Here’s an update at what we spent our grocery money on this paycheck. We normally spend about $20 at the Farmer’s Market – but didn’t make it this time, so I spent $100 at grocery stores instead of just $80 (and then the $20 would have been for the FM). I am writing this out mainly to give you some clue as to what we eat – because I know when I first started “going organic” I had no clue what to buy organic/where to buy organic,etc. With this current budget we will spend $200 a month on groceries. Some things were cheaper this paycheck because we didn’t need 1) toilet paper/kleenex 2) meat (have enough in freezer) 3)milk/eggs (have enough). But I “made up” for those expenses because we had to buy cheese (we buy big blocks that last a while) and I bought almond butter, hummus, earth balance butter and olive oil – all of which we’ve never tried before and are quite pricey – but can last a while (ie the Olive oil was $8).
$100 Grocery Budget
- 4 Organic Bananas
- 1 bag of organic apples
- 2 organic avocados
- 1 bunch of organic broccoli
- 2 organic tomatoes
- 1 bag of organic baby carrots
- 1 container of pre-made local hummus
- 1 Container of Earth Balance Butter Spread
- 2 Container of Organic Sour Cream
- 1 Container of Organic Cream Cheese
- 2 cans of frozen organic orange juice
- 2 Cans of organic cream of mushroom soup
- 4 cans of organic pizza sauce (dented special 75 cents)
- 1 container of almond butter
- 1 organic silken tofu block
- 16 oz. organic olive oil
- 8 (2 packages) local natural bagels
- 1 pack of tortilla shells made with organic flour
- 1 package of organic spaghetti
- 2 loaves of organic bread sliced (frozen, with thaw as needed)
- 1 package of local hamburger buns (no weird ingredients)
- 1 package of local hot dog buns (no weird ingredients)
- 1 package of whole wheat pitas (to make pizzas on, no organic/local available)
- 1 package of local shredded cheddar cheese
- 1 container of Lite Cool Whip
- .84 lb, block of local cheddar cheese
- .82 lb. block of local farmer’s cheese
- .78 lb. block of local provolone cheese
- 7 slices of organic turkey breast meat
- 1 package of organic pepperoni slices for pizza
- 1 bottle of cheap ketchup
- 6-pack of Mike’s Hard Lite Cranberry Lemonade (took to a friend’s house)
The 4 items italicized show you what we didn’t buy local or organic. Some of it can’t be helped (I can’t find organic/local pitas), some of it is preference (we don’t like organic ketchup), others are necessary (cool whip is non=dairy for david, the only option for us), and the other was unnecessary (Mike’s Hard was just fun to take to a friends, we don’t usually buy alchohol and if we do we buy local – it’s easy to do in Wisconsin!)
My criteria for buying organic:
1. Look for organic/local
2. Look for Organic
3. Look for Local
4. Go for cheap
I’m pretty black/white about things – if I can’t buy it local/organic I go to Aldi’s for the cheapest I can find.
So hopefully this will help some of you start thinking about how you can buy organically too – it really isn’t that difficult – now that we’ve been doing this for about 9 months we’ve got it “down” what we like/what we don’t like, where to shop, etc. Let me know if you have any questions, I’ll post this week’s menu tomorrow.
