HOLY COW! You save a LOT of money if you don't spend it on food. I mean, for reals. You also learn stuff.
1) You save on food
2) You save on tips (because not going to restaurants)
3) You save on gas (because groceries and laundry are my towntrip motivators)
4) You learn to eat new, often cheaper, things that have been sitting in the pantry
5) You really start to appreciate that living off other people's "waste" food is pretty amazing and get more and more willing to eat it.
6) You learn that 6 is my favorite number so I had to have 6 things in the list.
As of Feb 28 I had 2 heads of garlic and a few random cloves as "fresh food" and still have almost all of my sprouting seeds.
Still had a few cans of 2nd harvest veggies and peaches. 4 or 5 cans of peas. No more beans in cans. Maybe a half cup of lentils left.
Some dried carrots. No more bouillon cubes or dried veg mix as soup base.
Still have plenty of berries in vinegar (actually gave a pint and a half jar of them away today...must remember to get that jar back, I love that size/shape) and have been eating them pretty regularly. They are nice on a veggie and bean soup and add some color other than the carrots from the cans of veggies.
I still have plenty of rice and put 6lbs of spaghetti in the little free pantry over the weekend because it was too much. While I was there, I grabbed a can of diced tomatoes. Just one. It made a really nice tomato-garden soup with the last of the dried veggie mix. Surprisingly good.
I'm a bit low on spices but still plan to use up what I have. I'm out of cumin and paprika which are surprisingly handy for adding flavor to almost anything with rice or beans. BUT I still have chimayo green chili powder and a tube of "poulet" (thanks Chris!) seasoning that is about half full and seems to have some smoky paprika in it. It is delicious on much more than poulet. I also have 1 or 2 small jars of salsa from the farmers market.
I was planning on going to the store in a week or so because I will be in town anyway. I was thinking through what I "need" vs what I want and turns out I don't "need" anything. I'd like a small bag of sugar to keep my kombucha mother going and keep making kombucha.
I thought I'd like some oatmeal or flour of some sort (still kicking myself for not grabbing the bag of 5lbs of corn meal for 25cents...damn! but I had enough flour).
I say "thought" because I am just moments back from an extra "2nd Harvest" distribution day. A random truck showed up about 6hours ago and after lunch, the call went out far and wide that there was TONS of stuff available. INCLUDING MEAT!!!!
I got many many too many pounds of pasta. I will re-donate that. Already passed on the mac and cheese to a colleague with kids. I don't do the dairy so much and that is totes not worth the dairy cost. I will pass on most of the spaghetti because I got 3 or 4lbs of spinach rotini and still had 2lbs in the pantry.
There was also....OATMEAL!!! Maypo brand. Plain oatmeal. No sugar. Whole grain. Nice. It's quick cooking but whatever. I kept thinking I could make a nice fruit crumble if only I had some oatmeal. And there it was. 2 boxes of 1lb 2oz each. Lovely.
More than a dozen cans of fruit. 4 cans of peas. 4 cans of kidney beans. 4 cans of pork and beans (I ate one...oddly good cold out of the can...but tooo salty so the other 3 are getting donated to the little free pantry).
3 pounds of frozen ground beef.
3 pounds of frozen ground BISON!!!!! YAY!!!!
Since I was down to 3 or 4 jars of my home canned meat, this is excellent. I cannot remember the last time I had a burger. I plan to fry one up this weekend and put the rest in soup with the potatoes left from last week's regular distribution (they have some dark spots so need to be eaten sooner rather than later), some of my garlic and dried carrots. Whatever spices I can round up. I know I have fennel and peppercorns. I'm skipping the salt as much as possible so not adding it to most dishes. I gave away my hot sauce but have that delicious green chili...oooo....green chili bison stew...oh yeah. That sounds good. With a random fruit crumble using the oatmeal and a bit of the buckwheat honey or stevia (I bought that stevia powder...less than an ounce, before I moved into the wee shed. It lasts forever because you need so little).
There are also cans of the mixed veggies in the 2nd harvest "non-perishables" box. I have started just emptying one into a bowl and adding meat and spices. The home jarred meat is already cooked. Just heat and enjoy. The broth from the veggies in the can is good enough as soup. Left over soup with a bit more spice and oil is good on pasta or in rice as a casserole. Like, really not bad.
I'm not as much of a food princess right now. I'd RATHER eat local, organic, no-spray and think that is the way farming and consuming food helps the planet. I think that eating up food "waste" also helps in a different way. When I have more cash flow, once the house is done or whatever, I can go back to the fancy eating.
I do appreciate fancy food more now.
I put money in the grocery budget for March, but could continue to eat healthy meals without it. I didn't put any money in the dining out lines of the budget. Or the coffee out budget.
I still have money on the fancy bread gift card and by cutting back to every other week and getting less, like 2 small treats rather than a whole loaf of bread, I am stretching that out for another month at least. That's kind of fun.
Hopefully most of the March food budget will go to pantry staples I'm unlikely to get from 2nd harvest, spices, cocoa, coconut oil (one of your better no-dairy oils that keeps reasonably well in the wee shed).
I have enough coffee beans to make it through the month and still have enough tea to host the royal family a few times. I've cut back to one cup of coffee in the morning and then black or green tea for the next couple of caffeine shots. It works well so far. I also found the dregs of a bag of ground chicory root so I can add a bit of that to a small ration of coffee beans and make some New Orleans style coffee. It's quite tasty really.
Overall, my total spend for things that were NOT the "new" used car (more anon) or the house building bill, was 700$ less than January. About 300 of that is attributable to the no food-spend. In the summer, while building the pantry stock, I can spend 200$/month on groceries. It is easy to spend 50-100 a month on coffee and restaurant food with a couple of work lunches and a few fast drive through coffee hut trips. March has some annual bills to be paid so won't be as much lower. But I think I can keep the food bill a great deal lower than it was and that I will keep patronizing 2nd Harvest late in the day after the truly needy have had a shot and the food pantry folks from the small towns around have stocked up their rigs and headed back for those 2ndary distributions (does that make it 3rd Harvest?)
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