Grocery Spending/Menu Plan | insert creative title here
It's a multiple-picture week. 😉
This is my produce, none of which is local, because farmer's markets aren't open here yet (and I did try signing up for a CSA, but the programs here are full already. Boo. I did get on a waiting list, though).
I already have zucchini, peppers, onions, and carrots in the fridge, so I didn't need much in the way of vegetables.
This is my meat. I almost bought a package of Laura's Lean Beef, which is supposed to be all-natural and such, but I noticed that the package said nothing about whether the cows were pastured or grass-fed, so I put it back. If I'm going to pay $5/pound for beef, I want to make sure that it's a lot different than the $1.50/pound beef.
This is all of the refrigerated/frozen food I bought. I normally buy my eggs from my blog reader, but I'm just about out and so I bought a package to hold me over until I get some more local eggs.
And this is everything else. I got the cereal for about $1 a box and because I bought it, I got a coupon for a free gallon of milk next week. The deodorant is normally priced at $3.19, but they were on sale for $2 this week, and I had a coupon for $1 off of 2. So, I got them for $1.50 each (see, I do buy toiletries sometimes!).
I spent $55.14 at Aldi and $46.01 at Weis, for a total of $101.15.
Breakfasts this week will be yogurt, bananas, muffins, toast, and oatmeal. Lunches will be homemade yogurt, yogurt smoothies, fruit, sandwiches, and leftovers as necessary.
Saturday
Sunday-We're having some friends over after church, so we're having our big meal at noon this week.
- Grilled Fajitas (made with chicken, shrimp and veggies)
- salad
- tortilla chips and fresh salsa
Monday
- Chicken and Vegetable Pasta Salad
- Whole Wheat Rolls
Tuesday
- Stromboli
- green salad
Wednesday
- Ham sandwiches on homemade rolls
- whatever produce needs using
Thursday
- Aussie Chicken
- green salad
- french bread
Friday
- BBQ Beef
- homemade buns
- green beans
I'd love to be part of a CSA. We don't have one here. The closest one is an hour away so it isn't an option. I received an email yesterday from a local gal that is trying to organize a local farmer's market. We have one in the next city (11 miles) which is easy enough to get to on a Saturday but I'd love to have one here in our own downtown.
I've seen stromboli on your menu before. I assume you use a homemade dough; what do you use for the filling?
Instead of ground beef try bison (buffalo) meat. It is all natural, grass fed and tastes so much better than ground beef. It is about $4-5 per lb.- not cheap. Not all stores carry it. Where I live Giant, Kroger and Whole Foods have it.
Have you looked to see if anywhere around you does a winter farmer's market? I didn't think there was a farmer's market around us yet either until I did some research. The summer ones are much better advertised because it's technically "harvest time" then, but the winter ones provide some good things too. I get my meat, eggs, apples, and salad greens there. I have to agree with the person who mentioned bison. It's delicious and it's very lean. Grass fed ground bison has 179 calories and around 8.5 grams of fat per serving. Comparatively, ground chicken has 189 calories and around 11 grams of fat per serving. Not only is the bison raised more sustainably, but it's lower in fat and calories as well. It's a win-win! Now if you could find a local farm who has bison, you'd be all set. 😉
I love that I can see what meal I'll be enjoying tomorrow at your house. ...looking forward to it. =)
lol! I didn't know if you read my blog regularly, but I wondered if you or our other guests would be checking out the menu plan. =P
uugh. i'm constantly struggling with the local thing. i know local is a good thing but we don't grow grapes here in winter so i know they are not local even at our farmers market! lol
we have several farmers market open year round here. one stand has great prices. however it is SUCH a pain to go there! i'm trying to do it more often but it is only open on fridays and that doesn't always work for me.
i'm thinking we are going to buy a half of a cow soon. no it won't be grassfed, but it will be a local cow:)
also..can you share how you make stromboli with out costing an arm and a leg for lunchmeat??
ps. also share about the CSA. i have looked at them and found them to be very pricey. $500 seems like a lot. and the types of fruit and veggies you get are not always what i want. plus...they are not usually based for families of 6. i would LOVE to hear more about what you find out!
i know i won't ever pay a ton of money for local stuff...because then we won't eat near the amount of fresh fruit as we do now...so it's a trade off. i'm looking forward to hearing about your journey with this!
I go through these same "meat decisions," all the time, and I must admit it does make me buy it much less. Since I'm also learning so many new meatless recipes (meatlessmonday.com), plus getting the CSA delivery, it's not a hardship to buy maybe one piece of wild salmon a week or one package of organic chicken.
We watched Food Inc. last year and last night we watched Our Daily Bread, a German documentary about the mechanization in the production of our food. There was no dialogue or interviews, it was "silent" except for the sound of the environment they were in. What I saw made me so glad we're in a CSA, and even more happy I haven't wanted to eat beef in the past 10 years since reading "Fast Food Nation." The movie is incredibly disturbing, but a real eye opener.
I can see that the demand for CSA is growing, and that is great! I hope you are able to enjoy one soon! If not, the Farmer's Markets should be going strong by next month.
as always, love the stuffed animals! 🙂
What is a CSA? Never heard of them. I grew up on a farm with cows and just so you know, you cannot feed grass to cows in the winter they have to get grain. What I think is more important than grass fed is to buy local and hormone free from local farmers. They treat their animals different than feed lots after all their animals is how they get their paycheck.
CSA stands for Community Supported Agriculture. You pay the farmer upfront and get a proportional share of what ze grows, usually one every one or two weeks. CSA are (almost?) always local operations, typically small farms and typically environmentally friends but not necessarily organic.
Though grassfed cows eat grain in the winter, buying grassfed IS important! Grassfed beef is much healthier than grainfed--it has a lower fat content and higher amounts of omega-3 fatty acids. (Also, I think it tastes much better). Of course, while ideally, everyone would purchase local, hormone-free, grassfed beef, I know that's not always possible. But there are definitely advantages to grassfed.
I was in Aldi's today (Chicago). The green bell peppers were $3.49 for three, and the multi-colored peppers were $3.29. They're usually around a buck-fifty. I'm just wondering if the green pepper prices have gone up where you live.
Just curious...what is Aussie chicken? Served with Vegemite? Kidding, of course. I'm in Australia, just wondering what makes the chicken Aussie.
I noticed that you are making Aussie Chicken. Is that a copy recipe of a restaurant dish? Ever since I have discovered a recipe with the same name, I have no need to go and eat it out. It tastes almost as good at home!! I often will serve it with seasoned fries, just to fake myself out even more! It is really yummy and there is the satisfaction of knowing you saved a bunch of money in the process!!
A question: your menu does not seem to reflect what you buy in some cases (for example, the perch and crabmeat this week.) Wondering if you are stocking up, saving them for next week, or...? I tend to buy only what I will use for that week's menu at places like Aldi where things are pretty much always the same price. Thanks for clarifying!
Well, my shopping is always a little off-kilter from my menu, because my menu plan is a couple of days ahead. The food I buy goes from Thursday to Thursday, but my menu plan starts on Saturdays! lol So, the perch and the crabmeat were for the Thursday and Friday meal of last week, which you can see on last week's menu post. I hope that makes sense!
I recently too almost bought Laura's Lean Beef, till I noticed that the meat in the tube comes from the U.S., Canada and Mexico!!(I think I'm remembering that right. It says on the packaging) Even if it's not those exact three places, it gave me the heebi-geebies. I'm not overly zealous about things being organic and all-natural, but I'd like my meat to all come from the same country(U.S. of course!), if not the same butcher. So we're looking into buying half a cow from a local farm where the cow are grass fed and raised from calf to butchering. Right after I get a big freezer. lol I know it's not the cheapest, but it's definitely the healthiest.
My, you must have a large menagerie of stuffed animals! 🙂
I heard on the news today that there's a surplus of strawberries in the stores and prices have been slashed. Are there any good strawberry recipes you could recommend?
You can't beat homemade strawberry freezer jam. Most boxes of pectin for jam making have a version printed in the instructions. It's super easy (but make sure you measure very carefully), and the taste just can't compare to anything you can buy.
I signed up for 1/2 share of a CSA this year. It was a bit of a compromise. My husband found a deal on Steaks and meat, I wasn't too thrilled about upping our red meat intake. He let me have my CSA to go with his deal. My only hope is that we can make enough room in our freezer for all of this food!