It wasn't the $300 we wanted to spend, but as I mentioned earlier, we had a pretty bare pantry to start with... and it wasn't a perfect month since we were getting back into the habit of cooking and budgeting at the same time. Since February is a shorter month, I'm hoping we can keep things better in line and under $300.. If not we might need to revisit our grocery plan for 2014. Last year our average was $340 a month, but I think with more scratch cooking we will be better off in the long run trying for $300 a month. If we can't make it work in February, i'm going to bump it up to $350 since we are buying almost entirely organic at this point but we shall see.
It would have been slightly cheaper and closer to $350 but SCB asked me if he could have some nice roast beef and provolone cheese for sandwiches since he's been packing leftovers or peanut butter and honey all month long... and there was no way I was going to deny him that simple request when he's been trying to be much better about packing lunches with what is in the house. We also were re-stocking and took advantage of some great sales.
I'm really proud of the fact that we didn't really toss too much if any produce away. A few stalks of celery, some cilantro and some heavy whipping cream that was bought last month were the only items to get tossed out and not used up or frozen, which is awesome for us. Sure we had a few snags, but as the month went on I got smarter and remembered some of my tried and true tips and tricks.
After the bacon mishap, I made a point of wrapping and freezing the leftover package in the amounts I need for some of my recipes so we won't need to go out and buy it again next month when I make more soup. I froze some of the leftover cream before it would go bad again since I bought it from costco in bulk since it was cheaper and I wasn't buying organic anyway since I couldn't find organic in the store...
Someone also suggested we try to go to 1% or 2% milk since we can't find a good price on organic fat free milk so I think I might start price checking those options at Costco and see if they beat the $5.99 a gallon I found at Trader Joes that has a decent shelf life if we can keep it longer than a week before its gone... and speaking of Trader Joes, I also figured out I can get a better deal on Greek yogurt by picking it up at trader Joes on my lunch break then grabbing it at sprouts so hopefully that will save us a few dollars. I also tried to sweeten the plain Greek yogurt with some honey since I normally toss in some granola with it when I have it anyway... It was really good and it actually cuts out a lot of sugar so now I can say bye bye to needing to buy vanilla flavored yogurt as well and can just buy one type.
I'm missing a few receipts to record, but I got most of what we bought in January:
Dairy:
Yup... over $100 on dairy including 6 gallons of milk for only 2 people and the belly goober... But we have been using more dairy as healthy protein options when we cook more vegetable center meals.
Fruit:
$31 ish... We kept it pretty basic for the month and ate banana's, apples and oranges for the most part so we could buy organic for the most part.
Earlier in the month I splurged on some black berries which I really enjoyed :) and SCB loved the clementines, which since they were a "peel" type of fruit we didn't get organic.
Veggies:
Again, mostly organic here as well. Its weird to think we bought 7 lbs of onions in a single month!
Grains / Bread / Pasta Etc.
The one and only loaf of bread I hope we have to buy all year... it was just so sad...We did some stocking up thanks to some good sales at Ralphs... 10 boxes of cereal and 18 boxes of pasta (some whole wheat some regular)
The chips were for our weekly preggers classes so SCB had some snacks on hand.
Meats/ Proteins
Mostly organic poultry plus a weeks worth of awesome sandwiches for SCB as a nice treat.
Other:
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