The $60 Sweet Spot

Before we get down to business with a long-overdue grocery budget update, we must celebrate Ada's 5-month birthday! As always, I took a gazillion photos of her to commemorate the event.

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I went a little overboard on our day trip to Ithaca -- buying a ton of clothing for 6 months and up at my favorite Salvation Army and other thrift stores. For $25, this girl will be stylin' for years to come.


Still, it's not the clothes that make the girl.


Happy 5 months, Baby A! Now, back to groceries.

It's been a while since I wrote an update on how we're doing buying groceries for only $50 a week. For a while, we were doing great. But I think we had a lot of reserves under us. This isn't to say we're not striving to lean out the junk (mostly packaged crackers, cookies, and other convenience items -- you know, the stuff that everyone can buy on the cheap with coupons) and better our meal planning, but we haven't been sticking to our goal.

The good news? We're not terribly far off. And at $60 a week, we find we're able to buy absolutely everything we need -- no skimping.

This week at a glance:


Now, when we wrote our first post on this topic, we received some criticism. Emails and comments from people who cited that we're vegetarians and seem to live only on hummus. I suppose I can see where that's coming from, but I assure you, we buy a variety of fruits and vegetables to keep our bellies happy.

We have a food blog, after all. And I've had no trouble coming up with healthy recipes to post.

True, being vegetarian can certainly lessen the grocery bill. Especially now that we've decided to snack on cheese mostly on weekends (but that's primarily for dietary reasons -- Ada isn't tolerating it in my milk very well). But it's not that easy. We credit our success more with making lists and meal planning before we head to the store. We're slowly coming up with a catalog of $5 dinners -- like the Smoked Tofu Loaf and Asparagus Pasta.

I think one big area where we can begin saving is with baking supplies. If you read (never home)maker, you may have seen my recent post about my addiction to sugar. I'm on day 4 without cookies, cakes, and other items full of the refined stuff. Normally, I'd be stocking our shelves with sugar, brown sugar, Earth Balance, flour, chocolate chips, etc. I'm not going to all-out stop baking entirely. But limiting it a bit will free up some funds for sure.

Now, I remember that some of you guys were on a similar mission to lower your bills. How's it going? I can't believe what a difference an extra $10 makes -- and I'm happy to pull it from other areas in our budget.

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