Our food budget

Lately I've been on a mission to eliminate the possibility of my family and I eating outside of our home as much as possible.  I'm talking NO RESTAURANTS, no fast food joints -(except Qdoba's because its our favorite!) - and no ordering IN!  Aside from health reasons, eating out at fast food restaurants adds up quickly and it can mean the difference of a couple hundred dollars extra a month that we spend on "food."

It may come as a surprise, but I've also been working on our monthly budget to see exactly how much money it takes to feed our family of four if we cook and bake everything (or almost everything) ourselves.  We are trying to cut costs, but our grocery bill always averages around $150 a week. Granted, we purchase a lot of organic items. In fact, mostly all of our items in the pantry are organic or GMO-free. All of our fruits and veggies are organic as well as well as our chicken.  Our ground beef is grass-fed organic and even our hot dogs are the organic & Nitrate and Nitrite free kind.  These are choices that we have made which we are not willing to compromise on though.  We would love to see our grocery bills lower, but its a small price to pay for food that is healthy. We shop at Trader Joes so the organic items are reasonably priced compared to all the other grocery stores we previously shopped at.  We know that if we continue to hold up the standard of buying organic, this is as nice as our bills will look for now.

Knowing that we spend close to $600 a month of groceries, we do not have the means to buy any food outside of our home.  Yea, we can always swipe our credit card, but currently that is not an option.

I have been cooking up a storm these past few weeks.  I planned a menu for the weeks ahead and I'm making sure to keep our fridge stocked with cooked foods.  Keeping the fridge stocked eliminates us from ordering in when don't want to cook. Every single day, I survey our fridge and the contents of our storage containers to see if I need to make more rice, pasta, beans, veggies, chicken, or whatever else we need replenishing to complete our meals. I also make it my duty to cook or bake EVERY SINGLE DAY.  It's extremely important to have food to munch on when hunger or craving strikes! I think that was our biggest downfall before... not having enough food readily available.

Now that I know what our plan is in terms of handling our food expenses, Ive been experimenting with new recipes and trying new techniques in the kitchen.  It is so much fun!!! I am loving baking the most; I think it's because my 4 year old son loves to help me measure all the ingredients and gets so giddy when we put our concoction in oven.  He has a lot of fun with helping me... and I enjoy his excitement and his bright eyes that take it all in. 

I might finally get around to adding some recipes I use in the next few weeks to this blog which will have my seal of approval. Hopefully I remember and I get around to it! :)