The meal plan for the rest of January. All food in the house and some meals already prepared and in the freezer.
M24 - HF - carb smart seared pork
T25 - salmon chowder
W26 - Beef Stew
Th27 - garden pasta
F28 - pork stir fry
Sa29 - chicken fajitas
Su30 - conference starts - salmon burgers (Might swap out. My recipe has oat bran, which I can’t find in the stores down here.)
M31 - Beef tacos
I dunno, man, that seems like a fabulous assortment of food for late January!
It is! But it was one row of stalls, half of them either non-food (crafts, Berkshire Hathaway???) or prepared food. But 3 farm stands, 2 bakeries, a fishmonger, a cheese maker, coffee, yogurt, wine. So plenty to shop around 
. The other market that’s Saturday morning is at least twice as big, but we didn’t go in winter…
Weekly update:
Eggs/dairy: $17.97
Produce: $19.48
Pantry (this includes a giant spice order): $61.72
Snacks (tortilla chips and guacamole): $9.78
Grocery shopping yesterday, mostly for the dog. $19.
I’m under budget for food this month so requesting special dispensation to go to Whole Foods tomorrow to satisfy my mad craving for an Impossible/Beyond Burger. Aldi was out of stock. Hey, it’s cheaper to make them at home to order them, right?
Also need: no-salt tortilla chips, cheese, I probably should grab another coffee while I’m there. Might need hamburger buns.
Can I do that for the $20 bill I found in my wallet? Maybe. Depends on the pack size of burgers. Ideally they’ll have the 2-pack which is $5-something.
Oh, I did just place a small spice order at Penzeys because they had a free 1/2 cup offer and we are completely out of chili powder, as was Aldi, which is impeding my ability to use up my bean-tomato stash. What did I spend? … $26.36. Because I didn’t order enough for free shipping, $9 of that was shipping. Oh well. Also got Chili 9000, Arizona Dreaming (on sale for $1!), Sunny Paris (this was free!) and crushed red pepper which Boyfriend puts on everything and we and Aldi were out of that too.
Well, I just broke out and categorized my shopping from last weekend and we are officially over budget. Currently sitting at $622/$600 budgeted for groceries, and we need to shop this weekend for next week. We are doing very well on the eating out side though, only $170/$300. Overall I think we will stay within the budget of $900 for total food spending.
I am proud of limiting my penzeys order to $1.03! (Arizona dreaming and freeze dried shallots) Of course now I have to bike 18 miles today to go pick them up…
Snort, the closest Penzeys store is {checks} … oh. Hm. There is now one right by my office (which I don’t go to any more)?!? When did that happen? Damn. The closest one used to be waaaaay out in the suburbs, like 2 hours almost on trains.
Now you know!
So far my grocery expenses for January 2022 are $430 CAD. Our budget is $500. I sooo want to put in a Costco order, but am holding off. It’s 10 days to deliver. I’m not sure I have enough to order ($75) for them to waive the delivery fee. Thinking. The month ends Monday.
A friend said a friend was shopping and found bone in, skin on chicken legs for $7.99/lb. (that’s roughly $16/kg)!!! The price of chicken has gone up substantially.
Groceries to date are 375, eating out is 60. Several sale things on the list were not on the shelves. Hopefully they will be restocked. We will probably wait until the next sale cycle for rice, because we aren’t walking up to that store tonight, and they are particularly bad at having sale items in stock (even more so for rice).
In operation use the things:
I have finished the anchovies (I found recipes I enjoy, but I prefer other things more, so will probably not go out of my way to repeat the experiment in the short term)
I finished one of the NZ honey jars
I have gotten about halfway through the dukkah package we got in NZ (2018? it has been kept cold since nuts/seeds)
I probably only have one more meal with capers before this container is done and we can start the next
the gelatine is still waiting on the counter for me to make marshmallows
Nope, it came to $28.75. Probably because I grabbed an extra cheese and milk for Boyfriend. $$$, but, well, so’s getting covid from the scary guy who runs the scary bodega down the street, who never has a mask on, which is usually where Boyfriend would get his milk. So that’s fine.
Last update for the month…wasn’t planning to do any more grocery shopping (and still am not), but stopped by a food truck on my walk back from the bank this afternoon so one more ‘out’ charge:
Last Week of the month, no grocery shoppping planned tomorrow.
| January | Week 01 | Week 02 | Week 03 | Week 04 | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Produce & fruit | 29,01 | 22,01 | 41,78 | 19,08 | |
| Meat & processed meat | 17,37 | 0,00 | 2,49 | 3,19 | |
| Dairy & cheese | 15,87 | 0,00 | 8,88 | 6,20 | |
| Bakery | 3,22 | 8,35 | 4,45 | 4,30 | |
| Snacks | 1,80 | 0,00 | 6,16 | 0,00 | |
| Chips | 1,99 | 0,00 | 3,12 | 0,00 | |
| Dry goods | 1,49 | 0,00 | 7,06 | 0,00 | |
| Beverage (incl. Coffee) | 0,00 | 5,46 | 8,88 | 0,00 | |
| Eating Out | 21,90 | 23,70 | 8,50 | 17,50 | |
| Total | 92,65 | 59,52 | 91,32 | 50,27 | 293,76 |
I am fine with 300 Euros this month, I try to stay in that range in the next month as well.
I missed the update of last week, but didn’t stop collecting receipts and entering them in my Excel sheet. Did my last shopping for the month yesterday and entered everything today.
End result:
Total spend: €252. That’s a bad month, but it’s a 5 weekend month so makes sense, as yesterday’s shopping will mostly be eaten in February.
Biggest 5 categories:
Thoughts and learnings:
Our grand total for the month was $243.72, which is probably the lowest it’s been in a while. I credit canceling Imperfect Foods in part, because their prices were just so outrageous.
My son has been gone a week and I have spent 28. It will be interesting to see what I spend during a entire month.
No work snack spending! 