$100 Weekly Grocery Bill (Post 1)

I have been reading The Peaceful Mom Living on less than $28,000 a year series and am so inspired. I really like her $100 a week grocery bill. She gets paid every week so it is a little different from us (we get paid twice a month) but I would like to try and apply the same principle and see if I can do it with organic foods. Here is my mini goal for the month of November: Only spend $200 on grocery per paycheck or $400 a month for a family of four.

Since I did some grocery shopping this week, I decided to include that in my count. So far here is my total:

$30 - local farmer for 2 bushels of organic winter squash (mostly carnival)
$2.92 - organic ginger and some organic bananas
$26.34 - grocery store: organic rolled oats, organic rice, caramel apple, organic spices (cinnamon & spearmint), pork tenderloin (on sale for $4.99/lb), spicy tuna roll for me for lunch, organic red pepper
$10.12 - cheese, half and half, a few candy bars for my husband's lunch
$69.38 total

Yikes! We are only 2 days into the month and I have already spent a third of this pay period's $200. The good news is that we have enough vegetables (squash, broccoli from last week, the red pepper that I cut up small to accent food, some mixed veggies in the freezer) and meat (ground beef, pork tenderloin) in the freezer plus potatoes and rice for starches, flour for breads, pizza and baked goods as well as breakfasts, plus lots of oats (steel cut, rolled, quick). I should be able to spend the rest on fresh produce/fruits for the kids "snacks"/lunch over the next 12 days. We are out of pasta so that will either go on the list or wait until next time.

She also writes that they don't drink anything but water. In this house we drink a lot of milk with one toddler and with our coffee so that is a big part of our grocery bill. I have also been drinking a lot of tea due to the chilly weather but I have a HUGE tea bin so I plan on using it up before purchasing any more. Hopefully our drink budget won't eat up too much of our bimonthly budget. I can see we will need to eat a couple of nights without meat (we already do so it isn't an issue) to keep costs low.

I think our biggest purchase is dairy. Primarily milk, then cheese. We eat a lot of cheese. We can't help it, we love it. I should probably make sure that I put aside money for that, knowing I will want to spend $20-$30 on cheese for us over the next two weeks. I know what you are thinking: that's a lot of cheese. But is it? A block of Parmesan is about $5, I get a pound of organic cheddar at BJ's for $7.99. To make pizza, we use cheese. We often put it on eggs. Sure, that might have to be somewhere we cut back but I would prefer to try and cut down in other areas first. It is the kid's main source of protein. I am curious to see how the numbers come out.

Also, I don't mind doing this in November because we don't host Thanksgiving. Some of you may. We just are lucky enough to have each side of our family host one so we get two without the work. How incredibly lucky is that?

Anyone have any great or creative squash recipes? Comment below.