My budget for food and toiletries for our family of 10 for this month is $200. July is one of our highest utility months, as we are using more water in the garden and using the air conditioners (our house has 2 units, plus a window unit in our pantry) and ceiling fans all…
This month in the garden, we’re picking blackberries, Mission figs and Dorsett Golden apples. The blackberries and figs will finish up within a week and then the apples will be ready. I’ve amazingly still got lettuce, thanks to a much cooler than normal May, which I should be able to pick for at least a…
This month we’ll be adding one more teenaged boy to our home, as a dear friend’s son from France will be coming to stay. That means I will have 11 to feed, with one being a baby and three being teenagers. My budget this month for food, cleaning supplies, and toiletries is $250. From the…
We have radishes, lemons, Swiss chard, beets, a tiny bit of asparagus, arugula and several herbs ripe in the garden. We should have snow peas, lettuce, and spinach lettuce ready later in the month. Here are my shopping plans for the month. We’ll eat mostly from the pantry and freezers. Sam’s Club:…
I’m grateful for the opportunity last month of not shopping to empty the fridge and work on clearing out the freezers. The freezers still have quite a bit left in them and I always strive to keep the pantry full; there is plenty there still. This month we’ll work on eating more of the fruit…
For January, my grocery shopping budget is $0. We’ll be eating from what we have on hand. There are lots of reasons for choosing to eat from what you have on hand for the month. January is a great month to do it: You can rotate through food you’ve put aside all year (break out…
If you didn’t know I had a stocked pantry and freezers, my list this month would certainly seem like it isn’t enough food, and certainly not well-balanced! I never did end up finding a good sale on frozen peas or on cream cheese last month. I ended up buying broccoli instead of peas last month,…
November is the best month for grocery sales. Harvests are in and people are preparing for Thanksgiving feasts at the end of the month. Sales rotate around items for the Thanksgiving meal, fall harvests, and meats. I’ve already been to Winco this month, though I may return there again later in the month. Potato sales in…
I took a trip to Sam’s Club yesterday with the plan to buy toilet paper, and maybe something else. I came out with 2 large boxes of toilet paper (on sale for $1.50 off per box, taken off at the register), a 5-pound bag of chocolate chips (I’ll make cookies this month, and in the…
Since I’ve lived here, September has always felt like the last month of summer, though we’ll continue to run the air conditioner well into next month. With 5 months of over 90º weather, running the air conditioner is normal here from April through October. It’s going to be 97º today. The garden is not yet…
I’ve had a lot of questions about what we eat when it’s hot. We have 5 months of above 90º (32ºC) temperatures. Hot is normal for here. Right now temperatures have cooled a bit, and weather.com predicts an average of 105º for the next 10 days. We don’t like to barbeque in the summer. That…
Peaches and grapes are ripe in my garden, albeit a few weeks earlier than normal. This year, the mockingbirds have appeared in my garden, and they have figured out that my green grapes are ripe. I’ll be covering as many grape bunches as I can with paper bags to allow them to continue to ripen…