Half Changed World

I’m amazed at the attention this little experiment has gotten; I’ve gotten more links to it than any other post, including many that I thought were much more interesting.  I guess it’s because there are lots of people pontificating on the internet, and many fewer trying to match what they eat to what they say.  The discussion here was particularly interesting.

So, when I left off, we had spent $163.24 on groceries, $191.49 including purchased meals, $182.62 including cat food and laundry soap.  We spent about $87 on groceries in the past week: $29 at Shoppers Food Warehouse for frozen grape juice concentrate, graham crackers, soda (for the birthday party that wound up being cancelled due to sick kids), milk, spaghetti sauce, mozzarella cheese (for pizza); $37 at Costco for peanut butter, eggs, bread, spaghetti sauce, cheddar cheese, and dino buddies; and $21 at Giant for milk and taco fixings.  Current grocery total: $249.12, or $277.37 with purchased meals.  Including things like cat food, pedialyte, tylenol and cleaning supplies, we’re at $340.09.

I’m fascinated by how defensive I could feel myself getting as I read some of the comments that suggested ways in which we could cut our grocery budget further, even though the goal of this experiment was never to spend the absolute minimum possible.

I’m quite surprised by Amy’s statement that she’s able to buy organic food for $250/month or less — the stores that sell organic food around here are VERY expensive.  Even when I’m not trying to stick to the Thrifty Food Plan, I find it painful to buy wild salmon at $14 a pound when I can get farmed salmon (even if full of PCBs) for $3.99 a pound.  Amy, if you’re still reading, I’d love examples of what things cost where you shop.

Someone else ("PGC-ist") suggested a bunch of different chains that he said were cheaper, but Shoppers Food Warehouse is the only one of them that has a store anywhere near me.  I enjoy cooking, so am willing to spend 20 minutes making muffins or waffles rather than buying them at the store, but I’m not willing to spend an extra hour driving around the Beltway in order to save a few dollars.  And if I didn’t have a car, they’d be totally out of consideration.

One of the goals of the experiment was to see how trying to stick to this budget affected the quality of our diet.  Bean soup is cheap, healthy and filling, but its appeal wears somewhat thin after several days in a row.  Fresh vegetables have been surprisingly expensive — the ground turkey for our tacos was only $2.67, but peppers, lettuce and plum tomatoes were another $5.  I always have a harder time eating the recommended servings of fruit and vegetables during the winter than during the summer, and this project has made that worse, because I think they’re overpriced.

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2/6/05: Final report on the experiment is posted here.

This entry was posted on Friday, January 28th, 2005 at 9:24 pm and is filed under Food and Drink. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.