Eating from the Pantry Challenge Summary

It's been an interesting month of eating. For the most part, I'd say we ate pretty normally, we were more careful about how many eggs we used (which wouldn't have been an issue at ALL, if our chickens were laying....) and we didn't drink big glasses of milk as often as we might have had we not been trying to make it last.

Our total money spent on groceries for the month of January was $92. That's quite a bit over the planned $60, however, 15 of that was to replenish my son's lunch money account (he eats school lunch one day a week), and that doesn't come out of our regular grocery budget. That puts us pretty close to $15 over budget, which is how much we spent on wheat. After years of storing hundreds of pounds of wheat, we've finally used all of it up, and didn't pay enough attention to our supplies.

Some thoughts from this experiment:
I need to store powdered milk- if I used it in baking more often, I wouldn't need to buy as much milk, and also would be covered in case of emergency.

I also learned that it's really useful to have eggs around. I might look into powdered eggs for use in baking- as a back up for times when our chickens are not earning their keep.

Limiting trips to the grocery store made a big difference in how much I spent. I've been in the habit of going shopping every week, but have discovered if I buy an extra gallon (or even half gallon) of milk, that we do just fine going longer in between.

I've missed fresh produce. While I bought some at the grocery store (3 times during the month), it really wasn't enough. My parents shared some apples and pears that they received as a gift. But today as my Mister finished up a race, and approached the table with bananas, bread and gatorade, I had a "I NEED a banana moment". I'll be looking into joining a food coop again for fruits and vegetables, we've done one in the past and really enjoyed the variety.

I'm thrilled to have some extra grocery money this month to split between our camper fund (which is where the wheat money will come from), and The Road Home.

Our list of things that are needing some serious restocking has grown pretty long this month, so it will be interesting to try to resupply over the next couple of months without killing my grocery budget. (I admit to having thoughts of using part of our tax return to shore up our food storage....).

Eating from the Pantry Challenge

Crystal, from Money Saving Mom is holding a "Eat from the Pantry Challenge" where she's encouraging others to participate in a month-long stint with little to no grocery shopping. She encourages everyone to look at their pantries and figure out what works for them. My Eat From the Pantry Challenge will look like this:

1-Only 3 trips to the store in January, for dairy products and fresh produce, with a total grocery budget of $60 for the month. Because of my milk issues, the majority of that budget will go to buying the more expensive milk that my crazy brain insists on. We'll also eat out once during the month, but dining out money comes from a different budget than our grocery budget.

2- Not included in the three trips is our regular trip to costco for stocking up on basics (we didn't go in december, and are running low on important things like TP), and also trips to Rite Aid (I'm not counting Rite Aid, because I don't spend "new" money there anyway, it's all recycled rebates from earlier trips).

3- The money I save on groceries will be split in half, with the first half going to the Road Home Shelter in Salt Lake, and the other half being added to our camper savings fund.

Do you have a stocked pantry? If so, join in the fun! Jessica from Utah Deal Diva is also taking part in the challenge, check out her blog to see amazing pictures of her pantry and freezer (I think she could go for several months!).

Changing the way we live

I've been thinking a lot lately about why we do things the way we do. Why we buy the things we buy, and eat the things we eat. And why we're so hesitant to look at other options, and so quick to laugh and label different ideas as "crazy liberal ideas". Ideas can't hurt us, so why don't we do research and then accept or discount the ideas based on their actual merit?

I've been reading books like, In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan, and Animal Vegetable Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver, and watching documentaries like Botany of Desire and Food Inc..

I gow a garden in the summer, and can as much food as possible for winter use. I raise chickens for eggs (if they'd start laying again), and I try to eat real food as much as possible, though we do still eat convenience foods more than I'd like.

I've been thinking more and more about living in a sustainable way, and the changes I would have to make are scary, but I think they're scary because we've grown up thinking that the way things are are the only way.

What do we do when we can't go to costco and buy a jumbo bag of frozen chicken breast? It sometimes feels easier to live in ignorance of where your food comes from, because once you've seen it, it's a lot harder to continue eating it.

I've joined the coupon craze, though mostly for non-food items since we don't eat a lot of the things there are coupons for (though I got a great deal on walnuts and butter and now have a nice supply in my freezer), but even for things like razors, I've had feelings of guilt for quite some time. I can get razors for free, but not the extra blades, so to never pay for razors we'd end up throwing away entire razors every time the blade goes dull. It's hard to balance the desire for a years supply of all things and still not be part of a rampant consumerism culture.

There are lots of things to think about, but in thinking about starting small, I'm researching how I can avoid eating commercialized meats. Being taught not to waste things, we'll finish up the bag of frozen chicken in the freezer over the next couple of months, and hopefully by then I'll have ideas on where to buy chicken that was raised in a sustainable way, that is healthy for me, for the farmers, and for the planet. I'll also look into the milk I buy and decide if I need to pay more for organic milk, and if that means that we'll be drinking less of it. And, if my chickens don't start laying again, I'll be looking into cruelty free eggs.

I know all of this sounds crazy to some people, but I feel strongly that we humans were placed on the earth to be wise stewards over all things, and I can't justify supporting companies that don't care if they're making us sick, or if their chicken farmers are developing allergies to antibiotics because of their overuse in the chickens, or workers on a killing floor who lose their fingernails to infections, or who care more about their bottom lines than about people dying from e coli poisoning.

UPDATE:

I'm adding links to locally grown/sustainable farms as I find them. The one I have so far is Christiansen's Hog Heaven, which sells heritage breed pigs all processed and delivered in little packages. We're ordering a whole pork and splitting it among family.

Another grocery post, sorry..

Milk was on sale at Smiths Market Place this week for less than Costco, so I decided to go there today instead of costco next week.  

Smiths doesn't break down the receipt like other stores, but before coupons started coming off, the total was pretty close to $90.  

I paid exactly $20.  

The kids soaps and cheerios were free, the knox gelatin and the salsa were -$2 (so buying them subtracted a total of $14 off my bill).  We don't use store bought salsa, but I figured we can donate them to the food bank or give them away.  There were also special deals on the quaker things that made them between 50 cents and $1 per box.

Picture Round Up

Dinner two nights ago- it looked so good I had to take a picture.  Buffalo steak with mushrooms and asparagus and couscous.  Plus a side of home made fake-sour-dough bread to dip in oil and balsamic vinegar.  Dinner doesn't get much better than that.

I've taken up couponing.  As a hobby more than a way to save money, since I can't figure out how people live off of the groceries they can buy with coupons, but getting things for free or really cheap does bring a bit of a rush.  All of this was just over $30.  I "saved" $60.  (I also got a pack of gum for free but forgot to put it in the picture.)  Yes, I'm photographing my groceries now.  My life is that exciting. 

Signs of Spring I:  Baby Chicks 4 bantam Cochins, 1 standard Rhode Island Red (not pictured).

Signs of Spring II: Bare root strawberries planted a week ago are indeed alive and growing.

Signs of Spring III: Popcorn popping on the apricot tree.  The recent cold weather doesn't appear to have done too much damage (yet).