I realize that my grocery bill is always going to be higher than average because I insist on organic and all natural foods, but I am really tired of stressing over how much I am spending at the store. There are a couple of factors that have increased our bill since the move.
1) No good Farmer's Market in the area. How I miss the Farmer's Market at Memorial Park in Colorado Springs. I got all my produce there in the summers ( and I buy a lot of produce), most of it pesticide free if not organic for less than $25 per week! That is absolutely amazing. I am looking in to joining a CSA here, but I will lose the advantage of getting to pick exactly what I want and just have to work with what I get in my box each week.
2) The prices here are definitely higher. I would say I pay about 20% more for the same products I was buying in Colorado, very annoying. Our grocery bill is $1000 a month which was our budget in Colorado too, but I was getting more food. I realize some of your jaws are dropping. I hardly buy any meat, so it must be the produce?
After today's shopping venture, and spending $8 on two loaves of all natural bread, I asked myself, should I just be spending a whole day making some of these things from scratch and freezing them? Surely, it wouldn't cost me $4 per loaf to make bread. I used to make it quite often, but that was when I only had two kids and did not homeschool. The question still looms in my mind.
Another thing I don't get, is why my cart is always the most full cart in the store? What's with all these people that only have 15-20 items in their cart? Do they go to the store every other day? I shop religiously every Monday and then don't allow myself to go back in hopes this will save some money. I can understand why I was one of the few at Wild Oats or Whole Foods; most people don't buy everything organic, but I shop at a mixed store now as my other two stores are no where in the area. Why don't people buy more? If I were at the Commissary, there would be a lot of people with two full carts, so I don't get it. Do military families just eat more? I always feel guilty at the check out line when there are many of these 15-20 item people standing behind me tapping their toes impatiently.
So, do a little survey for my benefit. Here's three questions:
1) How much do you spend per week on groceries?
2) How many people are you feeding?
3) Do you buy organic or all natural products? (Okay, I suppose my motivation here is that if you are living off of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese and Ramen noodles, I will probably not take you into account when deciding if I am just an out of control food shopper).
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5 comments:
1) $100 per week - it used to be $60.
2) I feed 5 on that
3) I buy 25% organic/natural
$1000 - Traci - that is a whole lot of money! I think you'll live if not everything in your basket is organic. How about just the things you eat the most of like produce, bread, etc.
I shop about once a week. I don't do the large monthly or ever two weeks shopping trip anymore. And since we've been farmer's marketing, and making more things from scratch, not to mention the garden, my grocery bill has gone down to about $125 a week. And we have the addition of my step son now, so I was pretty proud of the fact that our grocery bill didn't increase that much. So a family of 6 at $125 a week is good. I make all our own bread and have since May. We are adding to that crackers, pasta, jams, waffles, and other starches easy to make from scratch. I'm also trying to make more household things from scratch too...good bye spendy cleaners and shampoos! :)
This might help your conscience. Have you driven by the fast food restarurants at the dinner hour? A lot of people eat out a lot of the time.
But you do buy a lot of the pricey items such as blueberries.
For what it's worth.
MOM
$100 a week on groceries, at least $100 a week on eating out. I buy the same thing every week, two heads of organic broccoli, two containers of brussel sprouts, a bunch of bananas, and oranges. That's the extent of our fruits and vegetables for the week.
We spend around $150/week for the 5 (+ infant) of us at the grocery, buy milk at FarmCrest (~$15/week), make our own bread using the KitchenAide (mostly whole wheat, but we try not to eat a lot of bread). My sister swears by her bread machine - pretty much just dumps in ingredients. We just bought a half a corn-fed cow to be delivered in December (I know you don't eat beef).
We don't do so much organic, because we decided the cost/benefit wasn't worth it. We try to keep processing to a minimum and keep our simple carbohydrates very low. We eat veggies/fruit as opposed to rice, pasta, potatoes, and eating out is a very special treat. We don't usually buy cans or boxes of food. My cart is always super-full, too. Oh, we also buy nuts at bulkfoods.com for our morning oats.
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