Here we go! I promised I would give you the in depth of what we spend this month on food. What we bought, what it cost, and what we made with it. And here is week 2.

This week I shook it up and went to our state capital Sacramento to shop at the renowned WholePaycheck  WholeFoods. I’ve shopped there on vacation and we always spend a ton, cos fun beer, and chocolates and treats on vacation… but I’ve never done a regular week’s shopping. So I wanted to see how it compared to our small town local health food store in terms of price.

How I shop a new store:

Every store has its own pricing, its own sales, its own ranges etc. So when I’m shopping a new place I want to know the store before I make my meal plan. I don’t want to write something down and then find it’s a lot more expensive for some reason at this store. I also want to make use of any sales, or lower-than-normal prices on products and add them into my plan. So I walked around, made a few nots and then wrote my meal plan. Then we shopped.

What we bought: 

My first trip round the store landed me at $98.48 so I went back and grabbed a few extra things! It all came to a total of $103.47 (when you take out a bottle deposit for the glass bottle.)

Later in the week Jared really wanted pizza for date night so I grabbed some pizza sauce for $2.50 and some extra seeds for seed butter for $3.50.

That’s a total of $109.47 for the week.

Added last week’s total we’re at  $206.33 for the first 2 weeks of the month I’m documenting. 

This picture is what we bought in the initial shop minus a $5 jar of Better Than Bouillon paste I forgot to include, and some extra date and coconut treats we’d already eaten! Bear in mind, I don’t fully eat up each week before I buy for the next. Some things roll over. So you’ll see some ingredients in the meals we ate that aren’t in the picture/list and also some next week that come from these ingredients not next week’s shop.

What we ate:

I’ve added story highlight on instagram so you can see a roundup of what we ate this week and I’ll change it each week of the month so you can see a more real life view but below is what we ended up eating. It’s usually 60% the same as what I plan but I move stuff around according to different needs/changes in the week.

Eating Out:

This week we ate out a couple of times (me alone once and once together.) Right now we don’t have a budgeted amount for eating out, and it doesn’t come out of our grocery budget so we only do it when we have ‘extra’ money from somewhere that wasn’t expected or a gift card or something like that, or if we can pull money from another unused budget, or if we’re working and it’s an expense. That usually amounts to one family coffee/meal out every 2-4 weeks.

 

If you don’t usually get my emails, I just sent out a download for 3 budget friendly recipes for $3 meals when you shop at Trader joes. We actually make those meals for less than $3 but I wanted a store that translated well! If you want the download hit the link here and pop in your email address to get it!

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