The Super Frugal Grocery Challenge, Week 1

Eggs and rice with stir-fried carrots and collard greens, topped with homemade kung pao sauce and chili oil

(Read all Super Frugal Grocery Challenge posts here!) 

Dollar amount of food consumed this week: $80.59

Total spent so far: $80.59

We made it through the first week of the challenge! You will note that if we spend this amount every week, we'll end up way over our $200 goal, but a lot of this money went into dry ingredients that we'll be eating later (I now have bread, chili, and refried beans in the freezer), as well as replacing expensive staples (olive oil, butter). This number is different from what we actually paid a grocery store this week ($40.68), but as previously mentioned, I spent some time to try to calculate the rough dollar amount of what we've been eating from the fridge and pantry. 

I've been keeping track of our meals in order to give an idea of how we've been eating (as well as to appall you with the lack of vegetables and profusion of peanut butter toast), but first, a few takeaways:

1. Food is more expensive than I think it is. Even working with very cheap ingredients, I found myself astonished at how quickly our grocery bill racked up! Next week, we're going to be intentionally about eating more simply and relying even more heavily on the cheap staples.

2. Vegan food is not expensive. Yes, an Impossible Burger is more expensive than a conventional one, but as a rule, vegan food is the cheapest food possible (especially if you have high standards for what animal products you buy!). We've been eating more vegan meals than usual just because they're cheaper.

3. Free food is amazing. Sadly, right now we have very little variety from the garden, but the profusion of sunchokes is very helpful! The kale is helping provide some our nutritional needs, and I hope to be foraging some wild greens if this weather keeps up. This week I also (kind of accidentally) started a "crop swap" group in my neighborhood. I was able to give away some sunchokes, and one of my neighbors gave me a dozen eggs from her backyard hens! I was so excited about this, and it gave me hope for more abundance as my gardening neighbors and I get into the growing season. The more people grow food and share, the easier it is to create food security and justice in our neighborhoods. This whole project reminds me of why this is so, so important.

4. The hardest part of the challenge is trying to track the price of every ingredient. Making low-cost meals is difficult, but not as difficult as trying to weigh out the ingredients to see how much "cost" I should write down! However, I'm excited to see the data at the end of the month to help us picture how we could spend this way more sustainably, so I think it'll be worth it. 

Anyway, onto the meal list!

Snacks/drinks this week: Homemade crackers, carrot sticks, homemade hummus, roasted chickpeas, homemade mead, homemade water kefir, coffee

Day 1: Peanut butter toast (with homemade sourdough bread), burritos (with homemade refried beans), and a potluck with friends (I made rice and veggies)

Day 2: Leftovers, rice and eggs, peanut butter toast, lentil loaf (like meatloaf but with lentils) with rice and red sauerkraut, homemade mead

Day 3: Homemade flatbread pizza, leftovers, buckwheat pancakes with homemade maple syrup, oranges (which were on sale for super cheap at Aldi)

Day 4: Oranges, pancakes and eggs, beans and rice, mashed sunchokes and potatoes with lentil loaf

Day 5: Peanut butter toast, oranges, leftovers, homemade pasta with tomato sauce from two summers ago (from the freezer) and crumbled fried lentil loaf

Day 6: Burrito, leftovers, peanut butter toast, chili, sunchoke-potato pancakes

Day 7: Peanut butter toast, leftovers, chili burrito, eggs (from our neighbor's hens!) with sunchoke-potato pancakes

I'm happy that we're done with one week! Only three and a half weeks to go! In the meantime, do you have any questions for us?

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