No real shopping yet.

I spent $1 on a bag of second onions at a road side stand, it's a lot of onions for a buck let me tell ya. I also bought 1 1/2 bushels of organic tomatoes to can, they are ripening in the garage. They were $30. So we're down to $7.54 with 10 days left.

I am quite impressed that for having "nothing" in the house we are eating quite well. We have two new recipes to add to our menu. We picked our watermelons from our garden today so that is the fruit of the day, we'll see what tomorrow brings. I hope to hold off until Saturday for a trip to Meijers and the health store.

!!!FRUIT!!!

Fruit! I adore fruit. It's so yummy, sweet, juicy and healthy. We really put no limits on the fruit consumption. We limit sugar consumption but not fruit. I may have to start.

I remember getting reprimanded for eat too much fruit when I was a kid. Fruit was rationed to last the week. I really, really don't want to too but seriously we go through a lot of fruit.

We are almost out of fresh fruit everything but the bananas are gone:-( We went through half a bushel of apples plus the left over grapes and tangerines and the fruit the neighbors gifted us in less than 10 days. OUCH! Yes we still have frozen, bananas, peaches, blueberries and grapes for smoothies. We also have 80 plus jars of canned peaches but one jars gives us all a small serving. Well you know what that means I need to go shopping, again!

I need to grow an orchard!

a good read

Here is a blog post on the price of eating real food.

Lessons Learned from our 15 day so far.

Lesson #1: I go to the store way too much! A little stop here and there really, really adds up.

Lesson #2: Little things make the simple seem well less simple. Ex. OJ added to breakfast, homemade lemonade with popcorn, Popsicles out in the sunshine. Life is a little dull with out the extras. (We're out of all three.)

Lesson #3: We eat a lot of meat! Seeings how everyone but myself was allergic to dairy, soy and eggs for so long we became some serious carnivores. Meat is expensive!

Lesson #4: I am lazy in the kitchen. Yes I spend probably twice as much time as "most" women today in the kitchen I'm still lazy. It is much, much easier to buy bread than make it yourself. You ALWAYS have to have a plan if cooking from real food ingredients.

Lesson #5: I'm a food snob, but I already knew that. I believe it's my job to nourish my family with real food, not just fill their pie holes as my hubby so affectionately calls them.

Lesson #6: Six people go through much more food than I really comprehended. We could maybe go 1 month with what we having in the house before feeling seriously deprived. So I need to work on my emergency stockpile.

Lesson #7: My desire to donate more food to the food pantry has increased. Also with more variety than the usual free cereal or .25 packages of hot dogs. Lord willing it never happens but if I needed assistants to feed my family I would hope and pray for REAL food.

Lesson #8: We need a few more "cheap eats" on our menu to supplement the feasts the family is accustom too. More soups and less meat and potato meals.

Lesson #9: The LORD has blessed us beyond measure. This should really be number one!

So I will blow through $300 without much trouble. I will go over budget in the name of feeding my family real food as long as we can afford it. Racky will be pulled from karate, the already rare date night will vanish and we will dress in rags before my family is made to eat little Debbie and the rest of her friends. I'm not saying we eat perfectly, far from it but it is a process and we will keep learning and trying to improve our food within our budget.

YOU ARE WHAT YOU EAT!

"Let food be thy medicine and medicine thy food." Hippocrates, 460 BC

Day 13

Still more shopping! You aren't surprised are you?

Meijer
3 bunches of bananas
1 roll mentos
1 Mr Bubble bubble bath
4 boxes of noodles (I had enough coupons to get 26 boxes but I read the ingredients and had to pass- 4 is still too many!)
2 cans of Quaker oats

-4.13 we did return a bag of bottles so that helped

Health Store
2 loaves of YUMMY bread
5 lbs of organic baking flour

-14.97

Down to $38.54. 17 days left there isn't a chance. Oh well we're learning a lot.

Days 11 and 12

Day 11
No money spent!!! I made batch of cinnamon rolls which I rationed through out the day , lest they eat them all in one sitting.


Day 12
$1.10 spent, not to bad. I bought:
12 ears of corn
1 muskmelon
1 quart bag of small tomatoes

I ALWAYS go to the health store on Fridays and pick up fresh delivered, local, organic bread!!! Yummy! Today I resisted and TRIED to bake a loaf, it's not good but we won't starve:-)

For cheap entertainment we went to the zoo this morning and feed the ducks on the way to an appointment. Then this afternoon we walked to the lake and the kids played in the sand and splashed in the water. Zero money spent for a lot of fun.

$57.64 left.

Days 9 and 10

Day 9- no spending! Yippee! We were the recipients of this lovely fruit from our neighbors, which was quite a bit bigger before I go the picture. There used to be about 6 plums and 3 or 4 peaches too. Day 10- A trip to Target .47!!!!!!!!!!!!! For everything!!!

Then on to the "meat" store as we call it. It sells local meat and dairy products. I usually go once a month after I write out the monthly menu.

Well they had a special that for every $10 you spend you get 2 yogurts for .01 each. So 16 yogurts later we're .16 poorer, not to bad.

Here is our meat stash. My originally purchase was 60.06, which is all I'm counting:-). When I got to the check out she told me the ground beef was on sale for $2.97 a pound. This is 25% off, you have to buy 10 pounds to get the discount so $29.70 later was have lots of beef. We only eat beef 2 maybe 3 times month so this will last a while probably to December, especially because I have some in the freezer still.

So sadly only $58.74 left