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| A typical meal: roasted veggies and lentil loaf with rice and homemade kimchi |
We're off! I love a good challenge, so I'm excited about what I'll be learning over the next 30 days! Although this month is shaping up to be pretty crazy as far as work is concerned (I have 43 students instead of the usual 30), I am still committed to blogging regularly to give you…
• A weekly update of what we've been eating and how much we've spent
• Tips for keeping your grocery budget low
• Mini-challenges to take on
• Some of my favorite easy, low-cost recipes
Yesterday I spent an unreasonable amount of time measuring the major items in our pantry and fridge that I know we'll use up in the next few weeks. There's no reason to do this for your own challenge, but Zach and I wanted to get a sense of the dollar amount of food we'll be starting with, to avoid us stocking up right before the challenge and buying extra right after. We want to understand what dollar amount is actually sustainable.
Here are the food items I decided to "start" with for our Super Frugal Grocery Challenge. As per the rules, I didn't count condiments or spices, but I tried to hit most of the major items that I'll be using without getting too finicky. The prices are as close as I could estimate based on my (probably unreasonably time-consuming) research. I will "buy" other ingredients, such as flour, grains, and beans, from my pantry as I use them.
Cupboard:
2 tortillas: 0.47
3/4 loaf of homemade sourdough bread: 0.70
Roasted chickpeas: 0.25
1/3 bottle olive oil: 2.53
Coffee: 1.00
Refrigerator:
3 quarts kefir: 3.59 (we buy expensive milk, but when we culture it, it becomes very cheap kefir!)
1 quart refried beans: 0.40 (our favorite— recipe coming next week)
1 stick butter: 1.49
Cheese, 19 ounces: 4.94
Some leftover rice: 0.10
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| Food is free! |
1 jar peanut butter: 4.86
Two eggs: 0.72 (you can buy a dozen eggs for less than this at Aldi, but Zach and I have decided that we wouldn't compromise our ethics on animal products, even if we were broke. We'll just be eating fewer eggs this month)
3 oz half-and-half: 1.32
3/4 bag carrots: 1.50
Homemade granola bars: 0.50
1/4 bottle juice (for making water kefir): 1.24
(I still need to figure out how much the sauerkraut costs me...)
Pantry:
Rice, 40 ounces: 1.20
Brown sugar, 1 pound (for water kefir): 0.96
Free items:
Asparagus beans (a kind of white bean) from my 2018 garden
Amaranth seeds, from last year's garden
Jerusalem artichokes (today we harvested two five-gallon buckets of them from the backyard!)
Kale, both dried and outside in the garden
Zucchini chips, from a zucchini that was going to get thrown away
Gingko nuts, foraged in the autumn
A rice-and-quinoa instant meal, that Zach rescued from getting thrown away
A big bag of collards, which was going to get thrown away
GRAND TOTAL: $27.77
It's amazing how even bits and pieces of food can add up to quite a lot! In the next few weeks I'll be trying to get through all of these ingredients, optimizing them as much as I can.
Thanks for joining me on this journey!
Lisa
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