On the one hand, I spent very little at grocery stores this week.  But, there’s a but and it will be at the end.

I started at the farm stand on Monday, spending $12.19 on mostly local produce (not the pears).

I then spent $6 on more apples (different variety) at the farmer’s market on Tuesday.  I was expecting to buy more things, but found the offerings to be rather sparse.

My big shop of the week was $66.83 at Wegman’s on Wednesday.  Unfortunately I grabbed Mozzarella instead of Cheddar, which also has a green stripe.  We’ll eat it, but not our favorite.  There were also three gallons of milk that didn’t make the picture.

Finally, on Friday I ran in to Stop & Shop.  The total was $26.90 for Saturday’s soccer snacks – apples and bananas – and sale items.  Pasta was $0.33 each, limit three!

So, that brought me to $111.92 for the week.  That would be excellent, BUT this was the first week of the meat share I’m trying out.  Eagle-eyed readers would notice no meat in the pictures above, which is highly irregular for us.  Our meat share brought us to $345.92 for the week.  So, that is high.  But, this is a once a month delivery.

The share is pricier than sale meat from the grocery store.  And, we only have limited say on what we get.  But, it’s supposed to taste better, plus its from local farms and some other feel good things.  That being said, I only went with pork and beef.  It’s a total per pound and I wasn’t ready to use up my pounds with chickens.  They also have lamb, but we don’t like that enough to get it regularly.  We’ll eat some of this and let you know how it goes both taste & budget-wise.  This cost about half of what we spent on meat in September so it seemed like it should fit in our budget even if I buy some chicken and ground meats.  I can imagine it might take a few times to refine our preferences.

Late post today as the kids have no school.  Plus, it takes a bit longer when I have to total up an entire month.

Last week first.  Sadly, I went grocery shopping almost everyday.  It really was an inefficient week.

On Monday, I ran in to Stop & Shop to grab something for an early kid dinner plus address the milk and bananas shortages.  I also took advantage of the great steak sale that was still going and picked up two more packages.  Mushrooms and ice cream were also on sale.  It all totaled $55.88.

On Tuesday I was near Target so I stopped there for grape juice, craisins, and granola bars.  I also needed one jalapeno for dinner.  They only had a bag of eight, but that was better than stopping elsewhere for one.  Now we just need to have Mexican more in the next week or so.  The total was $39.95.

On Wednesday I needed exactly six items (two of which weren’t food so I would not normally bring them up) so I went to Stop & Shop as it is the closest to my house.  Unfortunately of those six things they only had three.  And, while looking for those six things I found two items – hot dogs and cold medicine – that were months beyond their expiration date.  All in all a disappointing experience.  As for food, I bought onions and spinach for a total of $5.00.

So I went farther (and into rush hour traffic) to Shaw’s for the rest of what I needed at $19.59.  I was rather annoyed by this and jumped right into dinner, thereby not taking pictures.

On Saturday I spent $68.04 at Wegman’s, largely to restock the milk.

My last stop this week was the farm stand.  Surprise!  I spent $20.52.  We ate the green beans for dinner last night.  The corn will go with dinner tomorrow night.  That bag of broccoli will cover 2-3 meals, depending on how many people are eating.  All of that is local.  The pears and tomatoes are not local and will be more snack-y, spread over the week.

That brought my total to $208.98.  So, inefficient but not expensive.

And now for this week.  I looked at the categories by percentage last week; now for the totals.

September TOTAL: $1,387.48

• Stop & Shop: $285.54
• Wegman’s: $667.97
• BJs: $304.19
• Other: $129.78
  • Local: $45.25
  • Star Market/Shaw’s: $64.68
  • Trader Joe’s: $0
  • Target: $19.85
  • Other: $0

Oof.  Clearly I was making up for last month!

So, as I mentioned yesterday, a reader asked about our spending specifically as relates to meat and produce.  I focused in on the produce part, because meat is just plain expensive in comparison.  Clearly there are more and less expensive meat choices, but in general a diet with a hefty dose of meat is going to be more expensive than a diet without.  Produce, on the other hand, offers many more choices.

Casually, I always thought our budget was dominated by meat and dairy with produce being rather insignificant.  I spent this morning crunching the numbers for September.  That took a LONG time for what will end up being a rather short post, but I really don’t think you want all the details.

Suffice it to say I learned a few things:

• I tend to buy certain categories of food at certain stores, which did help when totaling by category.
• Stores sort their sales very differently so apologies in advance if these numbers don’t exactly line up with Monday’s September shopping summary.
• Produce indeed does not dominate our budget.
• Our budget (for September anyway, but it seemed like a normal month) was dominated equally by general grocery and meat.

So here it is:

36% General grocery (aisles + bread)
33% Meat (fresh, frozen, seafood, deli)
16% Dairy (milk, yogurt, cheese, ice cream, eggs, OJ)
9% Fresh produce
4% Prepared foods (salads + pizza dough)
2% Canned/frozen produce

Starting here because that was what kicked off this exercise.  A quick looks says maybe 1% of the prepared food number was salads, which if included with the other types of produce still only brings that total category in at 12%.

Milk and cheese dominated the dairy category; I just didn’t have a better place to put those other things.  This is to be expected.  My kids drink milk constantly, every meal plus in between.  And, we eat a lot of cheese.

Meat is trickier.  We are a meat and potatoes family and have meat with most meals.  But, as I mentioned above, there is a lot of leeway in what types of meat one purchases and how much one serves.  My guess is that this was a higher than typical month for meat because the total dollars for the month was on the high side.  Basically, I’d guess this is the driving category as relates to budget by a couple hundred dollars a month.

General grocery is harder to analyze without breaking things down.  Bread, cereal, juice, and granola bars all fall in this category and those are often considered expensive compared to the alternatives.  But, a quick addition showed that those totaled only a quarter of this category so its not the entire story.

All in all, this is a worthwhile exercise for anyone wanting to see where their grocery money goes.  Clearly for us the easiest category to affect is meat.  I’m not sure annoying the kids by not having some of their requested foods available in the grocery category would make nearly as dramatic a change.  And, as long as one is making conscious decisions, it is entirely ok for different people to prioritize their groceries differently.

We are settling into our fall routine.  Unfortunately that means lots of split dinners.  This week, while the first full week of school, includes 5th grade math night and Back to School Night at the elementary level.  Combined with sports and a one-off event I have Friday night we will not all eat at the same time this week.  As a result you’ll see the quicker items showing up again – pizza supplies, hot dogs, chicken nuggets, etc.  I’m trying to work in some recipes like chicken pot pie that can be eaten by two separate groups, but that’s just not always possible.

My total this week was $293.24.

On Monday I spent $49.05 at Stop & Shop.  I bought four gallons of milk that were not on sale plus everything you see below that was.  Stop & Shop is not the cheapest place to buy milk, but its close enough that if I’m there for the sale stuff it makes sense to grab a few to cover until the next time I’m at the better priced locations (BJ’s or Wegman’s).

The milk lasted until Thursday, when I ran over to Wegman’s.  I spent $110.54.  You’ll see there are a lot of bulk items in there so some of the bigger ticket items will be spread over multiple meals.  Over the weekend we used some for hamburgers and sausages.  We’ve also had meatball subs and tacos with this shopping.

Then on Friday I spent $133.65 at BJ’s.  I don’t usually go to BJ’s twice in one month, but we discovered we were very low on charcoal and it can be hard to find in the winter.  Since I knew I’d seen the bulk packages at BJ’s I went back there to stock up.

This was all the perishable stuff.  I know I laid out the non-perishables for a picture, but clearly I got distracted and then forgot to take a picture before putting it away!