Heavenly Homemakers

Encouraging women in homemaking, healthy eating and parenting

Pictures of Last Week’s Food – and Why We Had Ice Cream Cones For Breakfast

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Before we talk about ice cream for breakfast, we should probably talk about lettuce. Spoiler alert: the ice cream we ate is the same color as the lettuce, which means that one of them has food coloring in it and the other doesn’t, yet I still let my family eat both.

Hahaha, I let them eat lettuce. As if they had to beg me for it. “Please Mom can’t we just have more salad?!” said none of my children ever.

I mean, they don’t dislike salad. They just like other parts of the meal better. But whatever. They are good eaters and they eat a wide variety of fruits and veggies and so what if they ate green ice cream for breakfast last Wednesday?

So lettuce. Let-us talk about that already. (get it? lettuce=let-us. that is so amazingly funny) Look what came out of our garden last week!

food week may 92

We’ll be enjoying meal after meal of this lettuce from our garden as the rain has made our lettuce go crazy. (I won’t even tell you that none of the rest of our garden is even planted yet. Hello graduation preparation and bathroom remodel. You are cramping our gardening style.)

See what a pretty lunch we had the first day we picked lettuce? Creamy Mac and Cheese with peas and salad is the easiest lunch ever, by the way. (Can you actually call it a salad if you don’t add anything but Ranch Dressing? We were out of other salad veggies that day.)

food week may 96

Now, about that green ice cream. First the back story:

About four years ago I surprised the boys by making Homemade Ice Cream for breakfast on our very last day of school. The following year, they declared that we had always had ice cream on the last day of school and that it was a tradition and that we simply must do it again. I believe they told me this at bedtime the night before our last day of school, which of course meant that while I loved the idea, I did not love the idea making homemade ice cream at midnight or 6:00 am. So I told them no, and then I decided on a splurge of all splurges and surprised them the next morning with not only store-bought ice cream – but a box of ice cream cones too.

(The “Best Mom Ever” Award went to me that day. But then I made them do their living room and bathroom chores so I immediately went back to “Best Mom Ever” status after breakfast.)

Anyway, the Last Day of School Ice Cream tradition has continued (which I only do because we home school because it would truly be wrong of me to feed my kids sugar cones filled with drippy sugar and then send them to be instructed by other adults). The three younger boys finished their school work last Friday, but patiently waited for Asa to finish his last college final on Tuesday (he’s been getting dual credits for high school/college this year – woot!) so that we could celebrate by having ice cream for breakfast.

food week may 9 5

food week may 94

It was grand. But now we should probably talk about vegetables again.

I hit some great price matching deals on berries this week. 99¢ for blackberries? Yes, please. Plus I got great prices on strawberries and raspberries. We’ve been eating these delicious fruits with just about every meal, so these are already almost gone. (We put the food away at our house, I’m telling you.)

food week may 93

Don’t ask me why I bought mixed greens this week. Hello, Laura. Your garden is kicking out lettuce right now, remember??

Have any of you ever tried that Hormel Natural Choice Bacon? I was excited to see it at the store since it is a “better for you” brand. It was quite tasty!

Friday night I experimented with another new recipe we all loved: Sloppy Salsa Chicken. Don’t tell, but I’m almost finished with a project I’ve been working on for several months in an effort to simplify our (yours and mine!) evening meal time. Later this week, I plan to reveal some packets I’ve been putting together which include recipes, complete grocery lists, and instructions for creating five meals that can be made ahead all at once, then frozen for fast real-food meals for your family. Details coming!!

sloppy salsa chicken 1

Here’s a little sneak peek at one of the packet cover pages:

Eat Right Away Beef Edition 50

There’s also a Chicken Edition, and then I’ll be working on several additional editions (I couldn’t resist) for the future like breakfast, lunch box, ground turkey, and others!

So back to last week’s food details. It was a Bountiful Basket week for me, and I almost bought the whole truck. Man, we get some good deals from BB!

food week may 91

Along with all you see here, I also got a huge box of sweet corn. Which leads me to Mother’s Day.

I wanted grilled burgers with watermelon and sweet corn. So that is what my men made me. As you can see, I worked on my corn and melon before my burger. Ooh, and Matt put some fresh asparagus from our garden on the grill too. So yum.

food week may 99

After we digested, we played our traditional game of three-on-three Mother’s Day soccer. I so stink at soccer. But it sure was fun.

One final bit about last week…

Some sweet friends gave me a basket full of thank-you gifts and look what was included!

food week may 98

Yes, it is a coffee mug that is almost as big as my head. Almost. As you see here, I filled it just about to the top. This meant that after I finished drinking it on Saturday morning, I absolutely did conquer the world and solve all of earth’s biggest challenges (it’s a caffeine miracle).

So there you have it. Berries, vegetables, ice cream, and a huge mug of coffee. That about sums up last week for me. (I also did laundry and cleaned, but who wants the boring details on that? No one.)

Tell me about your week in food! Find great deals? Make yummy meals? Drink giant-sized mugs of coffee? Splurge on ice cream? Share, share, share!!!

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The Truth About My Family and Junk Food

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Think my family never eats junk food, only eats free-range organic everything, and that my kids have probably never heard of Oreos? Think again.

I’m asked all the time how I handle junk food situations with my family. The truth? It doesn’t bother me that my kids eat junk food sometimes.  Youth gatherings, parties, Bible class rewards, extended family get-togethers, road trips – my kids are actually presented with not-so-healthy options pretty frequently. Freaking out about it would mean I’d have to freak out about it pretty frequently. Ain’t nobody got time for that.

The Truth About My Family and Junk Food

We eat as many nutrition-packed foods at home as possible. We put loads of fruits and veggies on our table every day. We make most of our bread products from freshly ground organic wheat.  I super-duper care about my family’s nourishment and emphasize the importance of good food to keep our bodies as healthy as possible.

I just recognize that this issue isn’t worth causing rebellion to rise up in my boys’ hearts, nor is it worth hurting relationships with people we love. This is not about making a compromise. I’ve simply decided not make a thing out of what I don’t believe needs to be a thing.

Do I love seeing my boys with a can of root beer in one hand and a Twizzler in the other? Well, I much prefer to watch them choose which kind of homemade dressing they want on their salads. But if in fact they have just burst through the door after a teen event with said junk food items in hand, and their deep man voices are rumbling with fun facts about the evening as they give me the run down of who was there and what the Bible study was about and who won the game they played afterward – I’m pretty sure it would be unwise of me to interrupt and launch into a lecture about red food dye.

And anyway.  My kids already know that stuff isn’t good for them. I don’t need to say it again or give them the eyebrow of disapproval. They’re just having fun, being kids, and enjoying their friends and social events. If it means they love hanging out with their Christian friends then I say bring on the root beer.

The older my boys get, the more food choices they make on their own. If you can possibly imagine, they like some of that stuff that comes out of a package. It’s like they’re normal or something.

But they also really like healthy food. They each need more than the fingers on both hands to count all of the fruits and vegetables they love. They understand the dangers of margarine. They love (most of) my nourishing homemade food. They eat loads of great food every day without complaint.

I think it’s important to teach our kids all we can about good health and good decisions. I think it’s important that we provide our families with as much nourishing food as we can. Then, I think it’s important to smile and listen with excitement when talking to our kids about what they did while they were out and what they were offered to eat at a party – even if their tongues are blue and their finger-tips are orange.

What are your thoughts on this? How do you handle junk food situations with your family?

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Click over to this post to learn how we teach our kids about nutrition.

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What is Price Matching and How Does it Work?

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What is Price-Matching and How Does it Work

I’ve recently learned the art of “price matching.” Where has this been all my life? (Right under my nose. I just never looked into it before.)  This new practice has been saving me $10-$40 per week. That’s $40-$160 per month. That’s big savings for my family of big eaters!

What is Price Matching?

Wal-Mart offers an Ad-Matching Guarantee. This means that if another store within 50 miles is offering a specific food at a lower price (shown in their weekly ad), Wal-mart will honor that price. Read all the detailed information about their policy here.

It is important that you pay attention to the details of the grocery store ads. Price matching is only valid on items “pound for pound,” “ounce for ounce,” etc. I try to be very diligent about making sure I don’t accidentally pick up the wrong size item.

How Does Price Matching Work?

Sound complicated? It really isn’t. It took me exactly one shopping trip to work out all the kinks and learn how easy this practice is.

Before going shopping each week, I spend a few minutes looking at all relevant grocery store ads online. We have very few stores in my town, so I am thankful I can price match with the stores in our nearby cities which have 6-7 stores to price match with. I find the lowest prices from each store (mainly focusing on the produce), and make my list.

This week, my list looked something like this:

Aldi

~ Strawberries, 16 ounces, $1.29
~ Onions, 3 pound bag, 99¢
~ Red Potatoes, 5 pound bag, 99¢

Alert

~ Carrots, 2 pound bag, $1.19

Super Saver

~ Grape Tomatoes, 1 pint, 96¢
~ Blueberries, 18 ounces, $3.48 (our Walmart didn’t have this size, so I scratched that off my list)
~ Gala or Yellow Delicious Apples, 3 pound bags, $2.50 each

Wal-mart employees have been trained to quickly adjust the price of the items you are price matching. You simply tell them the price you found that was cheaper, and they ring it up at that price. Easy! I try to separate my price-match items from my other items to make it easier on the cashier.

Here is a sample conversation between the cashier and me…

Cashier:  You have such beautiful hair.
Just kidding. For some reason, the cashier never says that. Here’s the real conversation:
Me: These are my price-match items.
Cashier:  Great, we’ll start with the pears. How much?
Me:  99¢ per pound.
{Cashier rings up my pears at 99¢ per pound}  
Cashier:  Okay, now how about these onions?
Me:  99¢ for each bag

And so it goes until we work our way through all of my price match items. :)

How Much Can You Save?

Here’s an example of everything I bought and how much I saved through price-matching last week.

price matching

  • 2 bags of Yellow Onions priced at $2.98 for a 3 pound bag – I got for 99¢ each (saved 3.98)
  • 3 bags of Red Potatoes priced at $3.47 for a 5 pound bag – I got for 99¢ each (saved 7.44)
  • 1 pound containers of Strawberries priced at $1.99 – I got for $1.29 each (saved 5.60)
  • D’Anjou Pears priced at $1.67/pound – I got for 99¢/pound (saved 3.69)
  • 2 bags of Halo Clementines priced at $4.97 for a 3 pound bag – I got for $3.99 each (saved 1.96)
  • 2 bags of Carrots priced at $1.48 for a 2 pound bag – I got for $1.19 each (saved .58)
  • 2 bags of Gala Apples priced at $3.47 for a 3 pound bag – I got for $2.50 each (saved 1.94)
  • 2 bags of Golden Delicious Apples priced at $3.47 for a 3 pound bag – I got for $2.50 each (saved 1.94)
  • 2 pints of Grape Tomatoes priced at $2.98 per pint – I got for 96¢ each  (saved 4.04)

Price matching saved me $31.17 this week.  It took me about 10 minutes to sit at the computer and find the prices I wanted to match and make a list. Saving over thirty bucks in 10 minutes to feed my family real food? Yes, I think that’s very worth my time!

Watch that you don’t fall into the trap of snatching up good deals on processed foods. Those are out there too, so of course, I had to remind us all that those are just not worth the “price” we pay later. You’ll be surprised though at the great deals you can get on fruits and vegetables, meats and cheeses, often organics too!

One last note:

I try not to price-match from my hometown grocery stores. My town is small, so it doesn’t take much extra time to run into our local grocery stores to pick up the food I need. I like to support our local stores. Where price-matching really works well for me is offering me big city sale prices from bigger stores that would cost me an hour’s drive and a half tank of gas. :)

Share with us! Do you take advantage of Wal-mart’s price matching policy? How does it work for you? Have any other great tips to share about this?

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Top 10 Money Saving Recipes

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I Might Have Gone a Little Bit Nuts This Month at Amazon…

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With the recent announcement that after November 11, our Amazon Prime/Amazon Mom discount goes from 20% to 15% – I decided to really stock up during our October subscribe and save order. I continued to find good deals on food we eat regularly, adding them to our order. Before I knew it, the UPS man brought this:

amazon october 1

To be clear, the nine year old boy already lives here, the blue cooler was sitting out waiting for farm fresh milk pick-up, the flowers and pumpkins have been on our steps for over a week, and the sacks of apples were delivered last Sunday. Amazon and UPS are good, but they’re not that good.

Did I blow my grocery budget for this month? Why yes I did, thank you for asking. Am I worried about it? No, I’m not. Because I regularly buy in bulk, or grocery budget is very small some months and very large other months. This is obviously a large month. Seeing as I bought the entire internet with this order, giving our family plenty to eat for quite some time, the next few months’ budget look to be quite a bit smaller.

What you see in the picture below is only a portion of our order. There were a 6 t0 16 packs of pasta in each box, and I ordered six different kinds. (That’s 80 pounds of pasta. God bless the UPS man and his back muscles.)  With good planning, I will not need to buy pasta until April, 2015. I hope this plan works, as my boys never cease to amaze me with the amount of food we go through.

amazon october 2

I got two cases of toilet paper, a case of organic tortilla chips, a super discounted case of Izze soda for a treat, a case of salmon…here, I’ll give you a bullet list. Some of the prices I paid are no longer available. I used coupons for almost everything in my order, as well. I soooo love combining my subscribe and save discount with coupon savings. I get SUCH good deals this way! Not all of these items have come in yet. The UPS man will be busy making deliveries to our house the rest of this week. :)

  • case of Larabars
  • case of Plum Organics bars
  • case if Angel Soft toilet paper
  • case of 24 Izze sodas
  • case of Talking Rain mineral water
  • case of Bearitos organic tortilla chips
  • 6 different cases of Delallo organic whole wheat pasta varieties
  • case of pink salmon
  • case of Quilted Northern toilet paper
  • case of cashews packs
  • 2 cases of Seventh Generations diapers for a friend

Shucks. When it’s all listed out that way, it doesn’t really seem like much for my household. It only looks huge when it seems that Amazon blew up all over my living room:

amazon october 4

Thankfully, we have many (almost) free blessings from our garden that help counter-balance our grocery spending.

amazon october 3

In case you were wondering, we did not grow that pineapple in our garden. We Nebraskans are amazing, but we’re not that amazing.

Not only will you have lots of great groceries, you’ll receive fantastic boxes with which your kids can build forts and make messes in the living room. My nine year old was glad to see the Izzes, the pasta, and the chips, but he was very, very excited to see the boxes that hold so much potential for him.

Here are more details about how Amazon Prime/Amazon Mom works with subscribe and save works to save money. Be sure to keep up with our Amazon Deals page for all the latest deals!

How do you work your grocery budget? Do you spend the same amount each month, or do you spend more some months when you stock up and less other months when you don’t need as much?

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14 Oven-Free Breakfast Ideas for Summer

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Have I ever mentioned that we don’t have central air conditioning in our home? People think we’re crazy. Well, yeah. But there are a few important aspects to note about our variety of crazy – and about our lack of central air conditioning:

1. Our house is over 100 years old and was built to stay cool back before air conditioning was invented. We have high ceilings, which makes a significant difference.
2. We have an attic fan that sucks hot air out and pulls cool air in. (I believe I just told you that our attic fan sucks.)
3. When a person is used to air conditioning, a person tends to think they need air conditioning. When a person is not used to air conditioning, a person gets used to not having air conditioning.
4. I freeze to death when I go to Wal-Mart and other places with air conditioning and freezer sections. See #3 above.
5. We have several window air conditioning units. Remember this?  Ain’t she a beaut? We haven’t even installed it this summer. We haven’t been home long enough to care. But we have that one, another for out guest room, and another for our boys room upstairs. Window units work great for our needs.

All that to say:  I rarely turn our oven on during hot summer days. We typically deal with lack of air conditioning just fine – but avoiding the oven makes this much more doable. Baking muffins, quick breads, and egg casseroles is rarely an option. Instead, we stick with stove-top meals, toaster oven choices, or smoothies. Here are some of our favorite oven-free breakfasts, which of course can be made for lunch, snacks, or dinner too. Breakfast for dinner always rocks. Kind of like my attic fan sucks. (Oh, stop it.)

14 Oven Free Breakfast Ideas For Summer

14 Oven-Free Breakfast Ideas for Summer

It’s always fun to throw in the occasional bacon or sausage too, if I have time.  Fresh fruit in the summer time is amazing.  All the delicious berries, nectarines, plums, peaches, melons available – incredible. Yes indeed, summer time is my very favorite time of year – even without central air conditioning. :)

What are your favorite oven-free breakfast ideas?

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What We’ve Been Eating This Week. Did It Include Raspberries???

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I promised you that since I didn’t post a menu plan this week, I would instead show you some pictures of what we decided to eat each day. I already showed you what we ate on Monday. I also whined plenty about how I’ve been very hungry for raspberries but couldn’t find any in my town that weren’t gross or expensive.

Since I’m sure you’ve been simply worried sick about me all week and thought of little else but the fact that I wanted, needed, and desperately desired raspberries, you’ll be relieved to know that Matt found a small, reasonably priced package for me when he was out and about on Wednesday. What a guy. I was even nice enough to share a few of these with Matt and the boys. But only a few. There simply weren’t many left by the time they came into the kitchen. What can I say?

raspberries

Since I had prepped a bunch of fruits and veggies on Monday, it’s been very easy to continue to pull them out each day to go with our meals. Mind you, most of my “prep” consisted of washing the produce and dumping it into a Pyrex container. See how easy it is to eat healthy food? Wash and eat. Wash and eat. Wash and slice. Wash and eat. I can think of nothing easier.

Tuesday morning I made a simple breakfast of Cinnamon Whole Wheat Muffins (this recipe, without the berries, but with cinnamon sprinkled in). It wasn’t a super exciting meal, but it was yummy.

junefood8

We had BLT Wraps for lunch that day. Instead of making them all and setting them out, I simply prepped the filling and let everyone build their own. Easy!

junefood 1

Tuesday night we had Taco Potatoes for dinner. The crock pot baked our potatoes for us, so we didn’t heat up the house. :)

junefood22

After we finished off all the fresh peaches I had bought on Sunday, we sliced up a couple of plums. They were so pretty!

junefood3

Wednesday morning we scrambled eggs, cut up a cantaloupe, and pulled a loaf of Poppy Seed Bread with Orange Glaze from the freezer (recipe in {Healthy} Make-Ahead Meals and Snacks eBook). This is my absolute favorite quick bread. It stays moist even after being in the freezer. Love it, love it, love it! (By the way, if you bought that book prior to this spring, you should note that I now cut the sucanat by more than half in that recipe. It’s still plenty sweet. My shop now has an updated version.)

junefood4

Everyone fended for themselves for lunch, finding leftovers or making a sandwich. We went swimming in the afternoon, so Quick Blender Chocolate Milk tasted great after we got back while we waited for dinner.

junefood5

That morning, I had marinated several pieces of chicken in Italian Dressing (more details in Let’s Do This, Lesson 1). Matt put it on the grill while I made green beans and sliced watermelon. It was crazy deeeee-licious.

junefood6

What have you been eating this week? Isn’t summer food easy to make?

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My June Amazon Subscribe and Save Order, Plus Other Groceries That Came To My Doorstep

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It was very fun to come home from our trip to a living room full of boxes to open! Thank goodness we have a young man living with us this summer since we were out of town when our monthly Amazon order came in. Bless his heart – I had forgotten to warn him that the UPS man drops by with boxes very frequently at the Coppinger house. :)

nu naturals

The boys had a good time opening the boxes to discover what Mom had ordered this month. Besides our Amazon order, we had a box from NuNaturals (watch for a giveaway later this week!). Plus, we decided to give NatureBox a try.

nature box2

That was a super fun box to open! We tried some of the snacks yesterday afternoon and really enjoyed them. Having those snacks come to our door (free shipping!) is a treat. Whether or not we chose to keep our subscription or not remains to be seen, but we thought it would be fun to try it out. Have you looked into NatureBox?

Now on to our Amazon Subscribe and Save order. FYI: If you want to learn more about why I love Amazon Subscribe and Save and how I use this wonderful tool to save tons of money for my family, read this post. Remember, I have an Amazon Deals page that I work to keep updated with all the latest deals I find on real food groceries and homemaking items.

This month, I splurged a little on beverages. Typically, we drink water, water, water…and milk at our house. Okay, and one of us drinks a little coffee. But do you remember the post about how I get a soda fix without added sugar? My Amazon order shows you the most cost effective way I’ve found to keep these fun drinks on hand. What you see in this picture will last us for a LONG time. The Switch sodas will be lovingly rationed out for the next few months.

amazon order june 1

Oooh. Aaah. Toilet Paper.

Next, you’ll see that we bought cases of sliced black olives and coconut milk. Having items like this on hand are so helpful so that I can just grab them when I need them. These cases were on sale for a great price, plus Amazon was offering coupons at the time. I got super good deals and stocked up! For the record, I prefer regular coconut milk instead of lite – but I couldn’t pass up the price. :)  The coconut milk coupon is still good, by the way…as is the sliced black olives coupon.

amazon order june 2

Last but not least, I went a little crazy buying cases of my favorite brand of tuna. We go through at least 6 cans each time we eat tuna – so buying 72 cans seemed like a good idea, especially for cool, summertime meals.
amazon order june 3

Have you learned how to take advantage of Amazon Prime/Subscribe and Save deals with coupons yet?  You’ve got to join me, especially if you like buying in bulk!

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My April Subscribe and Save Order Came!

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Is there anything more fun than the UPS man bringing big boxes of food to the door? Yes, probably. But cases of groceries on my porch make my day. Wanna see part of what we got this month in our Amazon subscribe and save order?

subscribe and save april 1

This time around, I got several different “grab-and-go” snacks to take with us to the soccer field. And yes, I even got a case of Annie’s mac and cheese. We love my homemade Creamy Mac and Cheese, but sometimes it’s nice to have the boxed stuff on hand for the boys to make when Matt and I aren’t around. I got it for super cheap, and the boys were really excited to find it in our boxes!

Are you wondering why I got a case of black tea? (800 tea bags, baby!)  I’m going to get a batch of kombucha started, and have big plans to keep it going throughout the summer for a healthy, refreshing drink. I also ordered a scoby so I am all set! If you have no idea what I’m talking about (kombucha, scoby, what’s that?!) – never fear. I’ll take pictures and share more about it once I figure out what I’m doing. :)

subscribe and save april 2

I think we’re set on olives for a while. I couldn’t pass up the huge discount, plus I really like this brand. Opening a can of olives to help stretch a meal is always great!

subscribe and save april 3

I’m almost out of my home-canned tomato sauce, so I took advantage of the coupon offer at Amazon and bought a case of Natural Value brand to hold me over. It was a super deal! That rice was also an incredible price, and I figured it would be a fun change of pace.

I also ordered a few other items like toilet paper, which I didn’t figure needed to be featured with a picture. It’s toilet paper. What more do you need to know? But yay for a discount and for having a case of tp on hand, which was lovingly delivered to my door by my dear UPS man.

I took advantage of many of the coupon offers to go along with the 20% discount I got from Amazon Prime/Mom.

Want to learn more about using Amazon Prime and Subscribe and Save to get the greatest Amazon discounts? Read this post for more information. Also, always check in with our Amazon Deals page which I try to keep updated with the latest awesome deals at Amazon. Some of the items I talked about are still being offered at a great discount. Details here.

Did you (or will you) receive an Amazon Subscribe and Save order this month? What did you get?  (It’s so much fun to talk about food…)

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Forget Everything I’ve Ever Said About My Low Grocery Budget

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How to Handle an Increasing Grocery Budget

Well, please don’t forget everything – just the parts I shared a few years ago about how I can feed my family of six a whole foods diet for less than $500 each month.

See, I thought my kids ate a lot of food at that time (2011)…because they did. They’ve always been very active and have had hearty appetites. But now? Well, we can polish off 2 pounds of meat, 2 pounds of strawberries, 1 pound of frozen vegetables, 5 pounds of potatoes, and a half gallon of milk – in one meal. An hour later they’ll need (and I do mean need, not want) more food, so we’ll eat a bowl of apples, four bowls of popcorn, and a hunk of cheese.

The boys who used to look like this:

boysbreaddough15sm.JPG

Now look like this:

GG_8

The little one who loved dressing up in costumes and climbing on my bulk groceries…

bagofoats6sm.JPG

Can now eat his weight in bulk groceries. And he’s the youngest one of the bunch. You should see his 6’3″ brother eat. Those 50 pound bags just don’t stretch as far as they used to.

The food portions we put on our plates at meal time still look like this:

fruits and veggies 11

But that’s just a warm-up. An appetizer. A teaser plate. They polish that off and go back to heap more onto their plates, twice, or maybe three times – if there’s anything left. I typically have to act quickly if I want seconds (or firsts as is the case at times).

I love this. Feeding people is fun for me, watching my family eat great food is a joy, and observing healthy appetites does my heart good. Bring on the food, bring on the appetites, bring on the healthy eating!

But it does come with a price tag – an ever growing price tag that sometimes shocks me, especially when see the shopping cart, the bulk co-op purchases, the cases of food delivered to my door – and I know how long the food will (won’t) last.

grocery cart

This is what my grocery cart usually looks like (weekly) – filled with fruits and veggies to go with the farm fresh meat, eggs, and milk – plus all of our bulk food purchases.

Do I really mean for you to forget everything I’ve ever said about how to keep a low grocery budget while still feeding your family a whole food diet? No way. All of my tips and tricks still hold true. Our grocery budget would be increasing whether we were eating whole foods or not. I don’t even want to think about how much I would be spending every month if we were eating large amounts of processed food. I believe eating healthy whole foods is what is keeping our food budget as low as it is right now.  Therefore, we’ll continue to:

Our grocery budget increases, but only because we’re eating more food, and there’s not much I can do (or want to do) to change that. If they are hungry, let them eat.  Just save some for me, boys!

To accommodate the changes in our grocery budget, we’ve had to shuffle some numbers around in our overall budget. Eating is not an option. The money has to come from somewhere, right? So where has it come from?

Well, as we’ve taken a look at all the line items in our budget, it can look at first glance as if there is no flexibility. After all, we try not to spend money on anything we don’t feel is necessary, so what can we possibly cut out? Nothing, really. And while I’m on the subject, can I tell you how nice it is to have a clearly itemized household budget so that we can put a name on every dollar we earn and spend? There is so much comfort in this, even if there are sometimes question marks about how to adjust those numbers.

What has worked for our family is this:  Our boys are now able to earn money by doing various jobs such as mowing lawns, raking leaves, shoveling snow, babysitting, and other miscellaneous jobs people call on them for. Our two oldest boys are licensed soccer officials, which means that in the spring and fall they are called to the soccer fields 4-5 days/evenings each week to referee games. They are good at what they do, they enjoy the work, they earn nice paychecks, and they are good savers. So guess what? In an effort to both help our household budget and teach them how to manage money, our boys have become more responsible for purchasing many of the items they need.

As a result, we’ve been able to shift some money from our clothing budget over to our grocery budget. We let the boys pay for their own outings with friends, church youth functions, part of church camp costs, etc. Aha! It’s a win-win. The boys get to continue eating (you’re welcome, children), plus they learn about budgeting for themselves.

I’d love to hear how you manage your grocery budget, how you cut food costs, and how you teach your kids about managing money.

Also, I want to encourage you to take advantage of what BudgetFocus offers in the area of setting us a specific (but simple!) household budget. I love this resource! Through Mother’s Day, they knocked down the price of an annual plan to just $19.95 – a super deal!

Now let’s talk grocery budgets. How are you holding up with growing appetites at your house?

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