I need some accountability or something

Money is slipping though my fingers like water these days it seems. Some of it was restocking the house a bit and filling in holes in our emergency food supply but enough is enough. So if it takes me taking pictures of our food to make me really think about what happens to land in my cart so be it.

So here is the second of the 30 days. Okay not 30 days because the last 2 days are like the end of labor, you don't think its ever going to end and you are completely zapped of all your energy so 28 days it is:D

Monday was the official starting day. I'm striving for a 400/450 dollar budget this time. I wrote out a five week menu to finish off October and then all of November. I try to balance feast meals with pauper meals. I also wrote out a two week grocery list to my four stores that I hit regularly. Yesterday I made it to two and the hubby stopped and picked up bread on his way home before the store closed.


Meijer: $85.39

There are some expensive thing in there not normally purchased like balsamic vinegar, paper plates (road trip today so "needed" these) coconut milk to make pumpkin pie for the hubby, and single serve yogurts. By the way pumpkin pie yogurt tastes nothing like pumpkin pie, gag!!!!
The frozen bags of veggies give you the most bang for your buck but you have to cook those.
Target:
$45.50
Lots of veggies and fiber means lots of tp:D (Too much info huh?) Blue corn chips are supposed to be lower on the glycemic index and hubby is trying to watch that. Fruit snacks for the kids, no food coloring -Yeah!!!!
(have you ever tried to find a bag of pretzels without corn syrup??? what do pretzels need corn syrup for anyways, they're a salty snack??)

Health store (not pictured) $7.58
He did make one unauthorized purchase so I'm not counting the coconut ice cream "dove" type bars but I will eat some;-)

Grand total of $138.47

Grapefruit Time!

Well today was rainy so a perfect day to do a "little" canning. Family Fare has 5 lbs. bags of grapefruit on sale for $2.50 so I bought 2. So these sweet little jars after lids can out to be about .55 cents a jar. Hubby did have one of the grapefruits in his lunch today so I might have gotten 1 more jar out of the bunch. I used a very very lite sucanat syrup with the grapefruit juice itself.

If you buy these at Costco they are $1.06 a piece, but they do throw in some corn syrup and preservatives for good measure:D I don't buy them for all these reasons but like the concept.

They were quite time consuming, it took me about an hour to peel and cut 10 pounds worth. This was while doing math with Racky so I guess not to bad but the jars are small. They will be perfect to toss into the hubby's lunches when the refrigerator is barren waste land. All in all I may do another #10 but I'll ask the hubby to try these out first and tell me what he thinks.

If you like to eat grapefruit I found an awesome video on grapefruit peeling here.

This is part of Kimi's Pennywise Platter Thursday.

Pineapple fun!

From this... to this!17 pints of pineapple. We ended up eating one of the pineapples so 7 medium sized pineapples got us 17 pints. If I figure the lids at $.10 then the cost per jar is $.80. Not too bad. We like pineapple but not really the canned stuff that tastes like the can itself, so hopefully this turns out all right. If pineapples ever get as low as 99 cents I will do a ton more, these were $1.69 a piece from Aldi's.

Next thing to try is grapefruit in little jam jars for the hubby's lunch, but I have to get some of the leaves done first:-) One project at a time.

Summer pics

They kids first experience with store bought playdoh. Can't you tell they are a little excited.

Racky's future's so bright he's gotta wear shades.

My "rock stars". Lovely.

Last nice Sunday this year the kids and I hit the beach for a little sandcastle building.

Biggie's new nickname is Puddin' and it just fits him perfectly.

Lettie would live in her swimsuit if we let her, inside out, backwards it doesn't matter, life is better in a swimsuit to her.

My pretty little girl how are you six years old already, pushing seven!

Then there's Racky, I love that little man!

That's it summer's over, brrrrrrrrrrrr its cold!

The Price of Food

I found this reading the book the Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, if you are good at "eating the chicken and spitting out the bones" I highly recommend this book. I found it quite fitting after last months food challenge.

"The researchers found that a dollar could buy 1,200 calories of potato chips and cookies; spent on a whole food like carrots, the same dollar buys only 250 calories. On the beverage aisle, you can buy 875 calories of soda for a dollar, or 170 calories of fruit juice form concentrate. "

Real food just plain and simple costs more. You have to make it a priority or you will never be able to afford it.

The end of the 30 days

So the thirty days really ends today. 30 days is a really long long time! Here is the weekend run down and it's not pretty!

Friday night after 40 plus jars of pears I waivered and called the hubby to please pick up pizza on his way home. $22

Saturday I was bedridden after over exertion on Friday so hubby went to the health store for bread and rice milk 50 bucks later he is out of there, rice milk was 33 of it. He should never go to that store with money in his pocket. Cookies, coconut milk ice cream bars and lots of bread.

Then he brought me home lunch because the kids ate all the leftover pizza, $12.

Sunday no spending just canned 42 more quarts of pears. Hallelujah that's done.

Monday the Meijer festivities began about $15 out of pocket for mad crazy amounts of hand soap, shampoo, toothbrushes, flossers, cotton swabs and whatever else there was.

So add $99 on to my last total = $527.55 for the month!!!! That's almost twice the amount, oh well. I'm sure this is still less than what we normally spend. My goal normally is $150 a week or $600 a month.

I did learn a few things. I need to learn to bake more than cinnamon roll, apple crisp, tortillas and biscuits. We should have a greater supply of frozen veggies in the house for days when the fridge is empty. I miss me my Costco!!! (I'm going later to day to restock:D) Also have more treats for the kids like Popsicles. They go a long way in them not felling deprived.

So there you have it, 30 days in the life of my food budget!

The post where she blows the budget right out of the water!!!! *Edited*

Okay all was going okay, I knew I would go over but wow I blew it!

Friday I stopped at Big lots. I spent just under $5 on:

2 cans of organic tomatoes (I needed sauce for pizza)
1 box of Kleenex for a sick baby
1 can of organic soup for hubby's emergency supply a work

Then the hubby calls on his way home to find out what's for dinner. WHAT there's no olives for the pizza, he has to stop at the store and get some. $13 bucks later we have ham, green olives and black olives and peperoni's. I will give it to him that the pizza was yummy but we could have ordered pizza for that!

Saturday

There's no eggs, bread or fresh fruit left!

Stop #1 The Orchard
$94 OUCH!!!!!!
3.5 bushels of pears
1/2 bushel of apples

Stop #2 the Health Store
$15
3 loaves of bread (I'm freezing one for next weekend so I don't have to stop, but we're almost out of rice milk so I'll probably have to stop anyways)
2 dozen eggs
1 bag corn chips

Stop #3 Costco (should just stop typing now because we all know what happens to your money in that store)
$39.26
Nitrate free hot dogs (for the days when we get home and find out that daddy ate our lunch;)
Ham
#10 of organic carrots
butter
organic lemon juice (might as well we're on a money spending roll now)
organic salt free seasoning- a must have at $8

Okay So I decided to run to Meijers too Stop#4
$9.83
1 bag of organic potatoes
10 Delmonte cans of fruit
2 frozen meal -Free with coupon

$176.09 in one day!!! Oh deary!

$168.55 over the hoped $300. $15.61 per day instead of $10. I can live with that number.

I hope to end up with 80 plus jars of pears when this is all said and done plus canned tomatoes. So that is a huge bit of it. Lately it seems that there is always something to stock up on.
May- 50 lbs of asparagus
June- strawberries enough to make 33 pints of jam
August- peaches and blueberries
and now pears.
Then there will be apples and the 1/4 of a cow we ordered.
Always something. I think we are good for the next 8 days besides a bag of corn chips and possibly rice milk. So I think that is the end of the food budget posts or at least I hope.