Cash only food shopping = stress?

This is my first month ever really trying to stay on our grocery budget of $625 so I am using only cash this month to try and stick to that. What this means is that going food shopping has been a bit more stressful than usual these past 2 weeks! I’ve been carrying my trusty calculator around the food store and adding things up as I go and then praying that I didn’t make a mistake with my calculations as the checker rings me out.

The last 2 weeks I’ve been a little under my alloted amount, due to my coupon clipping ;), which has been great but I’ve definitely put a few things back and didn’t even pick up a few things because I knew I didn’t have enough money. One of the few benefits that I’m discovering through this process though, is that I really think twice before I pick something up. Where as before a few extra things might jump in my cart that looked SO good in the grocery store but then ended up in the trash half eaten at home, now I’m only buying things that I know we’ll eat and that we’ll eat before it rots or goes to die in our fridge.  And speaking of the fridge that is another benefit i’m seeing with this shopping weekly, paying cash thing, our fridge has managed to stay alot neater and cleaner. Normally things go into our fridge and sometimes (ok, many times) they die in there. I’ll be looking for something a month later and lo and behold in the very back or deep in the recesses of the veggie drawer there it is looking pretty sad and stinky! So now I’m buying things that we’ll actually eat before going bad which is a good thing and I can actually find stuff in the fridge because it’s not as crowded.

Also, because I’m buying more fresh food our freezer is 1/2 empty which leaves me more room for freezing some homemade meals, like my chili that I made yesterday!

Can the 4th time be the real charm?

This is about the 4th blog that I have tried to start over the last several years and I’m hoping that really its the 4th time that’s the charm. I’ve always started out excited and gung-ho about this blogging stuff but then I begin to feel awkward about writing about myself. I mean how much more narcissistic can you get then thinking that people are so interested in me or anything I’m doing to want to read about me or my family everyday?

Well this time I’ve decided to just keep this going as a running account and journal of turning our industrialized food eating house into a totally organic and sustainable one on a strict one income budget.  So I’m really not focusing on whether anyone else thinks it interesting or not but I’m focusing on keeping track of how things are going for me and for our family and if we can really make this work.

I have Michael Pollan to thank for sparking this change. I mean I always kind of watch what I eat and try to make relatively healthy choices and if I can fit it into our grocery budget try to buy organic produce and meat, but after reading “The Omnivores Dilemma” I have suddenly become even more convicted about making better choices about the food that comes into our home. On so many levels (spiritual, environmental, health wise) I think its really the right thing to do and I want to believe that its possible even if you aren’t rich.

One of the challenges that I’ve encountered in the past when I’ve tried to move our family to more sustainable food is the cost. Sure I can rationalize it in my head and I totally understand the higher costs associated with not mass producing food on the same scale as industrial food but when the rubber meets the road and I only have $625 for the month to feed our family of four my wallet ends up making most of our food choices. So as I was reading Pollan’s book I thought to myself, “for the month of March I am going to challenge myself to stay within our alloted grocery budget but only buy food that is being grown in a sustainable and earth/human friendly manner” and alas I am starting this blog to keep track of my success or failure in making this happen and to jot down and share some notes along the way.

I’m going to try to keep a log here of what grocery stores I shop at and how much everything costs so in case anyone else cares they can check those places out too. One of the other things that we’ve decided to reinvigorate, literally, is our old garden. I’m hoping that growing some of our own fruits/veggies/herbs will help us to offset some of our costs too. I’ll be keeping notes on how that is going here too, because of course, its all part of changing our house from industrial to organic…