Project: Food Budget, Week #6


That is me looking at my grocery receipts and thinking, "Hmmmm. What the ?#@* happened?" Last week turned into a blizzard and we did a lot of grazing. I also baked a lot of unexpected goodies since the temps were well below freezing. Nothing like an arctic blast to get me to fire up the oven. I cooked almost none of my meals last week so am adding them back into this week's rotation to hopefully help me stay under budget. Also, taco night leftovers ended up lasting through 3 meals. Crazy!



My 7 main meals:

Extras (I have all the ingredients for this stuff so don't have to buy anything new except fruit):

What I bought:


Coffee                  9.99
Peas                    5.99
Tortilla Chips          3.29
Flour Tortillas         2.99
Vegetarian Chili        9.99
Veggie Patties         11.79
Sugar                   8.89
Avocados                4.99
Daiya Cheddar           3.49
Daiya Mozzarella        3.49
Fire Roasted Tomatoes   1.39
Zucchini                1.01
Potatoes                1.99
Snapea Crisps           1.69
Powdered Sugar          3.29
Ghost Pepper Salsa      2.50
Hemp Milk               2.99
Hazelnut Milk           2.99
Habanero Salsa          1.99
Sour Cream for the Men  1.66
Orzo                    1.99
Eden Shake (Furikake)   5.99
Ghirardelli Chips       2.49
Bananas                 1.10 
Napa Cabbage            2.00
Radishes                 .83
Cilantro                 .68
----------------------------------------
Total                 101.48
Minus Gift Card       -26.99
----------------------------------------
                       74.49


Splurges

Okay, I just have to say that a good deal of the $101.48 I spent was on splurgy stuff. Not just your run-of-the-mill splurges, either. I got a $50 Christmas gift card to Central Market from my kid and spent $26.99 on stuff like the Eden Shake (which I have been lusting after for years but couldn't bring myself to buy because it's $6 for some damn seaweed and sesame seeds). I also got hemp milk and hazelnut milk since I'm trying to find a coffee creamer replacement. I got the new salsa from Mrs. Renfro's (Ghost Pepper -- YOWEE!) and some more habanero salsa, etc. So, I'm going to take that off my total since those things I consider gifts and not money that comes from my grocery budget.

The real splurge that I could kick myself for on here is the vegetarian chili. It's fresh (not canned) and is quite a lot of chili, but now that I look at it -- $10??? -- what was I thinking? I guess I just wanted to try it and when I see vegan stuff that doesn't have a lot of funky, overly processed stuff in it at a mainstream store, I want to support those efforts. Still, I could have made about 10 times that amount of chili for the same money. To top it off, when boyfriend was going to put some one of the containers in the freezer, he dropped it and about half of it went on the floor. Oops.

Bottom Line

If it hadn't been for the gift card, I would have gone over my budget of $75. Although, maybe not. I don't think I would have purchased such extravagant items with my hard-earned cash. Gifts are supposed to be just that and I wanted to get some special items at this store that I love. Still, spending $74.49 is just too much when this week was just a repeat of last week's meals that I didn't even end up cooking. Next week, I've got to do better instead of just filling up all the empty space between what I really need and what I've allotted to spend.


This entry is part of Project: Food Budget. (Join here!) Check out how the entire crew is doing:

Comments

  1. EmilyFebruary 10, 2011 at 11:24 AM

    congrats on staying under budget. and for allowing yourself some extra special items. :)

    my mom loves the so delicious coconut milk creamer for her coffee. says it's the best out of all of the flavors. just in case you are still wanting to experiment!

    ReplyDelete
  2. MeloMealsFebruary 12, 2011 at 7:20 PM

    I LOVE Mrs Renfros salsas.. The Green is my favorite..

    I'm going to check out your budget clubby thing.. cool beans!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Came for the Health Benefits but I'm Staying for the Animals

Image
Something has happened to me recently, but first, let me talk a little about how I arrived at this point. For most of my 43 years on this planet, I've been a vegetarian. When I was 14 years old, living with a foster family who owned a cattle farm, something clicked in me and I decided that I'd had enough of eating animals. But it wasn't easy. There wasn't a Whole Foods on every corner. Grocery stores in my little country town did not sell almond milk and tofu. The vegetables I'd been exposed to were peas, potatoes and corn and not much else up to that point. I didn't know how to cook anything and I didn't have my own money to even buy my own food. Luckily, that farmer's wife helped me sign up for a subscription to Vegetarian Times and was very supportive of what I wanted to do. It could have gone another way, for sure. So, for years, I did it for the animals. I didn't have graphic videos of male chicks being ground and suffocated. I
Read more of this post >>

Cheap Alternative to Maple Syrup

Image
One of my favorite vegan cookies has maple syrup as one of the ingredients. I love the stuff but it can get expensive ($14 at Costco is a deal, but still) when you use it a lot or want to make a big batch of cookies. The aforementioned cookie recipe calls for 1/3 cup of it for just 8-10 cookies. I decided to see if I could just make a syrup myself and it worked out great! Brown Sugar Syrup You'll need: 1 1/2 cups water 2 cups packed organic / vegan brown sugar Optional: 1/2 teaspoon flavoring (maple extract, vanilla, whatever floats your boat) What you do: Mix sugar and water together and bring to a boil. Gently boil for 2 minutes and remove from heat and allow to cool. Once cooled, add flavoring if desired. Store in fridge. The first time I boiled the mix for 3 minutes and the cookies came out super crisp and had a toffee flavor. The syrup was just too thick and condensed. The coookies weren't bad, but I really like a softer cookie. This weekend, I boiled
Read more of this post >>

Meatless Monday

Image
If you're a complete and total newbie when it comes to vegan food and you're thinking about making the transition but you're not quite ready yet or you just don't want to go whole hog (or "whole tofu" as we say in the veg world), then why not give Meatless Mondays a try? Not everyone is ready to make the leap in one day from meat at every meal to zero animal products whatsoever. That's okay. Use this one day a week to give it a test drive. Once you've got a month of Meatless Mondays under your belt, try adding another day per week. Maybe Veggie Taco Tuesdays or Spaghetti Saturdays? It's up to you. Try to focus on the progress you're making toward a completely plant-based diet and not worry about every single day being perfect. If you really can't let go of that struggle for perfection, then make the same meal every Meatless Monday, but work on changing it each week until it's just the way you like it. Then start perfecting anot
Read more of this post >>