Groceries this week: what we bought, made and spent
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I have listened to countless podcasts, and read countless blog posts about how to save money on groceries. I do believe it is one of the biggest places that you can make a big impact on your budget.
HOWEVER…
The vast majority of content I’ve consumed on the subject have unbelievably unrealistic outcomes for my family. There is just no one that we can spend $50 a week on groceries…
So I thought I would start documenting what we buy, spend and make with our grocery budget to give you an idea of how much it can cost to eat healthfully, intentionally, and on a budget. And yes, this is actually budget shopping for us.
If you are already spending far lower than we are on groceries a month, these won’t be for you…but I have also had many people reach out to me telling me they are spending well over $1000 a month on groceries.
Grocery budget this month:
I will tell you that usually my target budget for groceries is between $850-900. However, we are making a switch over to local, sustainable, “meet the farmer” kind of meat. So with that comes a bigger upfront cost. So this month we put aside an additional $200 to save for that.
$1000 ($800 for regular grocery budget and $200 for meat)
What we spent this week:
$215.34
This was a bigger week, we needed to stock up on some pantry staples like tea, coffee, honey, nuts, etc.
What we made:
Before jumping into what we actually made this week, I must say that I ended up going rouge off of my meal plan. There were a lot of reasons for this, but mostly it was because a stupid 18 hour stomach bug ripped through our house like wildfire, I’m 7 months pregnant and there were just a few nights in there where I just didn’t feel like cooking.
HOWEVER, I didn’t run out to buy anything “easy” or get takeout. I stuck to what we had in our fridge and pantry.
- Saturday: Grass-fed steaks (were in our freezer from a previous bulk order), baked potatoes and sauerkraut
- Sunday: breakfast for dinner (eggs, left-over steak and eggs)
- Monday: Veggie soup with homemade einkorn bread (this soup was insanely delicious. We used frozen bone broth we had in our freezer that we had made, zucchini about to go bad in our fridge, carrots, celery and onion). This soup was insanely easy to make (which is good since I could hardly stand up straight), used up food we already had, and it felt INCREDIBLY nourishing to all our sick little bodies.
- Tuesday: Spaghetti over spaghetti squash. This was a meal made by the one and only Jean. We are blessed to get a meal from her each week as a trade (one of my favorite trades we do through the office). She’s an amazing cook and it’s always super healthy and delicious.
- Wednesday: Chili. Funny story…last week I tried making millet bread. Let me be the first to tell you that there is a reason that shit is usually mixed in with other grains. G. R. O. S. S. So I needed to find a way to use that bread creatively so that it was palatable. Solution: make super yummy chili and put the bread under the chili so it soaks up all the deliciousness. IT WORKED!! We ate it all up.
- Thursday: Leftover chili. I doubled the recipe and there is easily another meal left over after two meals of it.
- Friday: Chili bake with salad. Gotta change things up a bit or people gonna be bored. But I don’t want to dig into something new tonight because Nick and I are supposed to be going away for an overnight (we’ll see…we have a sick baby…ugh). Put chili in a baking dish, cover with cornbread mixture and bake in the oven. Make salad alongside it to stretch the meal.
- Saturday: Clean up salad. Use the leaves we have left in the fridge with anything else we have left over (we have ham from the deli left over and lots of loose odds and end veggies.
How did your week go with your meals? Was this the first time you tried meal planning? I’d love to hear how it went! Or feel free to share some meal ideas in the comments below!
