I told you at the beginning of the month how I was challenging myself. Instead of $140 a week for groceries for the 4 of us, I was giving myself just $70. Well, how did I do? Pretty fantastic, considering that I even had $50 left after my last grocery shop earlier this week!
Also, 2 weeks out of this month we have an extra male in our house, consuming lots of food. That being said, the reason I have $50 left, is he went grocery shopping with me this week and insisted he paid for groceries. I only had a few things to get, equaling about $35, so I would have been under anyways! Then...he wanted some landjaeger, so on our way to get that, I saw that in the 'local meats' section of our grocery store, there was a local ham, on 30% off, and it was 10% off tuesday at our grocery store. I couldn't resist the 10 lb bone in ham!
It's neat to know that in a pinch, I can cut our grocery spending by over half, and us not live off of bean soup all month.
It also challenged me, to think of what to do with the odds and ends in the freezer and cupboards.
My plan for Feburary? I'm actually going to keep myself at $70 a week, and sock aside the other $70 a week for when I need to buy large amounts of grain for grinding into flour, big tubs of honey or maple syrup. Of course, I won't need $300 a month for that, so we'll see what else I use the money for...maybe use that money when we raise meat birds, instead of it coming out of our farm budget?
I bought about $150 of grain in the middle of December and I won't have to buy more spelt or buckwheat for a long time, but can see that I'll need to buy wheat in the next month or two. Honey? Well, we had a real cold snap where I think my husband went through a 2 pounds of honey drinking 'honey tea cow juice' which is mint tea with milk and honey. He makes it by the pot and keeps it warm on the stove drinking it over the course of an hour or so. That really depleted my honey stock!! I'm trying to use less and less sugar, and having good local when possible (can't happen for maple syrup) sweeteners! I need to check out different natural solid sweeteners that I can use in place of white and brown sugar without drastically changing a recipe.
Any help on the sweeteners?! I'd love to know what you use and where you get it!
gingersnap
i'm going to try growing stevia in my garden this year! whatever comes out of it, i'll split it with you!
mamabuckwheat
How well does stevia grow, and what do you do with it?
Sister#4
Kate I know that the Gardens at Harbour House has TONS of maple trees/maple syrup - something to look into if you haven't already?
mamabuckwheat
I've tried their maple syrup and it's not that tasty. For the mean time I buy organic maple syrup and am happy with that!
35aweek
If you're worried about growing stevia in a garden, I know they sell kits for the Aerogarden, which is completely fool-proof. I haven't tried it, though!
mamabuckwheat
Thank-you I will check that out