Budgets, Food & the Environment

Has anyone else seen Heather's $400 grocery challenge? The challenge is to spend $400 or less a month on groceries. What do all of you think about that? I love her idea and the mindfulness she's putting into it. I plan on following all the posts to get some ideas for my own budget. I do have to admit I had a few giggles the first time I read the challenge... I'll go into that in a minute.



Anytime that I have read a blog post going into a person's personal grocery budget there was always a backlash to follow. Either the person who wrote the post had too much too spend or too little according to the people that responded. Knowing that, I am still going to throw caution to the wind and put our number out there.

The monthly grocery budget for our family of five, granted only four of us are eating solid foods, is $400, and I don't think we are in the minority here. This budget does not include the pet food and supplies but does include our homeopathic medicines, cleaning supplies (baking soda and vinegar, anyone?), and toiletries.

It's fun for C to sprinkle the sesame seeds onto her cold sesame noodles



Yep, that's why I had a giggle over the challenge. I am living the challenge every day out here in Oregon. Our budget was a bit more when we lived in Virginia, but I no longer remember how much exactly. I can tell you, however, that I didn't have to spend hours going through the grocery store doing math and adding up the cost of every single thing to see if we could afford it that month or not (like I do, now). It can be stressful for me to make that budget stretch enough to feed all of us real-food meals sometimes, and there are some nights I am up late trying to figure out how to arrange the next meal plan to stay under out limit - yet I know that we are still ok. We can still put warm, healthy meals in our little ones' tummies, and for that I know we are blessed and I am very thankful. We should always be thankful.



While it is an every day reality for me, it still is a challenge. I believe we are what we eat and that our food choices make a huge impact on our quality of life, not to mention the environment our children will inherit from us. So believe me, I make our money stretch as far as possible to purchase real, organic, whole foods. I think what helps our budget to work is the following:
We, ahem - I, make 98% of our meals from scratch, and although we are no longer vegan we are still strict vegetarians and we do not consume any alcohol (thanks to our straight edge roots).We meal plan, and to save my sanity I make enough of one meal for us to have leftovers the next night (that's why you see the same meals twice in my meal plan photo above) We don't eat out (probably better not to, anyways, right? At least that's what I try to tell myself), nor pick up snacks. I try to budget in fun snacks I can make for the girls instead, such as popsicles,kale chips and nutritional yeast popcorn. I also like to try out a new recipe or two every pay period (which is every 2 weeks for us), so I factor that in.



On those days when I am at the third grocery store for the day (after having spent hours at the other two) with 3 upset children, all wanting my attention, while trying to do math in my head - oh, what I wouldn't give to not have a budget and just buy groceries as I please. Then I realize I am just being foolish.
Thanks to our budget I have learned to meal plan (which I am grateful for), buy in bulk and shop for bargains. Food has become like gold to us and we can't bare the thought of wasting it. The girls know that whatever we don't eat gets saved for the next day or if it can't, it moves on to 'puppy compost'. It's funny because it's so normal to me that I have forgotten that not everyone lives this way. We have had guests at our house, that I would happily cook or bake for, take a bite of something I made, not like it, and then quickly throw the rest of it away. I would gasp thinking about how that food could have fed someone else. Silly reaction from me, I know, but food has become such a deep issue for me...shouldn't it be for us all?



So, that's us (in a 'scatterbrained, thoughts all over the place' fashion) - our number and all. Would you care to share YOUR grocery budget and what works for you?

Budgets, Food & the Environment

Real Food on a Budget

Most of you already know of my love for real, organic food. I have been carrying on and on about it in this space for years now. I am also pretty sure you know of the importance of budgeting in my family - more people means more love but also more money spent on food. Let's face it - eating healthy, real food and saving money don't exactly go together, unless you think about the money you'll save in the future on doctor's bills. However I am talking about the present. The time when we only have X amount of money to spend on groceries that need to last us Y amount of days.

I confess as hard as I try to budget (and believe me I put a lot into it - hours each week), there are weeks where we'll eat like kings for a few days only to find out we are short on money towards the end of the week and end up having to eat ramen noodles to get by. We are essentially undoing all the good of the real food we previously ate with the processed junk. Ridiculous, right?! I just find myself confused and thinking something's gotta give.

With that in mind, you can imagine my excitement when I saw that one of my favorite authors is coming out with a book all about eating real food on a budget. 😍 Lisa Leake's new book 100 Days of Real Food on a Budget is available for pre-order now and will be released on Tuesday August 14th. I had the pleasure of getting an advance copy in the mail just the other day (I may or may not have jumped up and down and squealed like a schoolgirl when it arrived). I have been reading through it every chance I get. The recipes all look incredibly scrumptious and I look forward to trying them as soon as possible - the Southwest Salad is calling my name. For my fellow vegan and vegetarian friends this cookbook has quite a few recipes to meet our needs and most can easily be adapted (ie. use homemade sprouted almond milk in place of the cow's milk). It contains recipes for other dietary restrictions as well. Equally exciting though is the entire first chapter. Lisa shares her budgeting tricks, ways to lower your grocery bill, and meal plans that even include average costs as well as a meal plan template. She also has a supermarket coast comparison chart that really opened my eyes. Granted prices vary depending on where you are living but it still gives you a good idea of where to shop for particular items. Every family that wants to eat healthy but feels like they never could due to expense needs a copy of this book. It really can be done!

Here is a sample recipe from 100 Days of Real Food on a Budget. Click on it to see a bigger version.




For once I look forward to sitting down and planning our meal plan and budget for the upcoming week. I feel like perhaps now I can finally conquer the beast that is eating healthy while staying within our means.

I am giving away a copy of Lisa Leake's first book (a big game changer and personal favorite of my family) 100 Days of Real Food on my Instagram account. Be sure to check it out!

Real Food on a Budget

Wildly Affordable Organic

While I don't  believe being frugal/on a tight budget and organic, healthy living necessarily go hand in hand - I do think it is a possibility. I have made it my personal mission this year to find a way to make it truly work for my family.

As I mentioned in the previous budget post, a large amount of our money goes towards groceries. The cost of living here in Idaho is nothing compared to Portland, Oregon but the grocery prices are pretty much the same. We think that is due to the organic produce having to travel so far to get to us in the middle of nowhere as well as a low demand for it. I am not ready to give up on healthy eating for my family due to these issues. This means that we really have to make our money stretch.

I know the garden we have been planning and preparing the earth for will be a tremendous help, but we have quite awhile until that takes effect (Assuming that we can even get a garden up and running here in the desert). In the meantime we are growing some herbs in C's AquaFarm as well as growing more celery and scallions from the leftovers of ones we bought at the store. On a side note: If you haven't tried this, go do it now! Just trim the bunch of celery about 3" above its base and place in a shallow dish of water. Leaves start growing out of the center in as little as a week. The transplant it to soil (indoors for us right now) and it will grow a whole new plant. For the scallions, just place your scallions in a cup of water and the will quickly regrow. I had the one pictured above cut down to the roots and in just three days it already nearly doubled in size. Not only does it help the budget but it's also a fun experiment for the children!

This brings me to the book I mentioned last week that has already begun to help us out - Wildly Affordable Organic. It seems to me that a lot of books, blogs and articles on eating better and spending less assume that you eat out all the time and cook convenience foods the rest of the time. So their directions on how to cook and advice to eat out less doesn't really help me. I have been making our food from scratch for years and we rarely eat out (thanks in part to there only being one restaurant within an hour's drive that has vegan options). Thankfully, while Wildly Affordable Organic does cover these things, the content of the entire book doesn't revolve around them. The author Linda Watson created her wildly affordable cooking plans after being inspired by Michael Pollan and a national challenge to eat on a food-stamp budget. Reading about her journey on the challenge (no more than $1 a meal per person), especially her first shopping trip on a tight budget, really hit home for me. The emotions and exhaustion she experienced that first shopping trip described how I feel every shopping trip.

Linda has some well thought out seasonal meal plans in her book with detailed shopping lists. I have just started incorporating them into our monthly meal plans. So far, so good! She talks about doing a lot of your cooking or at least preparing one day of the week. She mentioned Sunday as being a good day to do this but I wanted to keep Sunday as our day of rest. Honestly, the whole idea just seemed too labor intensive for me at first but now that I have started doing it, I am loving the results. It worked out really well, too, as we just adjusted our homeschooling schedule. We used to do school Monday through Thursday and take Fridays off but  K has her religious education classes on Monday and I found myself getting stressed trying to cram all of our day's work into a shorter amount of time. So now we take Mondays off and do school Tuesday - Friday. Monday has now become the girls' "wash day" (they do their laundry then) and my "making day".  I go ahead and make anything we might need for the week in bulk which ends up saving us money and time. Some examples of things I make this day are: dishwasher detergent, some WAO bread dough, soaking beans and nuts needed for meals during the week, almond butter, hummus, yogurt, shampoo and any other necessities we are running low on.

Now that bring me to another way I am trying to help our budget, our health and the environment is by making as many of our everyday items myself. This applies to food (Some examples are almond butter, yogurt, bread, hummus) as well as household cleaners (like the all purpose citrus vinegar spray I shared last week, dishwasher detergent, furniture polish) and personal items (such as shampoo, toothpaste, lotion, deodorant, etc. ) I have experienced some major failures with some of my experiments (like the lemon almond yogurt you see pictured that never set) but instead of stressing out over the money lost I am trying to make do (we ended up making smoothies with the failed yogurt attempt), learn from my mistakes and carry on.

I have written more detailed posts about healthy living and food budgets before. This post in particular has some great advice and ideas in the comments. I was inspired all over again as I reread them today. I am also working on a budget wise, healthy living resources widget over on the sidebar. I will add more items as I think of them. If you have any that you think should be included, please do tell!

You guys left some incredibly helpful comments in my last post about budgeting and now I would love to hear what advice, hints, tricks and tips you might have on eating well while on a budget. I will continue to post more thoughts and ideas I have, as well as recipes as I move forward. In the meantime I do have another recipe to share with you;

Lets just ignore my chicken scratch writing in the picture above, shall we? I was in quit a hurry when I wrote that.

Dishwasher Detergent

3/4 cup citric acid
3 cups borax

3 cups baking soda

30 drops orange essential oil

45 drops lemon essential oil

 

Place all ingredients in a large jar. Place the lid on and shake until mixed. Use two tablespoons per load of dishes.

 

This recipe has been working well for us, but I do have to say you can not overload your dishwasher when using it.

 

 

ETA: I just found the recipe for the Wildly Affordable Organic bread (that we are loving) online! You can find it here.

Wildly Affordable Organic

The Monthly Rhythm Question

Our meal planning menu

I received quite a few e-mails over the weekend about my rhythm post on The Magic Onions, and I wanted to thank everyone for them. They mean a lot to me! There were a few questions asked and I am still trying to answer them all, but I did notice there was one question in particular that was asked quite a few times : Do we really only get groceries 1-2 times a month?! I have to start out by saying I did make a mistake on that post by saying we run errands/shop for groceries 1-2 times a month. I really should have separated errands and groceries; errands 1-2 times a month and grocery shopping 2 times a month.

Grocery shopping can be quite overwhelming to little ones and adults alike. Especially when you are on a tight budget and have to compare prices and write out the math to see how much you are spending the whole time. On top of that, we go to 2-3 different places for our food so it ends up being at least a half a day ordeal. With all of that in mind and our need for a strict budget I knew I needed to start meal planning.

I can remember my mother doing this when I was little. Every two weeks we went grocery shopping together and she would bring her list of meals she planned on making the next two weeks and she would always stick with it. That's just the way we did our groceries and what I was used to. It's funny because once I was out on my own I didn't follow that routine. It actually wasn't until we moved to Oregon that I saw how important my mother's wisdom was.

Our budget shrank dramatically and we really needed to save as much money as possible. Plus I was constantly getting burned out with the never ending question of what's for dinner. I became inspired to re-discover meal planning by my wonderful Season's Round Exchange (Autumn)partner Meg and her post on her family's menus.

Since my husband is always paid on the first and fifteenth of every month we planned our budget and meals around that. So about every two weeks, I sit down and plan our meals for the next fifteen days (with input from my husband and the girls) then we venture out and gather our food, armed with a planned out menu and list of needed ingredients.

I like to have the menu out in easy view for reference so we use one of the many watercolor paintings K makes every week and write out our menu on that then put it in a frame by the kitchen sink. Now, I should say that I don't follow the menu exactly. For example, I have subji and pooris listed for dinner Thursday night but if I have a hard day and don't have the energy for that I might pick something more simple from another day on the menu and make that instead. I always cross off the meal I made so that way I know what ingredients I have left without ever even looking in the pantry. Not only does this save us time and headaches but it also saves money. Before we would wander the grocery stores aimlessly just buying things that looked good but didn't necessarily make a meal. Now everything is organized and brings a better rhythm to our nights.


Preparing for Candlemas

Sorry, that was a lot of writing this time around! I hope that helped to explain our grocery rhythm a little better and answered any questions you had.

Wishing you all a joyful Candlemas tomorrow!!

The Monthly Rhythm Question

Sweet, simple moments {and a bit more on budgeting}

Bangs! She requested hair like her dear friend's. I think it makes her look so much older. Not sure how I feel about that!

My K and I have been spending days studying our seed catalogs and sipping on some tea. (Tazo Organic Peach Cobbler to be specific. It's like drinking your dessert. I can't get enough of it!) I savor these sweet, simple moments with my children. We think we have this year's garden planned and ordered seeds accordingly. Now we wait for the seeds to arrive and the ground to thaw. It is only January after all, but this unseasonably warm weather has been playing with our minds. We just want to dig our hands into the earth now!

I made some Indian lentil-cauliflower soup from the Oh She Glows  cookbook earlier this week (yes, I know I have been talking about this book for over a year now but it really is my go-to cookbook.) I doubled the recipe, because it said it only serves four, served it over rice and it ended up feeding our family of five for two dinners, one lunch (just Kevin) and I have about 3-4 more cups stored in the freezer for a last minute meal. That is a very budget friendly recipe, indeed! Of course not all the recipes in that cookbook are this budget friendly but many of them can be made so.

Speaking of the budget, my shampoo making was a big fail. I tried a recipe I found on Pinterest that involved castile soap, distilled water and some essential oils. I so wanted it to work but it made my long, fine hair limp, and flat and made my scalp super greasy yet itchy and dry. That was quite an experience. I kept thinking maybe there is a transition period but after two weeks I just couldn't take it any longer. Back to the drawing board on that one.

I had been stressing myself out and falling into the comparison trap with homeschooling, basically rendering myself useless. Thankfully some wonderful friends helped me back on track. Organizing and rearranging always seem to help when I get down and out. I hung a guardian angel image over our kitchen/homeschooling table and it makes the room feel more like our beloved school now. I look up at that painting whenever I am having a rough moment in the day and it brings such a sense of peace over me. I also reorganized our front entryway closet. The children's things end up all over the place in there. Since this is a rental, I can't screw branch hooks into the doors. Instead, I used some of those removable plastic hooks to hold my sunhat, the children's backpacks and a little bag I made to store sunglasses (We are forever misplacing sunglasses around here.)

Oh, and I forgot to mention - I finished my Downton Abbey mitts. I love them. They have been keeping my hands warm on our nature walks. I'll have to get some pics of them on me eventually. And that cute little St. Valentine heart Little L made? It was made using this tutorial but we used bakers twine this time around. I like how it looks with it.

Sweet, simple moments {and a bit more on budgeting}

One Small Change - January

You may have noticed a new button over on the top right hand side of my blog over the past month. It's for a wonderful challenge hosted by Hip Mountain Mama entitled 'One Small Change'. The challenge is to make one small earth friendly change each month from January until Earth day in April, and then post about it on your blog. Even though the change may seem small, it all adds up, especially when you think about the hundreds of other people making similar changes with you.
I am finally getting around to posting our change for the month of January. I am a bit late with this post, seeing as how we are supposed to post our changes at the beginning of the month but oh well, better late than never, right?


Our family cloth (which is actually recycled in a sense because they used to be the girl's diaper wipes)

I feel like we are a relatively earth conscious family to begin with (we recycle, re-use everything possible, use cloth bags, cloth diapers, family cloth, etc) so it took me a bit to decide what our first change would be. I would love to do something major like install solar panels, or get rain barrels to collect our water but those options are just not realistic for our budget at this time. That made me think about our budget and how the cost of living in Portland has been kicking our butts...


Homemade cleaning solution - vinegar, water and essential oils

Then the light bulb went off in my head, literally. Our first change would be to replace every single light bulb inside and outside of our home with energy saving bulbs. We had been meaning to since we moved in anyways but just hadn't gotten around to it. Not only are they better for the environment but they also save us money (every single penny counts right now for us). It's a win-win situation! I do really love how frugality and environmental consciousness generally go hand in hand.


Our rag bag (an old re-used burlap rice bag) filled with rags made from old towels, worn out knitted washcloths, stained shirts.. you name it, it's there!

So I went around and changed every single bulb and felt pretty darn good about it. The bulbs work great, but I wouldn't expect anything less. I know I am not single-handedly saving the world with my bulbs but I do know I am making a difference and teaching my girls in the process.
I do feel the need to mention a slight down-fall with this change, I ran into the only negative issue (that I know of, at least) with these bulbs... I dropped one and it shattered all over my kitchen floor. I froze not knowing what to do. Luckily Kevin was home and he took the girls. I reached for the broom then something told me not to so I put it back down. I then ran to the computer and quickly looked up how to clean up mercury and followed the instructions (which specifically said do NOT sweep or vacuum!). Everything is all cleaned up and fine now, and I am quite happy with our change, but I do admit that bulb breaking gave me a bit of a scare!


My lazy helper

Anyone else taking the challenge?

One Small Change - January

Changes

I intended to do another post last week but the time it took to transfer my photographs from one computer to another took a lot longer than I anticipated. I'm sure it didn't help that I waited until only a couple of hours before I would sit down to type my post up.

We ended up giving in and buying a new laptop last Wednesday. I had just finally paid off my credit card back on May 1st. I didn't really want to spend anything at all, but I decided on a budget of $400. That way I could pay it off in a couple of months. I walked into the computer store with that amount in my head, but I quickly allowed myself to get sucked into a $1,200 Mac. The huge screen for my photographs was what got me. Thankfully Kevin reigned me back in and I walked out with a computer within my budget.

I think we gave the salesmen a good chuckle. Apparently our old laptop was a dinosaur and a lot of the features I was accustomed to are now obsolete. It was a struggle just to find a laptop that had a disc drive (for the occasional movie nights Kevin and I have). Yes, we know we are way behind the times. They tried to sell us on computers that can be hooked up with an IPhone, IPad and/or television. None of which are items we own.

I swear electronic stores are like the twilight zone for me. We were only in there for an hour but it felt like an eternity and I left feeling absolutely drained of all my energy. At least it's done with now. The girls, on the other hand, had a blast pushing buttons on everything. And here I thought they would be bored to tears. Ha!

The screen on this computer is smaller and quite different from my last one. I am still getting used to it. It's hard to tell if my photos are in focus or not on it, not to mention that they all look oversaturated. I don't know if it's the photo viewing software on here or the resolution. I hope I can figure it out soon, just in case I need to exchange it. Perhaps it's just another change I need to get used to. Who knew I had such a hard time dealing with change?!

I do have more news to share on our move but I have managed to exhaust myself reliving that shopping experience. So for now, let's just enjoy my two littlest ones having fun in the garden and I'll go work on my photograph issues a bit more. See you back here for KCCO and then later again in the week. Thanks for sticking with me through all of this!

p.s. - Just in case you were wondering, C is wearing her Easter Sunday sweater and Little L is wearing his pants I made him the other week.

Changes