I typically spend an average of $180/wk on groceries. That’s a lot for an average American family. While quality food simply costs more, I think I can make some improvements.
Lowering Your Grocery Budget has some excellent pointers for reducing costs. For starters I plan to wean myself off coffee/tea and reduce alcohol purchases to once per month. I think we’ll start eating more beans as well. I’ll be sticking to the least expensive produce such as onions, carrots, celery, potatoes, winter squash, and apples. I’ll have to reduce my use of fresh herbs as well (ouch!).
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Start up a kitchen garden! Then you can grow fresh herbs for use in the summer and dry them to use in the winter. If you plant the herbs in pots you could bring them inside for the winter and put them in a sunny window even.
But be careful, the more you grow the more you want to grow!
But alas, I have tried this numerous times and killed all my plants.
Giving up a lot of the non-essential ingredients and focusing on simple, simple foods has improved our budget considerably which allows me to spend more where it really counts–grassfed meats, fresh milk, pastured eggs and high-quality fats.
We also eat a lot of beans and lentils cooked in bone broth. Or on really tight months we just buy a lot of bones and make loads of bone broth.
I, too, have tried to grow herbs in my kitchen (south windows) and have had no luck. My best one was rosemary, but I think I used it so much it just gave up.
Beans and lentils are a good idea to help a budget, I really need to look into some tasty recipes.
Brian –
Did you grow in pots indoors or outside? Did you fertilize or use compost? How often did you water?
I grow a lot of culinary herbs. I’m lucky to live in L.A. — we have great weather year-round. I literally throw my herb plants in the ground and they grow like WEEDS. (I have the sprinkler set to water automatically.)
That said, I bought a few herb plants recently from Whole Foods and they have been resting on my kitchen window sill for the past month or so. I have been too lazy (ahem — BUSY) to get them outdoors to be planted in the garden (which is riddled with lots and lots of good earthworms — and I fertilize with lots of compost).
Needless to say 3 of the 4 herbs on my window sill DIED. The dill, the peppermint, and the cilantro — kaput. The only thing that stayed alive was the arugula.
I’m not very regular about watering (I *need* automation in this dept. I can’t be trusted.) and they don’t have any compost.
So — perhaps you could try to water *very* regularly and start up a batch of compost (or just use fish emulsion if you can’t be bothered with compost yet).
If you have to compost indoors, you can use a worm tray. I’m about to order one of these — I will post about it on my blog soon.
Also it is important that the herbs get *plenty* of sun.
May I suggest using your leftover bread (if there is any at your house) to make grandma’s Bread Pudding. Right out of the Depression Era when nothing went to waste and you made do with what your had.