Food budget update

We have been on the new system of food for about a month, and I can say that...yeah, we blew this month's budget pretty severely! oops.

Although, I WILL say that most of it was poor choices and the fact this this is BBQ season, Rob discovered  he loves charcoal grilling and meat is expensive. So I think that we can stay at least near budget with a bit better planning.

The twice monthly organic club is going great and offering up a bit or random interest in our meal planning, and also bringing home things we wouldn't always buy (organic blueberries are so good, but expensive!). I am already formulating my winter bulk order, I think i will get a bulk bag of chick peas and a bulk bag of red lentils, and then I think I will have a good collection of legumes.Variety is key.

My goal of two bean recipes a week is working out nicely, and combined with re-thinking meat as a seasoning rather than a main in many meals has gone a long way too.

But in general, we have a good variety of healthier whole foods to work from and we're doing well, and the hard part is done. From here on out it's all about refinement, more recipes for weekday meals and regular food management stuff.

NEXT on the hit list: home heating systems and general maintenance and energy conservation planning. Our furnace and water heater are very old, well past expected age. We have $5000 sitting in trust from the house deal to pay for heating work, so I have started researching heating systems. We have an oil forced air furnace and the bones from a wood stove (chimney, cap and pad but no stove) to start with. Our choices are: oil, propane or electric forced air with or without wood stove back up. for wood we can choose between cord wood and pellet.

It's a complicated thing to parse, part of it is pretty personal in terms of work needed and price guessing and so-on. Up front costs and ongoing costs etc. But I'm working through it and it's coming on time to get estimates and see how things shake down. So far I'm enjoying having the luxury of time to figure out choices, rather than doing this in December in a panic.

Otherwise I'm looking up maintenance planning and figuring out what kind of stuff we should be doing. For instance, we got a lot of rain recently and I watched water pour off the side of the gutters in a coupe spots, so heading up there to scrape them out seems like a good idea :)

Tips from home owners always welcome!
xo

Food and budget details

Since we are moving to reduce preservatives and increase organics I have had to do some re-imagining of where we will get out food from, and also some budget re-jigging.

Luckily there have been some recent significant improvements in availability of "good" food (although in theory I don't support giving food moral status, nothing makes a food good or bad, it's just a choice, you know? That way it doesn't make you "good' or "bad" for eating or not eating something, it's just a choice. Anyway.

Here are the options I have at the moment:]

1. PC organics at the local superstore.

2. Alpine Bakery organic produce club, opt in week-by-week, you get what you get

3. New local food co-op focused on developing a market for local organic and responsible farmers, also planning to source bulk dry goods and organic produce from western provinces and states

4. Bulk ordering with a food club from Horizon foods out of Vancouver. You pay shipping and in this case a donation to a local youth cycling club to mass order and reduce overall shipping charges.

5. Grow your own in your back yard!

Currently I have worked out a mix of 1, 2 and 4. Working on number 5 (planted and waiting!) and I plan to take up with 4 in the fall too. Here's why.

Superstore is great for apples, oranges, bananas, frozen berries, onions, sweet potatoes and occasional oddities like portobella mushrooms. They are cheapest. \

Alpine bakery adds variety, our first basket had corn, plums, garlic, a pineapple and little bell peppers to name a few things that we just can't get at the store.  We will do this every 2 weeks due to the expense and because we supplement from superstore. cost is approx. $55 every other week.

I just made my first bulk order and received it on Friday! Here's what I bought:

Thompson Seedless Raisins, Organic (California) (w/sunflower oil) 13.6kg $82.59


NEW Pineapple & Mango, Organic 28g $42.72 [12 packs baby snacks]

Cocoa Powder, Organic (Fair Trade) 224g $34.50 [6 tins]

Black Beans, Organic 11.34kg $27.43

Navy Beans, Organic 11.34kg $39.63

Diced Tomatoes, Organic (can) 796ml $36.36 (12 cans BPA free)

Crushed Tomatoes, Onions & Garlic, Organic (can) 796ml $36.36 (12 cans BPA free)
Crushed Tomatoes, Basil, Organic (can) 796ml $36.36 (12 cans BPA free)



Quinoa, Pearl, Organic (Fair Trade) 454g $38.72

Unbleached White Flour, Organic 10kg $21.42

Sprouting Seeds, Great Mixes, Organic 1ea $30.36 [6 varieties x2 = 12 pouches]

Gin Gins Ginger Chews, Original 5kg $66.73 [errrr, this is for me haha]

Oats, Rolled, Quick Cooking, Organic 11.34kg $29.05

NEW Coconut Cream, Organic (can) 400ml $63.84 [24 cans, BPA free]

total 586.07+$80 shipping + $20 donation to youth cycle to participate in the buying club = $680.
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Yeah, I wasn't sure about the raisins but now they are my fave purchase BY FAR.

Our usual monthly food budget is $400 (what's yours? How do you make it work? Tips solicited!)
If I take the $610 (I bought the gin gins out of my allowance, not the family food budget!) and spread it over the next 6months, then subtract about $110 for Alpine produce club, that leave about $40/week for anything else we may want to eat. We have quite a bit of meat in the freezer and rice in the pantry and a breadmaker churning out cinnamon raisin loaves every 4 days (oh my god, cinnamon raisin toast in the morning YES).

 So far I don't know if this will continue to work. My current goal is to prepare 2 bean/lentil recipes a week, and keep them different and not make too much so we don't get sick of everything. I mean, it's black bean burgers and then a curry at some point. Not too bad. We are still going to eat meat, but more carefully, and more often as a seasoning than a main course. The best thing about beans is that billions of poor people subsist on them worldwide so it's not hard to find great simple recipes. Peasant food, it's what's for dinner!

The $40/week is left to cover dairy, grocery incidentals (sauces? impulse buys, meat, etc). We have a fairly well stocked pantry from my 50% off gathering (lots of pasta, some pesto, rice and such) plus stuff leftover form our previous heady days of excess (ha). 
Finally, we supplement our food budget with PC points and also we have an ice cream slush fund (ha) that comes from recyclables we pick up on our weekly disc golf date. We play sunday at noon, after the saturday drink n throw players have come and gone. It's fun.

I never expected that we would be able to sustain our budget with the changes but maybe we can. I'm going to see if we can keep on track. If we can drop our budget due to PC points or getting more creative (making salad dressings etc) then we can channel more into the mortgage fund or an RRSP or travel and that would be so good.

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So far, I'm cooking more, I'm finding great tasting recipes (you know how healthy food can taste like you're building character? That's not good enough!) and building a repertoire. And keeping a close eye on the budget. We get our second monthly produce club tomorrow, I wonder what recipes it'll have me looking up?

I will keep you posted on the budgeting and the costs. Do you have any tips or ideas to share? I want to win at food! Thanks! 

Hunting and Gathering

Once I started thinking about the quality of the food we were eating, and how that might affect our own health and the health of our baby it became easier to develop a food philosophy.

I am the type of person who shops and mulls and waits and wheels and deals to get the best price on things, and I am absolutely awful at making commitments, mostly because I am terrified that I will commit and something better will come along. Thankfully, I don't have that problem with people, but I sure do for stuff. It took me months to stop shopping for a car after we bought. Committing to a mortgage rate and type almost did me in.

So decisions for me can take a lot of time, both in making the decision, then feeling good about it after the fact. I am certain I lose much of the value of bargain shopping in the time I spend working it out. The way I have been dealing with this is to develop personal philosophies about things, so I can apply the filter and avoid much of the back and forth that would normally consume me.

It's a "life hack", a strategy to get around personality quirk roadblocks, we all have them for things like getting certain chores done (fold laundry in front of the TV?) or work done (ever use a timer?).

My main issue was I have conflicting values when it comes to food. I am interested in economy, saving money to spend it on other things, like having a stay at home parent, or a mortgage. This is a big driver as I love couponing and bargain hunting anyway, so I slid right into this. However, I also value organic foods for health and environmental reasons, as well as social justice reasons (I'm thinking of the workers in the conventional banana plantations and heir extreme exposure to pesticides). Also, there are local foods, BPA in can liners, levels of processed foods, and on and on. I was making every decision on a case by case basis, and my judgements varied depending on how I was feeling that day, how much money was left in the food budget, and whether I had a coupon.

Basically I found grocery shopping to be fun, but also paralysing at times and vaguely unsettling, as I rethought many decisions. especially as we went to feed the baby or ourselves and I wasn't totally happy with what we were having.

Deciding to minimise preservatives is a quick and easy way to cut out SO MUCH food that is available and allows me to simply disregard sale items that I might otherwise buy. Basically, it feels like I picked a winning philosophy and everything else will fall in line. I still love good economy and bargain hunting, but I'm not bargain hunting every product available to me, just the ones that meet my preservative free/organic threshold.

I'm not completely preservative free, I will still buy pies as I see them but it all feels natural and easy. And restful, there's no second guessing, no worrying about whether I did the right thing. It sounds crazy but I was/am thinking about food a LOT for someone who actually is not a foodie at all. But I am simplifying, boy howdy, and the food is actually getting BETTER than it ever was before.

Next: how I am going to game the natural food system, as best I can, and working the budget.

Food revolutions Part 1

Back when I was in university (both times) I was a careful eater. I lived in Ontario and was hooked in with environmental types and I had access to real food. Lots of organic stuff. I was a vegetarian and had time to make food. when rob and I were living together our food budget was $40/week.

Now, our food budget is $400/month and sometimes we go over. I buy a LOT of 50% off food like tortellini, sandwich meat, bread. All kind of opportunistic shopping to keep costs down.

And then recently I started getting weird headaches and body discomfort (not being vague on purpose, I just felt...off). It was from MSG in the campbell's soup I was eating. I cut that out and then found that I got the same reaction from some chili triscuits, which have the MSG clone ingredient maltodextrin (but no listing of MSG proper on the label).

At the same time, my life insurance agent told me (in conversation, not out of the blue like a helpful Tourette's injection) that she is allergic to all preservatives. Think about that! That means nothing in cans and jars, just about, that means never eating out and most meat and seafood - forget it. I was brushing my teeth thinking, what does she use to brush her teeth, surely toothpaste has preservatives? And then my co-worker told me about her rheumatoid arthritis and how "eating clean" makes a tangible difference in her joint pain. And she told me all about what she needs to avoid to eat clean and it's intense.

And then I started my food revolution. A full revolution, back to my roots of natural eating.

I have realized that I always said when we have money we'll spend it on good food. And by good food I mean organic food, local food, whole food. But that idea comes into direct conflict with my goals of economizing wherever we can, and also with the changes we've made to incorporate meat into our diet. I have found myself many, many times buying 30% off chicken thighs, or using a coupon on a sale bread and getting loaves for 75 cents. Doing this has stretched the budget a lot, and allowed us to have lots of food variety. But, ethically I'm against factory farmed meat. And health/environment-wise these choices don't line up with my supposed philosophy. There's so many choices out there that I find choosing a product difficult, do I go expensive and organic? Local and not-organic and expensive, cheap and spend the rest on RRSP?

Life is full of choices and I have come to realize that I have slipped into making choices that I actually don't support. I love saving money, I love a bargain but when it comes right down to it I care more about health and well-being. I care more about doing good with my money (following my own priorities and values). And with that comes compromise on other things I care about, like economizing and spending money on other things, and also at the expense of the routines I have built up around this from shopping weekly with my friend at the superstore to the meals we eat week in and week out.

I believe that foods steeped in preservatives make the body work harder and can contribute to problems. I worry about pesticides and BPA in cans and what it might be doing in my baby, my breastmilk and myself (and my husband). Overly processed foods are delicious but I don't know what I'm eating anymore, and I don't like the packaging and the expense of it.

My body has recently stopped tolerating MSG and MSG clones. It used to be fine, now it's not. What else am I making my body tolerate?

And I no longer live in Ontario. Local organic exists but it's not the same, or even close. But I have options and solutions and things are changing around here. And I'm going to track the costs and see how much it really costs to eat clean.

Next: how I decide what "clean food" means to me, what's in and what's out, and how I'm going to get it here in this Northern land-of-many-things,-but-not-really-fruit-and-non-root-veggies.

We're moving...

Things I will really miss about my small apartment, as we pack up only a few weeks away from moving to our big old house:

1. I will no longer be able to remain safely within arms reach of my daughter taking a bath while sitting on the toilet

2. No more "beep test" style sprints up two flights of stairs to the bathroom when I miscalculate how long it'll take to get home , time to get a new fitness regiment I guess.

3. No more walking to the airport and neighbourhood folks burning a trail down the road in their snowmobiles

4. No more built in cold storage in our entryway and laundry area due to our leaky front door

5. It's the end of keeping close with our pets, especially tender moments such as when I am doing laundry with a cat taking a poo literally inches from my feet in real time. Sad.
6. It's the end of creeping slowly up the stairs after the baby goes to bed wincing every time the laminate creaks and cracks, trying to decide if flushing the toilet will wake her up. Our stealth will surely suffer. 

And so on. But, we must be strong. Life goes on and we will have to figure out a way to get by in our new place, maybe the little master en suite or the cedar sauna in the basement will help. Maybe.