How I Feed a Family of Five or Six on $700 (way too much) per Month

Buy fancy food ingredients that I saw on the eating healthy blog. Put said ingredients in the pantry. Look at them every few weeks and think about how I should use them some time.

Go to the store twice a week when I forget important items (read: bread).

Spoil children with potato chips, marshmallow cereal, and frozen waffles. Wonder why they won't eat fruit and salad without nagging.

Buy lots of produce, especially blueberries from Chili because...I. Need. Summer. Now. Hope that someone other than me and youngest child will eat some of the berries because they are a "super food." Then secretly hope nobody else will touch our precious blueberries.

Buy some more produce, especially salad and soup ingredients. I'm the only person in the house who likes soup (college boy likes soup, but he's in college eating their food). 

Buy frozen fruit for "yummy" smoothies that nobody except me likes. Cry inside because I just want to help them be healthy. Why don't they like ginger in their smoothies?

Realize that I won't really bake bread this week, even though I have 70 lbs. of oats and at least 18 lbs. of flour on hand. Buy some bread. Feel guilty for not baking bread, then throw some grinder rolls in the cart. Dinner will be meatball subs to use up the meatballs I made from the grass-fed organic beef I bought last week.

Buy more grass-fed organic beef. 

Buy capers, Kalamata olives, chia seeds, and hemp seeds.

Buy sesame seeds to make tahini in my fancy new blender. Think about making it for a month. Maybe I'll do that tomorrow.

Buy hazelnuts to make hazelnut spread. Watch 10 videos about how to shell them. Think about shelling them for a month. Maybe I'll shell and roast those tomorrow, too.

Buy bags of dried beans. Actually cook the beans in the slow cooker and realize they are delicious, particularly in comparison to canned beans.

Save money by making my own slow-cooker yogurt and granola.

This week, I read a few blogs about families who spend less than $250 per month on groceries. How??? Well, they raise chickens, which is huge! I cannot raise chickens--not allowed in the city. They have successful gardens and put back food. They shop at Aldi. I do that! They meal plan. I do that sometimes. 

There's the problem! I probably cannot realistically get to a $250 per month goal in the winter time in New England, but I can do better than $700. 

I meal-planned for next week based on my pantry inventory. I will be working in some of those fancy food ingredients from the pantry. February starts in a couple days. Let's see how much under $700 I can get the grocery budget!

Heavenly Father,

You've blessed us abundantly. Thank you for your many blessings. Help me to make better use of the resources of food and money. Help me to nourish my family and friends with good foods. Help me to use financial resources to your glory, Lord. 

Amen.

Challenges in the New Year

For me, every week is like a new year. I'm always thinking about how to improve myself and my home. It's honestly a bit of an obsession. Lately, I've been reading lots of "How to Get Organized" books. I take them with me to read while waiting for appointments and joke about how I keep reading these books, but I am still not organized. One piece of advice in the latest book was to stick with a project until its completion. As I look at my very-close-to-clean desk, I wonder why I quit before I finished. In five minutes, the job that has been looming for the past month could finally be crossed off the to-do list. Two more piles, and done, Instead, I have been reading blogs about New Year's challenges, and now I'm writing my own post.

Two challenges are on my radar: The Frual Fresh Start Challenge at SixFiguresUnder.com and the Clean Cuisine 8-Week Challenge. Financial and physical fitness are both very important to me.

All of the challenges have one theme in common, goal setting. I'm very good at dreaming up how I'd like things to look or feel or be. However, I am not quite as good at setting attainable goals with benchmarks to keep me on target for success.

I wrote some goals in a notebook today. The notebook has a page in it with my "five-year goals" from 2009. My goals were lofty and unattained--but inspiring all the same. This time, I'm starting with a six-month goal in response to Stephanie's suggestion for Day 1.  In terms of the financial goals, one is to save for a trip in June to visit my grandma. Another is to pay off a student loan this year. My fitness and health goals are to exercise a minimum of four times per week with a specific focus on strength training and flexibility to alleviate knee pain. Once I've met that goal, I can begin training for a spring or fall half marathon (a distance I claimed to be done running, but I think I need to do just one more!).

All of my current goals are realistic, attainable, and measurable, essential characteristics of worthwhile goals.

I need to start supper in about 10 minutes. That means I have plenty of time to finish cleaning my desk.

What are your goals for the New Year? I'd love to hear from you!