Mid-Month Thrifty Grocery Spending Update

So we are over half way through with the month and we are making it very comfortably on our 550.00 food budget.

As I reported earlier, a good amount of the 110.00 allotted for Wal-mart went for non-food items.

We have no more money in the Wal-mart and Piggly Wiggly budgets as of today.

We have no co-cop money left because we received and payed for our order last week. We have about 15.00 left in our milk budget and 100.00 left in our market budget. I over-estimated the market budget because I had been buying extra fruits and vegetables for preserving. This month I have not been buying extra. I will transfer a little of the market money to other areas next week to finish out the month. I should come out under our budget of 550.00. Which is good, beacuse I do not buy meat from week to week. We buy a whole grass-fed calf for the freezer each fall as well as some chickens form our local sustainable farm. I can now add our meat cost in and hopefully come close to the 550.00 budget.

To make things stretch further this month I began making a breakfast and lunch menu. The breakfast menu really helps because the boys would eat eggs every morning. But with a menu we now eat eggs only two mornings per week. Eggs can get expensive at $3.00 per dozen.

I have gotten lots of pears from our tree in the backyard. I have made lots of pear sauce. I have gotten apples from people with trees in the their backyards. I boiled the cores and peelings with water the other day and used that for apple juice.

I have also been trying to cook at least one meat-less meal per week.

I water down our milk if I am running low and water down the milk I am cooking with as well.

Still Learning
Holli