This week's Market Report

Another week - another visit to the market.  Today I came in $4 under budget, though I'm probably going to spend that at a traditional grocery store.

For my $36 I got

4 red pears
2 smaller butternut squash
10 kiwis
1 package of  habanero peppers
2 bags of spinach
1 giant bag of green onions (I have no idea what to do with that many, but it was only $1)
6 mangos
3 large red onions
4 baking carrots
4 grapefruit
1 lb jalapenos
1 lb poblano peppers
5 plums
7 limes
6 lemons
6 oranges
3 large avocados
2 bags of small sweet peppers


I still need to buy for the week
shredded cheese
snack food for the husband and kid
butter
maybe some broccoli

Before today I had $168.97 left over for the week.

Now I have 132.97

Two more trips to the market will use up $80 of that and I have only $17 a week left over for each of the 3 weeks.  I estimate I will spend $10 this week on additional items and think each other week will come in under too.  Basically, it's looking good for keeping it below $300 this month.

The $300 - Most of a week done

Slashing my budget means I need to make use of everything.  No more leftovers sitting around going bad.  That's a lunch or two just waiting to happen.

The other day I made my ground beef coconut curry with peppers

Recipe can be found on one of my other blogs krulewich.com  

http://www.krulewich.com/2015/01/ground-beef-coconut-curry-with-peppers.html

It works out to be less than $1 per serving.  It makes 6 servings for normal people, 4 for us because my husband loves it too much and will eat a HUGE serving of it.  Because there were only 2 people home I was able to have leftovers and we had it for lunch the next day.

I serve it on cabbage.  That one head of cabbage lasted me for 3 meals.  I didn't make it a centerpiece of any of them, but it was something I served stuff over or added to other stuff.  It cost me $1 to buy that head and I got 9 meals out of it.

In the past I have been guilty of not making the best use of my leftovers - even if it was a part of a vegetable that I should use.  Too easy to just let things sit in the fridge until it was time to throw them out.  I can't do that now.  Everything has to be used if I want to stay under budget.  

Waste not, want not.  That's a phrase that should have been my motto all along.  We live in a society of waste.  Huge amounts of good food are thrown out every year.  Food that SHOULD be put to use.  I'm going to do my best to keep the amount of food waste around here as close to zero as possible.

I'm a couple of days away from my market visit.  It's time to start a list of what I need this week.  Surprisingly I'm good on lemons.  I didn't use as many of  them this week as I normally do, but I'm running low on oranges.  We snack the heck out of them and of course the bananas are gone.  They are snapped up after workouts and I like to put one in my morning smoothie.  We still have more veggies leftover than I anticipated so I will be more cautious in my buying this week.  

French Toast

Starting my budget meals off with a bang.  The kiddo had a friend over so I got fancy for breakfast with French Toast and fruit.  Worked out to be $1/serving.

I realized it's going to be hard to calculate some things because  if I've had them in the house  won't likely remember how much they cost.  Also milk & coffee are luxury items for me so I don't count them against the budget.  

Milk as a luxury?  Yeah, I prefer the taste of raw milk.  It's WAY WAY WAY more expensive than regular supermarket milk.  It's also something that can be eliminated from the monthly budget if I feel tight that month.

With coffee, it's more complicated.  I'm not going to eliminate it and I'm not going to drink cheap coffee ever.  Maybe it's a necessity, not a luxury.  I do save money by roasting my own beans.  That makes it about 20 cents a serving most of the  time.    That's a big savings over 45cents a cup from the kind I buy when I purchase roasted.  Funny thing even that is cheaper than those darn K-cups which are not not not good coffee (and bad for the environment).  Some people think it's fancy and rave over them, but gag - no.

Coffee is an experience for me.  From roasting to hand grinding to pour over brewing.  I don't take cream or sugar in it very often now.  Good coffee will do that.  You learn to enjoy the taste and don't want to hide it with other stuff.  You can follow my coffee life on one of my other blogs www.krulewich.com  I'm posting my year in coffee there.  On my instagram I post a cup a day from my collection  I love thrift shops and have tons of cups.  Too many.  I'm displaying them this year and as part of my minimizing my life I will keep a select few and sell the rest.  They are almost all vintage cups and as much as I enjoy them - I just don't have the space.  I'll post a link when I get around to that.

Back to budget food:

Lunch is leftovers and dinner will be black beans cooked in stock made from the bones of those hams I bought yesterday.  I boiled them with some peppers and made 3 quarts of stock.  Two will be saved for later and one was used today.  Black beans with a bit of ham and some gf cornbread from a mix I have on hand.  Today's food will come in at around $3 per person.  That's a tiny bit lower than my goal.  Good, because some days will be over a bit.    It's a rough estimate of course.  I'm not sure how to count the ham stock.  Mostly those would be trash, but I was able to get some good eating out of them and turn the stock into several more servings.

Oh well, as long as I only bring in $300 worth of new groceries for the month.

The $300 - planning

$300 a month for groceries is $392 LESS than the USDA says we should spend on a budget meal plan for a family our size.  It's even less than welfare figures - which is $4 a day per person.  I won't do it every month.  I'm going to try to for 3 months and if it doesn't work I will up it to $400 a month.  Still enough for me to save.  My goal is to spend $1.19 per person per meal and BANK $1.19 per person per meal.  That savings will come in handy during my slow season.  Work can be scarce during the winter and this year was tighter than most.  I don't want that kind of stress anymore, so I'm going to try to save 4x as much during the busy season this year.

That money is going to be set aside and not talked about.  Talked about money is vulnerable.  There is ALWAYS some crisis that sucks it up.  It's like the car or appliances know when I have extra money so they take it.  It's going to be my secret.

I have goals for the money.

1.  To have 3 months of income ready for the winter

2.  To have an additional 2 months of income ready for whatever

3.  To pay for the kiddo to take some classes at the community college.

4.  Race entry fees.  We love races and the community at them, but when you pay $30-80 per race per person it adds up!

That's a LOT I know, but my summer income is nearly triple my winter income, and food isn't the only place I am cutting back.  I'm trying to get the whole family in on it.  I know the kid is on board, just have to get the husband motivated!  His weakness is vending machines.  I'm going to assign each of us an allowance, so he can visit the machines SOME, but will know his limits.  

I guess getting my stuff together financially was one of my New Year's Resolutions, even if I didn't realize it a month ago.  :-)

The 300

My goal for the next 3 months is to stay below $300 a month for food for the family.  That includes our eating out money, but I have a separate budge for the milk.  I guess I could put eating out in a different category and then include the milk, but I did it this way since I always set money aside for meeting my farmer.

The $300 is for a family of 3 two of who can not eat gluten.  That's $3.57 a day per person for food for Feb.   There is not way to afford much junk food on that.  OR we can eat only junk food. I'll go with the first one.

I'm estimating that 160 of it or so will be spent on fresh fruit and veggies at the market.  That number goes up and down, but $40 a week is a good guess.


It will take some planning, but the savings will be worth it.