Grocery Shopping

We started doing the grocery shopping online again after Tom was born. Karen's been doing it, but I took over a couple of months ago. Even though we miss out on some of the specials, we end up coming out ahead by reducing impulse purchases. Except when we don't, usually because we have to go in and grab things we've forgotten. So now that I'm in charge of the online shopping, I'm trying to make sure I don't forget anything. So far, we're saving around $75 to $100 a week.

Which still leaves us spending about $300 to $325 a week on groceries. That's too high, but a hell of a lot better than the $400 we were spending before. Eyeballing the grocery list, I'd say we're spending about 55-60% of the budget on Real Food. Over the next few months, that number should climb to 75-80%, with at least 25% of the total being spent outside the supermarket.

One change we've made this week is that there was no jar of spaghetti sauce. I'm going back to making my own. Karen makes her own vegan pasta sauce, but I quit making one when the boys were little because they didn't like it. Every time we'd have spaghetti, it would be a battle to get them to eat it, until one night when we were throwing a quick dinner together, I grabbed a jar of pre-made sauce and they were all over it. And that's the way it's been ever since, until last night when I realized that I forgot to buy it last week.

So instead of running up the store to grab a jar, I ran out to the garage where we've got two dozen cans of chopped tomatoes that were on sale a couple of weeks ago. Cooked them down with some onions, garlic, italian herbs, a bit of sugar, salt and pepper, and splash of balsamic vinegar, and the boys thoroughly enjoyed it. James even had leftovers for lunch today. So that's the way it's going to be, with the addition of fresh tomatoes (in season) and home-grown herbs (and maybe onions and garlic, too) in the future.