Stretching Our Food

by FrugalBabe on January 26, 2010

I love grocery shopping.  I have no interest at all in going to the mall, but I can happily spend an hour or so wandering around a grocery store.   We almost never eat out, and I cook just about all of our food from scratch, which helps to keep our total food costs reasonable.  According to our credit card spending report, we’ve average just under $600/month for the last 12 months at grocery stores.  In addition, we usually spend about $150/month at Costco, most of which is for food.  After housing, food is definitely our largest expense.

I usually go into town and do my grocery shopping once a week.  But it’s been 11 days now since I went shopping, and we’re still going strong.  I decided to see how long I could go without shopping, and it’s working great.  We have a pantry and freezer full of food, but I tend to focus on the fresh produce first, forget about the stored food, and then go back to the grocery store when I run out of fresh produce.  This time, I’m focusing on using up what we have before I go shopping again.  We have lots of dried legumes in the pantry, so we had lentil soup yesterday and we’re having black bean chili this evening.  I have been using greens from our cold frames for green smoothies, and combining them with dried greens that I have on hand (spirulina, several kinds of seaweed, wheat grass powder, and dried mint leaves).  I’m using up frozen veggies and bulk dried items.  We eat oats for breakfast every day, and since we buy our oats in 50 pound bags, we rarely have to replenish our supply.

Since we live in a small town now, we spend almost no money unless we go into the big town 10 miles from here.  That’s where the grocery store and thrift stores are, as well as most of the other places where we buy things; we try to combine trips, and schedule all of our errands to coincide with a grocery run.  So if we aren’t grocery shopping, we pretty much aren’t spending money at all.  We’re more than half way through our current credit card billing cycle, and we’ve had a total of 12 transactions so far.

I’m loving this challenge of making nutritious meals for my family just using what I already have on hand.  I’m finding that a little creativity goes a long way, and I’m hoping to make it to the weekend before I have to shop again.

Related posts:

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  3. More On Kids And Food
  4. The Cheapest Health Food
  5. Stretching the Life Of Our Oven
  • http://www.squidoo.com/xml/syndicate_lensmaster/purplelady Carol Ann Wiley

    I loved reading this and I so identified with it. We have been trying to use up the food in our pantry and freezer partly to be frugal and also to make room in both areas to add more. Right now larger pantry items end up on the floor in front of the pantry and there is no room in the freezer for my ice cream fix.

    Your post made me decide to start using some of the recipe sites that let you look for recipes based on what ingredients you have. Then I just need to decide to actually try some of them.

    Good luck to us both.

  • http://mommy-nature.blogspot.com Deborah Schneider

    Dear FB,

    Wow, it sounds as though you’re doing everything that you can to keep costs down. It seems as though you must live in an expensive region, however. The costs that you’ve noted would really put a hole in my budget.

    Please be well.

    Peace,

    Deb

  • FrugalBabe

    Deb,
    I’m not sure if we live in an expensive region – I’d say it’s about average. It’s cold and snowy right now, so pretty much everything has to be grown elsewhere and trucked in. Our costs are a bit on the high side mainly because I only buy organic food. I make up for it somewhat by cooking everything from scratch and by not eating out, and we don’t buy meat, dairy, or eggs, all of which tend to be expensive. Even with that, I know we do spend quite a bit on food. But given how little we spend on everything else, I’m ok with the higher-than-average food budget.

  • http://sensetosave.com Kacie

    We’re joining a CSA this year and I’m so excited! It’ll be great to have fresh produce all picked out and waiting for me each week. I’m sure I’ll want to supplement my share with a few items from the grocery, but I hope that it’ll save me time and money. Plus, it’ll be easier to eat more healthfully!

    I don’t know if a CSA is an option in your area, but maybe it’ll help you save some money.

    Even though $600 sounds a bit high, the fact that you don’t go out to eat helps some. Some other family might spend $400 at the supermarket but another few hundred at restaurants each month, for example.

    I think it’s ok to splurge in one enjoyable category if you’re conservative in others.

  • http://mommy-nature.blogspot.com Deborah Schneider

    Dear FB,

    Now I understand. My husband and I do many of the same things that you and your family do: we don’t eat out often (perhaps once or twice a month on date night); we cook nearly everything from scratch (including our bread and yogurt); we buy in bulk (including the 25lb bags of organic soybeans from the food co-op for our soymilk maker); we make our own detergents; we grow some of our own veggies; and we eat no meat and very, very little dairy (our chickens provide our eggs). The one thing we do not do is purchase only organics. Right now, about half of our purchases are organic, and between the two of us, we spend about $75-$80 per week. That seems like a lot to me. It almost hurts at the checkout stand. I know that the most ethical thing to do would be to buy only organic and local, but I cannot seem to get beyond the sticker shock sometimes. I really do admire you for putting aside monetary considerations to make such awesome purchasing decisions. I hope that I will be able to get there one day. Right now, my husband and I are choking a bit on his law school debts while we both work in low-paying public-sector jobs. Technically, we could probably afford to spend just a bit more on food, but I try to put our extra pennies toward chipping away at that 70k burden around our necks, lol. Please keep up the good work and awesome blogging. Peace, Deb

  • FrugalBabe

    Thanks for the kind words Deb! Until 2007, we were paying off debt that we incurred to start our business, and it wasn’t until we paid it off that I started buying only organic food. Once we were debt free (other than the mortgage), we felt that it was ok to spend more on our food. I’m impressed with your determination to rid yourselves of those student loans – good luck!

  • mc

    How do you store your 50 lb bags of oats? I have thought about buying oats and flour in 50 lb bags, but I am not sure how to keep it in our house.

  • http://www.budgetconfessions.blogspot.com Cate

    I love grocery shopping, too–I even start to miss it when we haven’t been in a while! I love cooking, so it’s fun to browse and come up with new meal ideas.

    Like your family, our second biggest expense after housing (well, unless you count saving) is food. We’re okay with that. Food is important to us. It gives us joy, it nourishes us. We don’t go out to eat hardly at all. I would rather spend more on food than less–it’s an area where I think the price really corresponds to the quality.

  • FrugalBabe

    MC,
    We have a large bin with a lid where we store our oats. They come in a huge paper bag, and we just dump them into the bin. Then we have a one gallon container that we refill from the bin and keep in our kitchen. The bin stays in the garage. My brother refers to it as our “dumpster full of oats” :)

  • MommyNamedApril

    sounds like you’re doing really well! you should join our grocery challenge :-) http://www.mamalovesfood.com/2010/01/grocery-challenge-2010.html

  • Cass

    My family is a pack of carnivores (when we really shouldn’t be!), and it’s difficult to imagine how a vegetarian/vegan family can stretch their grocery budget. There’s probably a lot of soups, amirite? :)

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