Food Inflation

If you've been in a grocery store lately, you've noticed that something funny is going on...

Package sizes seem to be shrinking, even though the price remains the same.

This phenomenon is commonly referred to as food inflation.

Have you taken a look at the farm situation for this coming year?  The Mid-Atlantic region is still covered in snow.  Typically, our fields are beginning to dry out this time of year, and the soil would be ready for our early spring crops in two weeks.  Considering we just received a new blanket of snow today, albeit a thin one, I think it's safe to say that early spring crops might not make it into the ground until the end of March.

California is suffering from the worst multi-year drought they've had since they began keeping records.

Florida lost much of its winter crops with the weather we've had this winter.

And what about the farm land that was inundated last spring along the Mississippi River?  It's going to be a couple of years before that land will be ready for commercial farming again.

It's not going to be long before the food manufacturers raise prices across the board and stop shrinking package sizes.

So, what can you do to help cut down on your own food costs?

I have a list of things that we've done.  For most of the last 20 years, I've been a stay at home mom, and we've lived off of one income.  For the past 4 years, I've worked as a substitute teacher.  Most of that money has been set aside to help pay for the textbooks and some other related college expenses the kids have.  I do have a few tricks up my sleeve to help cut the food budget that I've learned along the way.

1) Cook from scratch.  ALL of the time. 
It is healthier than using processed foods, and ultimately, it is cheaper.  If you work outside of the home, I know that this can be difficult.  I have several strategies that I use to help keep the stress down on working days:

• I prep food on Sunday afternoon.  I will spend a couple of hours slicing carrots, celery, etc. and storing them into containers, labeled for use later in the week.  I've even gone so far as to measure out the spices into a container ahead of time, so all I have to do is dump.
• Use your slow cooker often.  Set it first thing in the morning before you leave, and dinner is ready when you get home.  
• Cook two, freeze one.  I do this with casseroles, lasagna, baked chicken, anything that I can make two of just as easily as one.
• Once a month cooking.  Ever heard of this?  You do one massive shopping day once a month.  Then, you spend a day prepping, cooking, baking, and freezing.  It makes for a horrendously long day, but the reward is great.  No thinking about dinner for the next month. 

2) Use your leftovers.
As hubby's lunch the next day.  As part of another dinner.  In a casserole or soup.  Never, no not ever, do not ever throw anything out.  I currently have a Rubbermaid container in the freezer, holding leftovers - a little bit of green beans, some rice, and some carrots.  When the container is full, this will be the basis for a soup.

3) Bake your own bread.
Easy to do.  You don't need a bread machine.  It's easy to whip out a loaf of home-made bread in a few hours. 

4) Eat more soup.
For the investment of a handful of veggies and some broth,  you can have a rich soup that will satisfy a family of many for pennies.  Even better, leftover soup can be enriched with a handful of other leftovers and some pasta to make a tasty casserole on another day.

5) Shop at Farmer's Markets.
Okay, unless if you live in a warm climate, there aren't any open at this time of year.  Keep an eye open for them.  Buying directly from your local farmers, you are cutting out the middle man and saving on your bottom line.  Once you get to know a farmer, they'll also hold back a large order for you if you ask a week ahead. 

6) Plant a garden.
Now's the time to get those seeds started!  The payoff won't be for a few months yet, but you will basically have FREE food.  Even if you live in an apartment, you can still have sprouts in a jar on a windowsill, or veggies in a pot on  your patio.  (A POT garden!  Get it?  A POT garden!!)  And yes, husband and I had a pot garden on our balcony when we were first married.  We grew tomatoes and green peppers, and herbs.   Herbs are expensive!  (I mortified my very proper MIL when I told her we had a pot garden going....)

7) Learn how to preserve food.
Freezing, Canning, and dehydrating.  Start looking into it now.  Believe me, there is nothing like going to the cupboard and finding rows and rows of food waiting for you... food that you put up.  If you don't know how to can, research the internet.  Patrice Lewis has an excellent guide on how to can on her website: http://www.rural-revolution.com/., and here: http://www.rural-revolution.com/search/label/canning 

I will say this- canning IS a science.  There are precise guidelines on how to can for a reason.  Botulism kills - and if you are haphazard in your canning, you will discover what Botulism can do to your intestinal system.  Follow those rules and guidelines to the letter.   I learned how to can from my mother and grandmother when I was little, and then I took a "refresher" class from my home extension service before I began canning again.  I love what Patrice has to say about canning, and I am diligent about following my Ball Blue Book of Canning to the letter.

8) Pick Your Own
Find a pick your own farm near you.  These farms have lower prices, and they offer a volume discount.  In a typical year, I hit up our local pick your own farms for several bushels of tomatoes, apples, peaches, green beans, and corn.  Even better, when I patronize my local pick your own farmer, I'm supporting a local farmer, and keeping the money in my local economy.  I desperately want our local family farmers to be able to stay in business!
 
9) Coupons
Are they worth it?  Mostly, coupons are for highly processed foods.  I try to stay away from them as much as possible.  I know they are fast and easy, but I have begun to wonder what the future "price" will be - high blood pressure?  diabetes?  some weird chemical floating around in my system?  Since I've had to give up gluten, there really isn't much that I can eat that's covered by a coupon.  (I do use coupons on personal hygiene items when I can find them- soap, toothpaste, toilet paper, etc.)

10) Meatless Mondays (and other days)
Meat is expensive.  Cutting meat out of at least one meal a week is going to save you at least $5 a week.  If you do use meat for a meal, make sure you can get the most out of it that you can.  A meat based meal, leftovers for a casserole, and a bone for soup or broth is a pretty decent haul on a whole chicken or a roast.

It's not easy, but all of this is worth it if you want to lower your overall expenses.  My husband says "It's like earning money, but it's not taxed."

Bonus- our overall health will improve if we eat fewer processed foods and graze a little bit further down the food chain.

Dinner Tonight

 

Actually, this was dinner Monday night.  Pasta Fagioli. 

 

I found the recipe here: http://theprudenthomemaker.com/index.php/pasta-e-fagioli.   The Prudent Homemaker is written by Brandy, who develops all of her own recipes.  This one looked different than any I had tried before.  At the very end of the recipe, you cook the pasta separately from the soup, and then add the pasta to the soup just before serving.  The combination of spices, and the processing that she used in this soup raised this from "just another bean soup" to "totally amazing". 

Since daughter is a vegetarian, I replaced the chicken bullion with vegetable stock.  (Remember my broth cubes I made from turkey?  I also made broth cubes from vegetable stock a few weeks back.)

 

 

Pasta Fagioli- ready for the fridge!

 

 

The recipe on the website gave me more than enough soup to feed the three of us for dinner!  (Now that the boys are back at college, I have leftovers again!)

 

So now, we have awesome leftovers!  I didn't actually process the soup.  This is going in the fridge.  I don't like to store things in plastic because I'm never certain what chemicals will leach into my food.  Instead, I store leftovers in small canning jars in the refrigerator.  I always have a few empty jars sitting around at any given time during the year.  When I can something up, I write the contents and the date on the lid in sharpie.  After we use up whatever is inside, I clean the lids and save them.  The writing on the lid of the jar lets me know that they are used, and I can reuse them to store things in the fridge.  The lid to this jar says "Grape Jelly, 2010". 

 

If you are looking for a warm, filling, over the top, simply sublime recipe for Pasta Fagioli, I recommend that you head over to the Prudent Homemaker's website and try this out!  http://theprudenthomemaker.com/index.php/pasta-e-fagioli

 

Once you journey over to Brandy's website, take the time to browse through her website and blog (http://theprudenthomemakerblog.blogspot.com/).  Brandy's husband had no source of income for almost a year, and she manages to feed a growing family on 33 cents a day.  33 CENTS!!!  And I thought I could pinch a penny! 

 

Have a wonderful Wednesday!

The Final Cost of the Chicken

You see, I really do stretch a roasted chicken out quite far.

Once our family finishes with the original chicken, I sit down and pick the chicken off of the bones.  I then portion out what is left into one cup servings to go into other meals.  Sometimes, I'll use one cup, sometimes, I'll use two.  I try to use the chicken as more of a flavoring in casseroles and use veggies to fill up on bulk in the meals as much as possible. 

When I finish stripping the chicken, I will boil the bones down and either make broth to freeze for later, or I'll make soup.  I'm always surprised at how much meat is still clinging to the bones when I finish stripping a chicken.  The bones do make a very good soup.  This time, I chose to make some more broth.  I had planned on making soup out of the bones, but it's been an "interesting" week.  And I don't mean "interesting" in a good way.  I mean frustrating.  So, for the sake of my own sanity, I decided to go ahead and boil the chicken down into broth.

Anyway, the final rundown on the chicken:

Original Cost:  $15.69

Chicken and Rice Casserole:  6 servings
White Chicken Chili:   6 servings
Chicken Neck Soup:  6 servings
Baked Chicken: 6 servings

This added up to a grand total of 24 servings from one chicken.

Divide the $15.69/24, and we come up with 65 cents per serving.

Not bad.

Again, if you take a closer look at the recipes I used, you'll notice that I stretched my chicken out with rice, veggies, beans, and in soup as much as possible.  The meat became more of a flavoring than the centerpiece of the meal. 

I can't wait to see what I can do with a turkey come Thanksgiving!

The Last of the Chicken

We had baked potatoes for dinner on Tuesday night.

Last night, we used up the last of the chicken.  Wait, I used up the last of the meat on the bones.  I'm going to make chicken soup out of the remaining bones for dinner tonight.

Unfortunately, when I'm making soup from scratch, I believe in bringing the water to a boil before I let it simmer.  So, tomorrow morning before I head off to work, I'll bring the water and leftover bones to a rolling boil, and then I'll toss it all into the crock pot and set it on low for 8 hours.

For dinner last night, I made a Chicken and Rice Casserole.  This recipe was given to me by my room-mate's grandmother back when we were in college and just learning how to cook.  I loved it then because even I could make it - as long as I remembered to set the timer once I put the stuff in the oven!  Even better, when I made this for me, I ended up having dinner for several days during the week.  This was dinner last night, and will be lunch for my husband and I tomorrow.

 

Chicken and Rice Casserole

(Cherie's Grandma's Recipe)

1 cup cooked chicken or turkey, diced
2 stalks celery, diced
1/2 onion, diced
1 (10 ounce) bag of frozen mixed veggies
2 cups of cooked rice
1 can Cream of Mushroom Soup
1 cup mayo
Corn Flakes

Spray a 9x13 inch pan with non-stick cooking spray.

Saute the onion and celery in a saucepan until veggies are soft.

In the pan, combine chicken, mixed veggies, rice, onion mixture, cream of mushroom soup, and mayo.  Stir well and spread to edges of the pan.

Crush one cup of corn flakes, spread evenly over the casserole.

Bake in a 350* oven for 20 minutes.

Note- I've had this recipe with mayo and without.  I prefer it with the mayo.  I've exchanged the cream of mushroom soup for cream of celery and omitted the celery stalks.  I've had it with two cans of cream of soup and no mayo - one can of mushroom and one of celery.  The point of this recipe is to keep your expenses low.  Cherie's Grandma told me that the trick to this recipe is to use what you have in your fridge and pantry first, and then to hit up the grocery store last.  She always used this recipe to use up odds and ends of leftovers in the fridge.  If she was trying to feed more people, she'd add more rice and veggies to the mix. 

Thoughts on the $30/week challenge

Over the course of this past week, I have attempted to eat groceries by the federal guidelines.
Adding up the cost of my meals over the last week, I find that I spent $14.96 for myself.  I am well under what the government says I should be spending for the week.

BUT, I have a few thoughts about eating on this plan:

1) FRESH PRODUCE-
I had the luxury of being able to go out not once, but twice to stock up on produce.  We had the cash on hand midway through the challenge to go out and purchase onions, carrots, and celery.  While not hugely expensive, I did spend close to $20 in that particular trip.

And that was just veggies.  Fruit is even more expensive.  I am fortunate in that I live on a large plot of land, and we are able to grow many of our fruits.  Strawberries in the spring.  (Yes, I still need to move the darn strawberry patch.) Blueberries and Raspberries through the summer.  (Need to cut those branches back.)  And apples in the fall.  The cost per pound for fruits can be prohibitive.

Fortunately, we live in farm country.  I live close to several farmers that sell produce at an extremely reasonable price, so I can what I don't grow.  A bushel of peaches for $15?  Standard cost for me.  Unheard of in the city.  Farmer's markets are a great way to help get fresh fruit, and many farmers now accept food stamps at these markets.  The biggest challenge for many living on a tight budget would be finding and getting to farmer's markets.

2) TIME
In order to keep the cost of my groceries and overall food expenses down to a minimum, this requires that I cook all of my food from scratch.  Easy to do if you don't work outside of the home.  I work part-time, and as long as I think ahead for dinner, I can have what I need either cooked ahead, prepared ahead, or in a crock pot the next morning before I leave.  I honestly believe this is more of a challenge for those who work full time.  If you have several hours on a weekend afternoon, it is possible to prep more items in advance.  If you cook double batches of something on a weekend, eat one and freeze the other, then you would have a dinner for another night on hand.  This requires freezer space, and the time to put into meal prep on a weekend.

3) VARIETY
I found myself rotating around the same meals over and over again, especially for breakfast.  I've never been much of a breakfast eater.  But eggs and oatmeal get a little bit old after a while.  I also found myself continuously short on my fruit and veggie intake.  Especially fruit.  Adding fresh fruit in is expensive.  Oranges right now are running $1 each here.  Canned mandarin oranges are running 33 cents a can.  While a fresh orange would be healthier for me, it would considerably raise my cost per day.  The canned mandarin oranges contain some of the benefits of an orange, but they are preserved in a sugar syrup.  I feel that the health benefits of the mandarin oranges are mitigated by the sugared syrup.  This would be a difficult choice for a family living on a very limited income.

4) VEGETARIANS
I believe that vegetarians would be able to keep well under the federal price points.  However, they would need to prepare their meals from scratch.  Many of our meals are vegetarian.  Meat is expensive, and the ability to prepare meals without meat considerably lowers the overall price point of any meal.

5) INITIAL CASH OUTLAY
This is the biggest challenge.  You must have the cash in order to purchase in bulk in the first place.  50 pounds of potatoes cost us $20.  For a $30/week budget, that is most of your budget.  However, those 50 pounds of potatoes will feed us very, very well for two months at a ridiculously low cost.

Take a look at the chicken I purchased.  It was an initial cash outlay of $15.69.  That is over half of the $30/week.  When you look at the number of servings that I am getting out of this chicken, the cost per serving is manageable.  However, if you only have $30 for a week of groceries, this would be a difficult choice to make.

Other Thoughts:
I typically use coupons when I shop.  I shop the sales, and I purchase items when they are on sale, and I buy them with a coupon if I can.   Since I work part time, I have the time to do this.  When I find myself in the middle of a long term sub job, I don't have the time to put into coupon clipping and sale shopping.  Therefore, my bottom line for groceries increases.  I also hit up the farmer's markets on Saturday mornings, as well as the big produce stand.  The owner of the big produce stand owns a farm that grows fruits and veggies for the commercial market.  He sells seconds to the general public.  I can buy a bag of veggies for 50 cents.  They make excellent soup veggies for the stock pot, or an excellent stir fry.  I don't always hit pay dirt when I check out his seconds, but it is always worth the stop. 

I will continue to keep my costs as low as I can with my groceries, and I will continue to blog about my grocery savings on occasion.  I'm still working on getting as many servings as I can out of the chicken. (Are you sick of the chicken yet?)  I think I've got 2, maybe 3 more meals before I boil the carcass down for stock.

Monday's Challenge

Breakfast:

3 eggs, scrambled, 50 cents
12 ounces milk,     50 cents

Lunch:
Leftover Chicken Neck Soup  (I'm still waiting on the final price/serving, because I'm waiting to see what the final cost on the chicken will end up being.)

Dinner:
White Chicken Chili
Cannelini Beans: 1.29
Chicken 
(I'm still waiting for the final cost on the chicken... this is from the chicken I made on Saturday night.)
Chicken Broth (from the freezer, batches made this summer)
(The link for this is here:http://mini-van-mom.blogspot.com/search/label/broth%20cubes)
I'm not sure what the final cost is on the broth... I made it this summer from leftover chicken.
Green Chilis, 7 ounce can: $1
6 servings for this dish, Preliminary cost for the dinner per serving: 76 cents.

Total Cost for Today: (Preliminary) $1.76

NOTE- The leftover chicken chili will be lunch today. I'm wrapping it up in tortillas, and serving it with cheese and lettuce.  I'll reheat it before I serve it. 

Total Cost for the Chicken to date:
Cost for the chicken: $15.69

5 servings off of the roast chicken
6 servings of  chicken neck soup (dinner yesterday, lunch for me and husband on Monday.)
6 servings of  white chicken chili (dinner today, lunch for me and husband today.)

As of now, we've had 17 servings from one chicken.  This is a total of 3 dinners and 2 lunches to date. 

Cost per serving for the chicken:  98 cents.
Per meal, the chicken at this point comes up to:  $3.13.

The original $16 for the chicken was a high price, but since I'm stretching this out over many meals, the total cost continues to go down.

Sunday's Challenge

Sunday was a little harder to judge, as we made more from scratch this weekend.

Brunch:
Buttermilk Pancakes  (from scratch):  Flour, Buttermilk, baking soda, salt, etc. 
I'm going to estimate the cost at $2.50 for the batch, and the batch served 5 people, so 50 cents a serving?

Fruit Salad: With mandarin oranges, bananas, and apples.
Apples from the tree in the back yard, oranges (3 cans at 33 cents each) $1, bananas, $1.  Total cost, $2, 5 servings comes up to 40 cents each.

Milk: 12 ounces, 50 cents.

Dinner:
Chicken Neck Soup
(The recipe was posted yesterday.  I still don't have a price for the soup because I'm still working on the chicken and won't know the final price until I find out how many servings we end up having from that chicken!)

Biscuits: (again, from scratch)  I'm going to estimate high, at $2.50 per serving, with 10 biscuits.  I ate 1, but we had leftovers.  Lunch sandwiches were made with leftover biscuits today.  We're looking at 25 cents per biscuit?

Snacks:
Yogurt: 50 cents
Granola: (homemade. 1 serving) 50 cents

Total Cost for Sunday:  $2.65

Saturday's Challenge

Breakfast:

Biscuits made from scratch  (again, I'm estimating here.  Milk was used as the liquid in the recipe to up our calcium content.) 20 cents each
Triple Berry Jam (from the batch I made this summer, all fruit grown in our own yard)
Orange Juice, 10 ounces, 50 cents  (it has added calcium)

Lunch:
One slice of Elio's Pizza.  (Sue me, the boys are home from college, and they love Elios)  2 boxes for $5, 3 long slices per box.  (The boys eat Elios by the long slice, not the small squares.  So do I, for that matter.)    83 cents

Dinner:
Baked Chicken
Dirty Rice (1 box, bought on sale with a coupon for a grand total of $1.50 for six servings.)  25 cents per serving
Steamed Carrots, 1 pound.  (from the 5 pound bag I bought for $3.49)  70 cents for the pound, 12 cents per serving for 6 servings.

Snacks:
1 banana  19 cents
8 ounces of yogurt, with my strawberry jam mixed in, 33 cents.

Total for Saturday:  $3.00

Note:  I did NOT add the cost of the chicken in yet.  I need to figure out how many servings we will get from this bird before I can figure out the final cost.  Believe me, I stretch out a chicken like nobody's business.

Friday's Challenge

We made a trip to the store last night, and spent close to $30 on some desperately needed staples:

5 pound bag of carrots ($3.49) 
2 bags of celery - (2/$4)
2 (5 pound) bags of onions ($2.99 each)
Toilet Paper
Hummus ($5 for the biggest container they had - 17 ounces)
Oatmeal - Again, the largest container that they had! 
Yogurt - (1) 32 ounce container of vanilla yogurt.  We can stir our homemade jam and jelly into this. 

The challenge now begins to be figuring out the ultimate cost of items when everything is made from scratch.  I'm going to have to estimate the final cost, somehow.

Breakfast:
Waffles.  (Recipe is in the next post down from here.)  The price breakdown for the waffles follows at the bottom. 
Final cost for the waffle: 23 cents
Milk: 12 ounces, 50 cents.  (I still have a little left in the gallon I bought on Sunday.)
Syrup, 4 ounces: ($3.49/32 ounce container, 11 cents per ounce).  44 cents

Lunch:
The PTA at the school where I was subbing yesterday brought in salads donated by one of the local restaurants.  My cost: free.

Dinner:
Baked Potatoes - about 2 pounds worth, at 40 cents a pound, that comes up to 80 cents
Frozen Broccoli - $1/ 32 ounce bag
Shredded Cheddar Cheese - 4 ounces ($2/16 ounce bag, 50 cents per 4 ounces)
Leftover ground beef from the taco salad.  It turned out that husband had kept out some of the seasoned ground beef from the chili I didn't know about.  The last of this went onto the potatoes last night.  - 80 cents  (Again, I'm guessing on the chili.)
Per serving on the chili?  That's a little harder.  There were 4 of us for dinner last night, so add the numbers up and divide by 4 would be:  78 cents
Shockingly enough, we had absolutely no leftovers after dinner last night.

Bed Time Snack: Yogurt 50 cents.  (This is the last of the containers I bought last weekend at 10/$5)

My total cost for the day:  $2.45, and I believe I did a better job of getting enough dairy and fruits and veggies.

This is well below the limit set by the government for the day.
However, you have to keep in mind that I do plan for leftovers.  I made a huge crockpot full of chili that was used for meals over 3 nights.  The bean soup was used for meals over 2 nights, with enough left for my husband to eat for lunch one day this week.  If you are able to cook and plan for leftovers when you cook, it does save money in the long run.  If you have teenage boys in your house, this is harder - oh so much harder - to do.  The oldest son was a runner (Cross Country, Track and Field) through high school.  We went through tons of bread, pasta, and milk on a regular basis.  He would take 3 sandwiches for lunch every day, and snack on peanut butter and celery by the case load.  I learned how to make hummus from scratch so that they could snack on something healthy that would help fill him up.  Ahhh... those were some interesting days!

Price Breakdown on the Waffle Recipe:  (If you really want to see the math!)

The most expensive part of that recipe is the milk and eggs.  The eggs come up to 33 cents.  We used powdered milk in the recipe, for 26 ounces, I paid $5.64.  For the 2/3 of a cup of dried milk that we used for the recipe, I believe the cost comes up to $1.10  (About.  My math is shaky, at best, on that calculation.  It comes down to 22 cents an ounce, but how many ounces would be in 2/3 of a cup?  1/2 cup would be 4 ounces = 88 cents, and 3/4 of a cup would be 6 ounces = $1.32.  I'm going with $1.10)  I bought the flour on sale for $2.50 for a 5 pound bag.  That comes down to 3 cents per ounce.  At 20 ounces of flour for this recipe, that comes up to 60 cents for the flour.  I'm giving up at this point, and I'm just going to add 20 cents for the cost of the oil, salt and baking soda.   Total cost for the waffles:  $2.25.  With ten waffles per batch, the final cost comes down to 23 cents each.  

Wednesday's Challenge

I'm beginning to get into the challenge a little bit more now!  Another crazy day of subbing, and dinner needed to be put together after I got home, and I was exhausted when I started.  Believe me, I understand the desire to stop at McDonald's after a full day of work to pick up dinner for the family.  I could easily have picked up a couple of items off the dollar menu and called it a successful day!

But, after I shook off the fast food temptation, I came home and started on dinner....

Breakfast:
3 eggs, scrambled: 50 cents
Milk, 12 ounces: 50 cents

Lunch:
Tuna Salad: (other half from yesterday): 48 cents
Flat Bread: 25 cents
Yogurt: 50 cents

Dinner:
Taco Salad  (Recipe and price break down follows): 80 cents


Total Cost:  $3.03


Again. taking a closer look at this, I am behind on my dairy and veggie intake.  Even though we are keeping our food expenses down, I do need to work harder at eating a healthy diet within these guidelines.
I'm still well below my daily cost limit, but I am beginning to wonder if we are eating healthy enough.  Also, our veggies are coming from our garden.  If we'd bought them from the grocery store, our costs would go up significantly.

Taco Salad:

1 head iceburg lettuce, torn and washed (99 cents)
Leftover Chili from last week's dinner. (http://mini-van-mom.blogspot.com/2013/09/thinking-ahead-for-dinner_26.html)
Leftover Black Bean Soup from last night.
Taco Shells  ($1, on sale)
Salsa (Homemade, from one of the batches we made this summer, with veggies from our own garden. Again, I'm not sure what the final cost on this would be, since the ingredients were grown by us.)

In a pan on the stove, combine the leftover black bean soup and chili.  Reheat over medium heat until warm, stirring often.
Crush taco shells.
In a large bowl, mix the chili, lettuce, and crushed taco shells.  Toss thoroughly.
Serve with salsa.

Estimating the cost of this is a little more difficult.  I made the chili last week.  The ground beef was $3.99.  The corn was $1, the beans in the chili last week were 50 cents, the tomatoes were 50 cents, and the two cans of tomato sauce were 25 cents each.  The spices might have come up to ten cents, total.

The cost of making the chili comes up to $6.34.

Trying to estimate the number of servings for that pot?  I'm going to estimate 8 servings.  (We still have leftovers, which I will take for lunch tomorrow.)

According the my calculations, the total is 80 cents per serving.  Not too bad for a dish containing meat!

Eat for $30 a Week Challenge

Calculating the Cost per Serving
In her book,  The Complete Tightwad Gazette, Amy Dacyczyn writes at length about the need to calculate the price per ounce (or pound) of products, and then multiplying that amount by the number of ounces used in order to make a valid decision about the overall value of the product.  Amy is a black belt tightwad, and her books have been my constant companion over the years.

I mention this because in this $30/week challenge, I am not going to the store daily and spending $4.29 per day on food for me.  Instead, I pooled all of the money for the three of us- $90, and bought items in bulk.  The biggest price savings come when you purchase food in bulk.

We are eating oatmeal for breakfast this week.  At the store this week, the oatmeal cost us $2.59 for a 42 ounce container.  That price comes out to .06 per ounce.  At 4 ounces of oatmeal per person, the price of the oatmeal is coming up to .24 per person. 

Our oatmeal is made with water and not milk, so that takes the price point down considerably.

Our meals yesterday:

Breakfast:
Oatmeal :  .24/ person

Lunch:
Tuna Salad:  (Can of Tuna, 75 cents, 5 cents of mayo, 5 cents of mustard, 1 stalk of celery at .10, 5 cents of pickle relish.)   The salad made enough for lunch for 2 days:  48 cents
Flat Bread: .25
Banana  .20

Dinner:
Bean Soup:  This one is more difficult to figure out.  I used an 80 cent bag of dried beans to make a soup back in July that was filled with onions, tomatoes, and peppers from my garden, so the veggies in the soup came up to no expense.  I froze half of the soup in July, and had stored it for dinner on a day when I was subbing.  We have had at least 10 servings out of this batch of  soup, from the first time we made it as well as this time, so I'm going to price it out at 8 cents per serving.

Total:   $1.25.

I'm not sure how healthy this is.  There are no dairy products in here, and my fruits and veggies consist of what was in the bean soup and a banana.