$$Food$$

OK, Lindsey, I want a copy of your grocery list and meals!  Wow!  That’s all you spend, eating mostly organic???  That’s amazing!  I can spend $200 a week *non* organic!  We do have a small garden, but so far all we’ve gotten are some green beans.  Not helping us at all.  We’re in MN, and there are 6 of us.  My biggest problem is getting the plan together, doing the shopping, but not wanting to cook!  LOL  I’m not a cook by nature, I really hate it (though I’m told I’m good at it), and I am glad my dh cooks a few nights a week. 

I am trying to cut costs, too. I am trying to match coupons in the Sunday paper to the sale ads. I’m not sure what stores you have around, but I am also starting to shop Aldi more.

We have a family of 9 and spend about $150-175.  That is after the above post mentioned I have cut spending making a LOT of things myself and trying new things as we can.  We are eating more rice, beans and cutting the meat in 1/2 for the most part.  We do not can not eat organic, though we have a cow in the freezer, chickens, and have eggs.  I buy in bulk about $100 extra or less a month from Azure for my main things.  Some last months others from month to month.

Good luck it’s a lot of work and really making things from scratch and not buying prepackaged is the best bet, not always the easiest though.  Oh we are also down to one snack a day, the meal planner of the day picks if we have it after nap or after dinner!  I just make sure meals are full of all the essentials.  Good luck!  It’s a tough job meal and budgets. Misty

You’re crazy!!! We spend $300-$400 a month, even though I make all that stuff from scratch!

We are about to buy a bunch of beef from a local farm that also delivers to Dallas. E-mail me if you want the website info. It’s going to be a costly initial investment because the meat is $4.80/lb. It’s all hormone-, vaccine-, and antibiotic-free, and pasture-fed. We will probably buy 30-50 lbs at a time and keep it in the deep freeze. They also sell pork and chicken.

And we spend $28/month just on milk!!

Buying stuff in-season really cuts costs. I can get watermelon, canteloupe, and oranges for less per pound than apples because apples aren’t in season right now. So I don’t buy apples. My kids love them, but they also love watermelon and oranges. It keeps things mixed up to buy what’s in-season and saves money.

Also, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this to you before or not, but we are grinding our own flour for baking. This saves SO much money! I ordered 75 lbs of organic wheat berries yesterday for less than $30. Do you know how much the equivalent amount of organic flour would’ve cost??? Probably more than twice that much! I use the grain mill attachment for my Kitchen Aid mixer. It’s not as fast as the other, more expensive mills, but it works just fine for me. We can eat the wheat as long as I soak it before baking with it because it breaks down the gluten. 

I buy my spices, oats, rice, sucanet, sugar, baking powder, cocoa powder, and a few other things on the bulk aisle and save so much that way too. 

Getting some good beef and chicken bones and making your own broth is another money-saver. 

It was so important for us to eat this way but we couldn’t afford to double our grocery budget, so I adapted. It’s more work sometimes, but it’s totally worth it to eat as well as we do and still spend about what we spent on groceries before “the change”.

Hope that helps!

Lindsey