Follow our family's weekly vegetarian menu, access recipes, and download weekly grocery lists, during my quest to get our weekly grocery bill down to $70 per week, while supporting local agriculture and eating healthy organic foods!

Thursday, April 14, 2011

Project Food Budget: Week 11

Goal : $70/week- $280/month
Actual: $87.48 - $258.91/month


The Breakdown:
  • $15 for 1/2 CSA share
  • $23.74 Dinner Swap meal
  • $43.98 Staples
  • $4.76 dog food ingredients
Dinner Swap Menu
  • Sweet potato and kale quesadillas w/ home made tortillas
  • Potato, apple, (veggie) sausage and sage casserole and salad
  • Spinach and mushroom quiche and roasted tomato soup
  • Fettuccine and white beans
  • Chickpea salad sandwiches and pasta
  • Vegetable biscuits and gravy with mashed potatoes and green beans
Additional recipes:
  • I tried my hand at solar cooking. The recipe was amazing. The solar oven made of random things laying around my house... ummm... not real great. So I am going to tweak it and try again! This recipe for solar cookies, with about 1/4 c of cocoa added is (as I said) amazing! I finished cooking them in the conventional indoor oven. :) 

  • I also decided I did not like the carrot bread recipe I have been using and found a new one. It is quite possibly the best bread I have ever made. I would definitely suggest trying it! I also threw it on the skillet for a minute to heat it up and then added a tad of butter and some fresh crushed garlic.. Yumm!
Dinner swap meal: sweet potato and kale quesadillas with home made tortillas and smoky pinto beans
  • 12 large sweet potatoes
  • 3 lbs dry pinto beans
  • 5 lb whole wheat white flour
  • coconut oil
  • chipotle peppers in adobo sauce
  • 3 onions
  • 5 lbs Monterey jack cheese
Staples: 
  • peanut butter
  • oranges
  • black beans
  • lemons
  • limes
  • tortillas
  • eggs
  • cheese
  • pinto beans
  • cottage cheese
  • honey
  • cheese
  • cliff bars
I am on track to go approximately $50 over budget this month. I have $21.09 left to stay under the monthly budget. $15 of which is already spent for my CSA share.  Being that I have used almost all our grains, I don't think $6 will make it.

I have been $15-$20 over budget every week. I have decided once it comes time to renew my CSA, I am going to try to do a work share. That would shave off $15-30 per week and bring be right down to my goal. This won't happen until June though. We are also going to start a garden. I have not really done so before, so it will be a grand experiment. What in life isn't?


3 comments:

  1. looks like you are making some great food! what does it mean to have a work share? are you volunteering time at the farm?

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  2. We love our CSA workshare. There was a huge shift in how we saw our food and our farm when we started working. We are far less wasteful. We thoroughly enjoy watching each little seedling rise up and produce our next meal.

    I hope that you do the workshare. It's a great experience!

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  3. emily, A workshare is an exchange for time worked on the farm for a box of veggies. the CSA we have has a program where you work 5 hours/week for the box. I have never done it before due to having no child care. It would cost me about$50 to get someone to watch the little one that long. The box is only $30. So it as alway been a bit of a no bainer just to buy the share. I have since made friends with families on my street and when this share runs out, we might strike a deal where she watches the 2 year old, I work for the share and then we split the share. Now that I only make 2 meals a week, 1/2 share is plenty.

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