quote:Originally posted by Jhai: The only non-frozen vegetables we use are items for salad, carrots for munching, and those few vegetables that don't freeze well, like onions, celery, mushrooms, and the like.
With a few exceptions for seasonal produce and things my kids will take in lunches, ditto.
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I feed a family of five on just over $450 a months, and we eat tons of fresh produce, and that's with boxed cereal.
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For the most part, I dislike frozen and canned vegetables. I buy fresh, as local as possible, and only what I know I can eat, two or more times a week. Very little goes to waste. I know that I have the luxury of having both the time and money to do that, though, and that it's not realistic for many people. I keep the cost down by buying in season, on sale, and from the "scratch & dent" bin when it's just cosmetic damage.
The one thing I don't understand (that no one has done here) is people who say they can't afford to shop at Farmer's Markets. Around here, produce at Farmer's Markets is incredibly cheap, much cheaper than buying fresh produce anywhere else and for some things cheaper than buying frozen. I do the bulk of my shopping at Farmer's Markets in the summer, and it really keeps the bill down.
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Oh, also, I rarely eat meat at home, so not buying meat often balances out the buying fresh produce a bit.
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It sounds like your prices are considerably higher than ours. Milk was $1.66 a gallon last time I went to Wal-Mart, and I never buy meat that costs more than $2 a pound if I can help it (sometimes I have to, but not often).
And I definitely do not use as much fresh produce as you do. In one week, I think I buy
1 lb. of carrots 1 head of lettuce 2-3 types of fruit at 3 lbs. each 1 green pepper 2 onions Maybe another vegetable if it's on sale
Probably one thing that helps me is that Jonathon really doesn't get anywhere near his five a day of fruits and vegetables, and my kids are still young enough that their serving sizes are considerably smaller than ours.
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quote:Originally posted by ElJay: The one thing I don't understand (that no one has done here) is people who say they can't afford to shop at Farmer's Markets. Around here, produce at Farmer's Markets is incredibly cheap, much cheaper than buying fresh produce anywhere else and for some things cheaper than buying frozen. I do the bulk of my shopping at Farmer's Markets in the summer, and it really keeps the bill down.
Our farmer's market costs almost exactly the same as the grocery store so it is utterly pointless to go. I really wish it were cheaper. In fact, this summer I joined a local farmer's co-op in hopes of getting the cost down, but our first week really disappointed me. I expected much more than I got for my $16 a week. They claimed the produce would feed a family of 4 for a week but if so, they aren't eating nearly enough veggies.
But I'm like you -- I know that what I do is not realistic for all families and I also know that if I had to (my husband lost his job or something) I could cut costs quite a bit...I don't see $200 a month but definitely down to $400-$500 no problem.
quote:Originally posted by Brinestone: It sounds like your prices are considerably higher than ours. Milk was $1.66 a gallon last time I went to Wal-Mart, and I never buy meat that costs more than $2 a pound if I can help it (sometimes I have to, but not often).
$1.66 for milk! Wow. I get all excited when I see it for $3 a gallon here. As for meat -- I have to say that even at $2 a pound, it's not the bulk of my grocery costs, because a little bit goes a long way. You can make a dinner for 4 out of 1 pound of chicken or ground beef. Fish is more, but you don't tend to use a whole pound of fish for a meal. I spend much more on dairy and produce. My vegetarian days are some of the priciest.
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quote:Originally posted by theCrowsWife: For the most part, we only buy fruits and vegetables that are $1/pound or less, but then we buy a lot of them. --Mel
You can find fruits and vegetables that are $1 a pound or less? Please, do tell me how! I promise you, I snap up produce that gets that low when it does, but it almost never does around here. We're typically doing morel like $2 a pound.
We're in eastern Ohio, and produce prices are much higher here than they were in Arizona. I miss Arizona produce prices. Still, there's almost always something, and things like apples and carrots will last for several weeks, so I can safely stock up on things that aren't too delicate.
Sam's Club is the best place for greens around here. Sometimes I get the spring mix, sometimes I get the romaine, but either way it's much cheaper than Walmart or the other grocery stores.
I also don't have a problem with frozen fruits and vegetables, since they have the advantage of having been harvested and processed when ripe, rather than having been harvested unripe and transported the way much fresh produce has been. Likewise, canned tomatoes have more lycopene than fresh ones, and again the flavor is better than fresh (from the store) for any cooking applications. A #10 can of diced or crushed tomatoes at Sam's Club is only a couple of dollars, and I figure I typically go through one can of each per month.
ElJay mentioned farmer's markets, but most places also have some sort of wild food available if you know where to look. The alley behind our house has tons of black raspberries, blackberries, wild grapes, and black cherries, and nobody else bothers to pick them. Our freezer still has several gallons of raspberries and blackberries from last year. There are also edible wild greens. In Arizona we harvested prickly pear cactus fruit.
quote:Also, how many servings of fresh fruits and veggies are you doing? $200 a month for FOUR people and you're eating fresh? I'm a numbers girl, so if anyone is willing, I'd love to hash out some numbers.
Well, our family only has three, and one of us is four years old, so she doesn't eat much. I also have to admit that we don't always meet the serving suggestions for fruits and vegetables. Still, there are some luxuries that we don't need in our food bill, so I suspect that even if we really focused on hitting that goal every day, we could probably still do it on the same budget. It wouldn't ALL be fresh, though.
quote:And that's just produce. Dairy is hugely expensive. A gallon of milk is nearly $4 anymore and we typically go through 2 a week. A thing of butter is about $3. Even the cheaper bulk yogurts are pricey, though I can't think what that price is off the top of my head. Eggs are cheap, but those are about the only things that are.
Most of the time, I find that milk goes on sale often enough that I never spend more than $3 a gallon (I guess it's a good loss leader). Most of the time it's more like $2 to $2.50, and I stock up. I have an entire shelf in the refrigerator dedicated to milk, and can store up to seven gallons at a time (although I generally don't go any higher than four or five gallons). I rarely run out before there's another sale, and I rotate them properly so I almost never have a problem with spoilage. We probably go through about two gallons a week as well, more if I'm making kefir and yogurt regularly.
As far as butter, four pounds is around $7.50 at Sam's Club, so you can save significantly there. I only buy plain yogurt, since we mostly eat it with savory meals anyhow. Our big dairy weakness is cottage cheese, so I buy five pounds of that at a time at Sam's, and that will last about two weeks.
quote:Bread costs about $2 a loaf on a good day. I've made my own bread before, but even that isn't cheap because flour and yeast add up.
Sandwich bread is expensive, and used to be a huge addiction of mine. If you do a lot of baking, you can buy yeast in bulk at Sam's for much less than at the grocery store, and it will keep indefinitely in the freezer. However, most of the time I meet our bread needs with unsweetened cornbread or biscuits, or pasta. When my husband was taking a sandwich to work for lunch every day (because as a truck driver he didn't have hands free for much else), we probably spent almost as much on his lunches as for nearly everything else put together.
quote:I buy my meats in bulk from Sam's and meat is, on average, $2-$3 a pound and my family of four can go through 2 pounds a day. (We also enjoy fish, which is more.) But let's say we just went down to 1 pound of meat a day for $2 a pound....that is still $60 a month in JUST meat.
Wow, that's a lot more meat than we consume. We generally only would have meat with a main meal, and I would make something like goulash where a pound of ground beef would combine with tomatoes and macaroni for probably 10 or 12 servings of food. Lentils are only about $.70/lb, and the other legumes aren't any more than $1.50 for the most expensive. During Lent this year, a common meal for us was black-eyed peas cooked with mustard greens and cornbread. That's a cheap, easy, tasty way to get a lot of nutrition. Add a big salad, and you meet most of your vegetable/fruit needs for the day.
Also, I mentioned that we produce our own eggs. Right now, we have so many eggs that it is our biggest source of protein, hands down. It's interesting, because I've found that I've had almost no craving for meat the last several months, and I think it's because I have been eating more eggs than I ever had before. It's not uncommon for my four-year-old and I to together eat a dozen scrambled eggs for breakfast. Our chickens are on pasture, so it's roughly equivalent to those expensive omega-3 eggs you can buy in the store, only so much tastier.
quote:Oh and cheese! Let's talk about cheese. We buy the big blocks from Sam's because otherwise we can't afford it, but we probably spend $30-$40 a month on cheese.
Yeah, not much room for cheese in our budget. I would love to eat more cheese than we do, but it would be prohibitive. I compensate by buying the sharpest cheddar I can get, so that I can have a good cheese flavor while using less. I make good-tasting macaroni and cheese using about half of the cheese the recipe calls for. Sharp cheddar also seems to last a lot longer before getting moldy, probably because it is dryer than many cheeses. Counting the cottage cheese mentioned above, I probably spend about $15-$20/month on cheese, on average. One of our luxuries (so to speak) is American cheese slices for my daughter. I don't buy Kraft, though, but the bulk slices at Sam's. A box of those will last a couple of months. I wrap each stack in plastic wrap and store it in a ziploc bag, and it keeps fine.
quote:The reason I'm getting so specific here is that I am really and truly curious how you eat on $200 a month. What are you eating and where do you get it? These are the types of things I eat on a daily basis and they cost me. At the moment, I budget $740 a month for groceries and consumables (toothpaste, shampoo, paper towels, aluminum foil, household cleaners...all that gets wrapped up in our grocery bill).
Oy. I budget $50/month for non-food grocery items: household cleaners, toothpaste, etc. Again, a lot of it is bulk from Sam's, like toothbrushes, windex, and floor cleaner. I don't know if you're including diapers in that budget; before my daughter was toilet trained I had to spend more like $75/month.
I freely admit that quite a lot of our food savings come from producing and gathering our own food, but that falls under the "easy, cheap, or good, choose any two" rule. I was a bit flabbergasted that eros thought that $200/month for one person was cheap. I'm sure that compared to a lot of people it is, but it kind of blew my mind.
quote:Originally posted by theCrowsWife: I don't know if you're including diapers in that budget; before my daughter was toilet trained I had to spend more like $75/month.
Cloth diapers here -- one time up front expense and a lot of savings. Plus, environmentally friendly. I actually saved a ton of money by choosing cloth diapers, breast milk, and home made baby foods. I have to buy a few disposables for Mom's Day out, but that's just 3 diapers a week.
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Even buying a lot of pre-made meals like Lean Cuisine, I easily eat for about $150/month (it is just me) or less. In fact, the only months I probably hit $150 are months when I buy a lot of spices. Otherwise it's probably closer to $125. I don't eat meat but once a day, I rely on other protein for my remaining servings. Frankly, I don't think more than one serving of meat a day is very healthy, even if you are using the really lean stuff. I hate to say that, because I'm a meat eater but the problem is not that things like fish or really lean meats are unhealthy in themselves. I could eat a lot of fish, but you have to balance the need for protein and the desire for a meat product to fulfill that protein need against some of the other problems with eating fish.
The biggest problem with fish is mercury levels. While there are some fish that have lower levels of mercury than others, you still shouldn't consume huge amounts of fish because of mercury.
I remember when I shocked one of my friends on how little I spent for food. I had just moved to an apartment and needed to shop for a lot of basics and get as much of my monthly food as possible. I told her I wasn't going to spend more than $150 at the grocery store and she laughed at me. But despite the size of my list we walked out of the local Bi-Lo under my budget of $150. I think we were around $125 and that's because I had to buy a bunch of spices which significantly upped the price. She couldn't believe it, but it was because I shopped carefully, had coupons (and I clip and collect weekly, or online) and bought nothing that wasn't on my list.
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Yep, I did cloth diapers (and breastfeeding) when my daughter was an infant. I had to switch to disposables for the two months we lived with my in-laws while we searched for real estate and waited for our Arizona house to sell, and then when I tried to get back to cloth diapers I used a very bad detergent and was completely demoralized by the results. So I bought disposable diapers and pullups for about a year and a half until she was potty trained. I'm definitely going back to cloth for baby #2! It's all already set up and I won't screw it up with the wrong detergent this time.
quote:Originally posted by Christine: In fact, this summer I joined a local farmer's co-op in hopes of getting the cost down, but our first week really disappointed me. I expected much more than I got for my $16 a week. They claimed the produce would feed a family of 4 for a week but if so, they aren't eating nearly enough veggies.
It will get much better later in the season.
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quote:Originally posted by andi330: Even buying a lot of pre-made meals like Lean Cuisine, I easily eat for about $150/month (it is just me) or less. In fact, the only months I probably hit $150 are months when I buy a lot of spices. Otherwise it's probably closer to $125. I don't eat meat but once a day, I rely on other protein for my remaining servings. Frankly, I don't think more than one serving of meat a day is very healthy, even if you are using the really lean stuff. I hate to say that, because I'm a meat eater but the problem is not that things like fish or really lean meats are unhealthy in themselves. I could eat a lot of fish, but you have to balance the need for protein and the desire for a meat product to fulfill that protein need against some of the other problems with eating fish.
The biggest problem with fish is mercury levels. While there are some fish that have lower levels of mercury than others, you still shouldn't consume huge amounts of fish because of mercury.
I remember when I shocked one of my friends on how little I spent for food. I had just moved to an apartment and needed to shop for a lot of basics and get as much of my monthly food as possible. I told her I wasn't going to spend more than $150 at the grocery store and she laughed at me. But despite the size of my list we walked out of the local Bi-Lo under my budget of $150. I think we were around $125 and that's because I had to buy a bunch of spices which significantly upped the price. She couldn't believe it, but it was because I shopped carefully, had coupons (and I clip and collect weekly, or online) and bought nothing that wasn't on my list.
I don't find $125-$150 a month for a single person shocking. In fact, that sounds very much like what I spent when I was single and eating a lot of frozen lunches.
There are some varieties of fish that pretty much need to be avoided due to mercury -- large ocean fish are the worst. Mahi Mahi is basically right out. Something like tilapia is very safe, though, and also very cheap. There is a lot of information out there about which types of fish are ok to eat all the time, which you should avoid, and which you could maybe eat once a week (like canned tuna). I did the research when I was pregnant but continue to follow the same basic advice.
I don't see why eating 2-3 servings of meat a day is a problem, though I heartily agree that it is best to choose nuts, beans, or eggs for some of those servings as variety is, IMO, one of the keys to a healthy diet. The other key: stop over thinking it. Enjoy eating and don't let people drive you into an unhealthy obsession.
Today I was on the opposite side of this argument. I was told that I don't actually like meat; I just like the spices. So I had a lovely rare steak, made sans spices, and said nuh-uh. Posts: 32919 | Registered: Mar 2003
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I should note that an interesting argument has been made that it isn't red meat itself that's bad for you, but the way we usually raise it in the U.S.- in tiny, unclean living spaces in feedlots, given pounds of antibiotics to make up for their poor living conditions, eating animal protein (including animal protein that comes from their own species), and, specifically, eating corn. Cows in particular are ruminants, and their digestion is not well suited to feed that consists largely of corn. Corn-fed beef is well-marbled (a trait much prized in U.S. beef), and corn allows cattle to quickly be brought up to a slaughtering weight, but the resulting meat isn't very good for you.
Conversely, grass-fed- or at the very least, grass-finished- beef is often high in the same omega-3 fatty acids that are so prized for their health benefits these days. And just to add to the perversity, grass-fed beef may be better for you in many cases than farm-raised fish. Which is, again, often raised on corn-derivatives.
Most of this comes from what I've read in Michael Pollan's books ([i]In Defense of Food, The Omnivore's Dilemma.) It's a pity grass-fed beef is so hard to get near where I live. You can get grass-fed ground beef if you look hard enough, but anything more interesting you basically have to find a specialist cattle-rancher and make a deal not unlike a farmshare.
(sigh) I do like a good steak, but I try not to eat red meat more than a couple of times a week.
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