This post is a few days late because I normally leave the grocery receipt in the car, and forgot to bring it in until today. But I did promise youall numbers and a look at what we're spending on food and where.
Last Saturday, I spent $141.18 on our food-related purchases. It breaks down thusly:
$43 at the farmer's market
$98.18 at the grocery store
Normally, I try to keep the farmer's market to $40 or less, and I would have done so this week had I not bought a big bunch of calla lillies for $5. My $38 in foodstuffs included: a quarter-flat of strawberries; a few pounds of asparagus; a few pounds of green beans; a few pounds of early tomatoes; a few pounds of early peaches; a cabbage; two yellow onions; two red onions; a big bunch of mint; four pounds of salad greens. There may have been other things; I sort of sprinted through the market so I could get to a class afterward. I can tell you that the peaches set me back, but damn, y'all, they are good.
As for the grocery haul, the only thing that really made me groan was that we were a mere $1.82 away from getting a coupon good for 25 cents off each gallon of gas purchased at the local gas station. And our cashier wasn't cool -- I've had kindly souls in the past either let me toss in a magazine or just write a coupon code on there, but this lady wasn't having it. Alas, we're only getting 10 cents off our gas.
But it was a stock-up trip. We were out of bourbon; we wanted to replenish the supply of low-sodium soups that Phil sometimes takes in for lunch when he's crunched for time; we picked up a chicken for roasting, as that'll last us at least three meals; we had no cheese in the house; we were low on flour, sugar, eggs, cider vinegar, frozen waffles; yogurt. I broke my nearly year-long moratorium on corn-related snack foods and submitted to the sales prices for microwave popcorn and corn chips. Honestly, I think what pushed us into the pricey reaches was the cheese.
Anyway, if our grocery shopping patterns are any indication, the remaining grocery trips in May will be relatively light, especially since we're good on staples.
Also, this grocery trip was a powerful example of the soothing powers of mathematics. I was sort of freaking over spending $141.18 on food -- on food! On stuff that I am, to be honest, merely renting from the nitrogen cycle. I could fly round-trip to Seattle for what I paid for food! Sure, I'd be hungry, but so what? I just flew up the West Coast for less than what I spent on food! Eating is overrated.
Except I did the math and figured this out: Phil and I eat an average of 4 meals daily, if you include snacks. We don't buy lunch at work. We now eat out all of three times a month. Let's say there are 30.5 days per month*, so that's 122 meals per month we are having. Since we're preparing 119 of them at home ... well, so long as our grocery bill averages out to $90 per week, we're looking at $3.02 a meal. That's cheaper than eating out.
So we're not quite to super-thrifty eating -- and holy skit, we're going to have to watch the grocery bill for the next few weeks -- but at $3.02 per person per meal, we're not doing too badly. At least we're eating well.
* I got this by dividing 365.25 by 12 and rounding up the quotient.
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