Let's start with what I spent in the last week:
local farm : $54 (grapefruit, lemons, cabbage, cauliflower, eggs & greens)
grocery store : $92 (lentils, black beans, red beans, garbanzo beans, yogurt, sugar, almond milk, carrots, tortilla chips, salad greens, cucumbers, lime juice, bananas, apples, 2 pounds coffee)
*we ate out once, after a very long day of painting the house, $30
Menu for the week:
breakfast ~ oatmeal, granola & yogurt, banana muffins, pancakes & frozen fruit, pb toast
lunch ~ leftover dinner, popcorn & smoothies, kale & cheese pasta, smoothies & pb toast
dinner ~ nachos & big green salad, burgers, spaghetti w/ sausage marinara sauce & salad, roasted squash & wild rice w/ sauteed cabbage, carrot soup and big green salads, bean-rice-veggie wraps, veggie sandwiches
I had hoped to have a big green salad or green smoothie at least six days.... we actually did this five days... hopefully we'll do better next week.
How did you do? I would love for you to share your thoughts, challenges, successes in the comments below!
On another note......
I thought I would talk about two things that came up over the last week with readers and in emails.
Menu planning & snacks.
I think one of the biggest ways to save money is to plan a menu. I know some people do this once a month, every two weeks or weekly. For us, it works well to do the shopping weekly. I plan a weeks worth of dinners. Check the pantry and freezer for staples & then plan the grocery list off of that. This keeps us eating lots of fresh produce during the week and helps eliminate those little grocery pit stops that always knock me right off my budget.
I don't use anything fancy. Two sticky notes does it. One for writing down meals, the other for shopping. I try to list my shopping items in columns as to where they are in the grocery store. That way I don't zigzag back and forth to grab items. It's especially helpful when you are in the store with little ones and you need to focus and get in and out as quick as possible. I know you know what I mean by this.
The other great thing about menu planning is that I can see what we're eating, make sure we're getting salads several nights a week and varying our orange and green veggie intake as well. I usually plan two nights a week with meat as a main course, one to two leftover meals (more on that later on in the challenge) and the rest bean & rice vegetable rich dishes. This works well for our family.
And then there are snacks. My kids are eaters. Voracious eaters. Every two hours they are bugging me for food. I try to keep boiled eggs and roasted nuts around for a quick easy protein based snack. While I do love raw almonds, my little ones are not as fond of them. And carrots. We eat so many carrots. They are good dipped in peanut butter and organic carrots are HALF the price of organic apples. Celery with peanut butter and raisins is also a regular. I do encourage them to drink a lot of water too.
And popcorn. We love popcorn.
Today I am sharing our recipe for popcorn. It's easily made vegan. My husband says it's like hippie movie theater popcorn. Rich in b vitamins. Some good fats if you use good quality oil or butter. And cheap. One bag of organic popcorn is $3.50. One half cup of popcorn makes about 16 cups, perfect for each of us to have a bowl full. One bag is roughly 3.5 cups of popcorn..... so that means it costs about 50 cents to pop up a batch. Even after adding butter, olive oil, sea salt & nutritional yeast it is still around $1.50 for a huge batch.
We pop a half cup of popcorn in our air popper. I melt 3 TBSP of butter or olive oil (I usually do a little of each) over low heat. Add a spoonful of nutritional yeast. Stir to combine. I drizzle this a little at a time over the popcorn, stirring well after each drizzle. Then I lightly salt it to our liking. Nutritional yeast is sort of cheesy-buttery tasting. It takes some getting used to.... but now we love it!
Popcorn is a great snack. It's really good (and easy) plain as well. We love it for lunch with hard boiled eggs, a handful of nuts or green smoothies to round it out nutritionally.
What are favorite snacks in your home?
{pssst..... new to the challenge? read more about it here}
