Weekly Shopping

I’ve been neglectful while I’m still in my hybrid budget eating mode. Happily, last week I did not spend really anything extra on food and so I’m feeling very enthusiastic about the project. It helped that I had a large credit card bill and electric bill to pay off so that was good incentive to keep the food bill low.

For me, this project is much easier when I have tangible goals for it. On one hand, there are a set of abstract goals of wanting to reduce waste which is better for the environment and of wanting to know where my money is going. I believe that if I have good control over my food budget, it will help me gain control over other parts of my budget. These are all good as a start but it’s easier on a day to day basis if there is something I can point to at the end of the week or month as having been accomplished that is direct and personal.

Last week, the goal was to put a big payment on the credit card and the utility bill which I had slipped behind on during the winter. This meant not having really any disposable income for the week. Now, I still have a lot of food around so this wasn’t so difficult as far as developing meals for the week. At the end of the week, I could look at my bank account and be sad that there isn’t much in there but I can also look at my two major debts and be glad that a chunk is gone from both of them (I paid off the utility bill but still have a balance on the credit card).

In the next couple of weeks, I have a trip planned out to my sister’s and this will mean renting a car, buying gas, and various other expenses. Having the car means that the dog can go with us, which saves on boarding and staying with my sister means little money spent on food and board. But I still anticipate spending about $500 for the 4 days with all the other expenses.

These small goals are useful and I also have an ultimate goal of a trip to India to tour and do some volunteer work. I think that my plan for that goal will be to set up a separate savings account into which I have money deposited directly.

Because I go to the Farmer’s market on Sunday- I consider that the beginning of my shopping week. My housemate will do my shopping at the supermarket so, using the store’s website, I developed this list (it might look familiar from one of my earlier posts). I am beginning to get desperate for grains because I haven’t really had any for the past couple of weeks. So, I kind of loaded up on the rice this week. I had to laugh when I figured out the total number of servings and it came to 116! In truth, my housemate will eat some of the bread and maybe some of the rice. According to most nutrition guides, I should be eating about 7 servings of grains a day so I have purchased more than twice as much this week as I need. Oh well, I’m not willing to give up the smell of basmati rice!

edit: ha! I realizd the error in my math and can subtract out the beans from the total grains. That's what i get for lumping by shopping site and not food group. Still, it's 79 servings at least it's not twice what I need.

I was trying to figure out price per serving but it gets complicated when you start making dishes that include a lot of ingredients. For example, I never eat raw tomatoes so I pretty much always end up using them in large cooked dishes so I’m not sure how to divide those out, the six that I bought this week, are sure to last me at least the whole week so I will divide them out by day to get a general sense of the daily expense. I have no idea how to figure out the onions as a per serving item so I’ll do the same

Weekly Shopping 6/21/2009

Supermarket shopping:

item	Price/amount	Price serving	#servings
Rice white	2.49/32 oz	.12	20
Rice basmati	4.14/32 oz	.20	20
Rice brown	1.25/16 oz	.12	10
lentils	1.35/16 oz	,10	14
Red beans	2.49/16 oz	.20	13
Corn tortillas	1.89/36 small	.19/2	18
bread	1.00/ 3 loaves	.05/2 slices	21
	14.61		116

Farmer’s Market

Kale	2.00/2lb	..25/ quarter lb	8
Eggs	1.75/doz	.30/2	6
Milk	1.75/ half gal	.11/half cup	16
tomato	4.00/6	.58	7
squash	2.00/4	.50/1	4
yam	2.00/4	.50/1	4
onions	2.00/6	.29	7
	15.50

For fruits and vegetables, I need 35 servings, From the Farmer’s market, I only have 23 (and I’m not even sure I should count the yams). Luckily, I have cabbage left from last week

Total over all is 30.11. This leaves me about $5 for anything else that I need. That could go for chicken, maybe peanut butter which would last more than a week easily, or maybe some extra fruit. Unfortunately, unless I start stealing tea from work, that may be where the $5 is going.