On or around June 1st of this year, two of my friends and I decided to trim the fat from our grocery budgets in more ways than one. We decided to challenge ourselves to feed our respective families for a grocery budget of $250 per month and try to do this is healthily as possible.
Now, let me start by saying, these two friends of mine are go-getters! One of them texted the next day about how she was able to spend about $60 for enough groceries to make her meals for a week or week and a half, and she's what I would consider a wonderful, gourmet foodie who even has her own food blog! :) She is so great at creating gourmet meals on her own from ingredients at hand. Wow. Friend number two did not disappoint either. She found that allrecipes.com was a great way to plan her meals. She has a newly vegetarian husband, and was still savvy enough to plan great meals for she and her hubby within budget. I, however, did not start this challenge with as much fervor.
The first week for me was a lot of what we called "pantry eating/living". We had frozen foods and pantry items that we could eat on for longer than I'd like to admit, so that's what we did. Once that got boring I, like any good budget-savvy shopper, headed to Costco. That is what budget-savvy shoppers do, right? :) Three-hundred and fifty dollars later I was outta there with stockpiles of food. I justified it at first by reminding myself that at least $100 of that wasn't part of my "normal" grocery budget, it was things like protein powder, dog food, diapers, and what not. You know, things that didn't "count", so in my mind I still stayed within budget and had enough meat and staples for way longer than a month, so this would actually save me even more in the long run.
However, here we are, Monday evening, July 12th. I think that yesterday was actually day one of the challenge for me. Sad, but true. But, it's better late than never, right? I was headed out the door to the store after church yesterday, realized I had no idea what I was shopping for besides some produce, and knew I needed to get with this program for both health reasons and budget reasons. So, I stopped in my tracks, got online and decided to plan a menu for the week.
Okay, if I'm being honest I love the idea of menu-planning, I just don't love the process nor feel that I have a knack for it because I absolutely, positively hate to coupon. Don't get me wrong, just like the next girl I love a great bargain, but I just don't like combing through ad after ad and playing the grocery game, then feeling like a failure if the store didn't pay me for buying their groceries like all those amazing coupon ladies you see on the 11 o'clock news.
I also find it hard to plan because I feel that true menu-planning should include all meals, not just dinners, and I don't think there are a lot of sites nor people talking out there about how to plan each and every meal plus snacks for a week, so it just seems daunting to fill in the blanks after the dinners for the week are planned. Another challenging part of the challenge is that we are trying SO HARD to eat more healthily, and organically when we can, and that can get expensive. I used to be (and still love to eat them) a casserole mom who made something yummy with "cream of whatever is in the cabinet soup"once or twice per week. One of those casseroles would last my family of 3 for days at a time, but I realized that while yummy and budget-savvy, that's really not the most healthy way for us to eat. I also put a lot of stress on myself to really mix things up and not have us eating the same things over and over again. So, this challenge is going to challenge me mathematically, creatively, and culinarily. So here I am today, taking part in this challenge, and trying my best from day to day to figure out how to make this grocery budget and healthy living work for my family. So, here goes nothing or here goes everything...
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