper things like sending him with breakfast cookies so he doesn't go out and buy a pint of Ben and Jerry's to meet his snack needs. But the restriction of nothing at all is officially off.
4. If I have to, I'll give us more of a vitamin credit. Maybe that's cheating, but I admit that it wasn't worth it to me not to eat as many fruits and vegetables as I wanted. The last few days I was craving--craving--salad.
5. I haven't got menus or shopping lists up yet for February. My kids have been sick. It's been a haze of puking, fevers, poop, and mid-night wakings where I run in wondering if someone is sick again, only to hear, "I can't sleep." I try to be sweet; I do. "Well, honey, (teeth gritting), I'm sorry you can't sleep, but if Mommy doesn't get some sleep she won't be able to take care of you tomorrow because she'll be too tired (and she'll poke her eyes out and be at the ER).
Specific Breakdown of Numbers:
Fruits/Vegetables: $65.11
Dairy: $56.47
Grains: $47.53
Chocolate/Sugars/Sweets: $26.65 (oh dear--I feel a bit embarrassed this cashes in at #4)
Nuts/ Beans: $23.13
Meat/Eggs: $19.63
Oils/fats/condiments: $13.76
Actual vitamins: $7.5
Yeast: $1.20
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