The Grocery Market Mission

So about 10 weeks ago i embarked on what i have lovingly deemed "The Grocery Market Mission".  After a few bouts at the grocery store this past year of spending $200 or more for only 1 week of groceries, i felt like i was bankrupting us with my liberal love of food. So i decided to go on a mission.

Some background:
I adore food. I love, crave, dream, desire, and am completely smitten with food. If you know me, you've undoubtedly seen me practically make love to a spoon or dance and wiggle in my seat while eating. I have very strong beliefs about food too. Yes, i subscribe to the "food as medicine" philosophy, but i also subscribe to "food as therapy" (chocolate as antidepressants). I believe in organics (when affordable and can be found). I believe in growing food, eating meat (and hunting in a sustainable way), whole foods, and the occasional "half" food (as long as it contains good ingredients and is affordable). I believe in pizza parties and making fancy ice cream. I believe in making donuts in the fry daddy ever fall because they're just amazing and a world without donuts would mean there are a lot of a'holes running around...

All that said, the 'mission' was to see if i could spend less money on food without having to compromise my beliefs and joys. I am fully aware that i am prone to indulgence and that we could live quite well on a cheaper diet of tuna noodle casserole (which is good, but only once a year or so).


The mission:
I was spending between $160 and $200 at the grocery store every week.  We are a family of four, myself (34 yr old female, moderate activity most days), my husband (33 yr old male, moderate to strenuous activity most days), my 7 year old daughter, and 5 year old son.

The mission was to save some money. As simple as that. I started out hoping i could spend less than $100 per week on food. We have a small CSA share for veggies and i borrowed my father in law's Sam's Club card and bought some large quantities of things like kid snacks, dried cranberries, nuts, toilet paper, dish soap...  So between the grocery store, the csa, and sam's club i was hoping to spend less than $100/week to feed us all. This did not happen. it worked out great the first week but after that it was bedlam.


The results:
So the first week was a success. Every week after that, it didn't work out. I quickly learned that despite the CSA and Sam's club, i still was spending between $80-160/ week for food.  I have two more weeks to go in my 12 week study. So the absolute results are not quite in yet.  but i did come to some conclusions:

1) It is cheaper if i spread my shopping out to include Sam's Club or better yet Trader Joe's.  Sam's club is cheap alright and even cheaper because we're on my father in law's account. However, they don't have a lot of the things we eat (non-sugary granola bars for example - and yes, i could (and have) make my own, but i have mixed feelings about that which i'll get into another time).  Trader Joe's is great for kid snacks, but it's crowded as all hell and i always buy WAY too much

2) I learned some great things like: how to make yogurt, and dry beans do taste better.

3) Making my own yogurt and cooking dry beans vs. canned, is not necessarily saving us all that much money. Well, maybe the beans are...?

4) Every little bit counts. We did save some money. And while i felt like a failure (because i didn't meet my $100/week goal), we ended up spending an average of $146/week on groceries. This doesn't feel like a huge difference to what i was spending before the mission, but if i add it up we're spending at least $1000 less per year on food. That's $1000 that we can save (or spend on vacations to west africa or buy a motorcycle with).

Summer Lovin'

Last week i turned 34. It did not feel significant perse. I do not feel particularly older, i do not feel decrepit or lost... While at Chincoteague Island the first week of this month, i did go through a very slight mental crisis of realizing that instances of being hit on by young men are becoming more and more rare. I miss being hit on... i know it's shallow and vain and that this is just another demonstration of my large ego that continues to trip me up in life. I think i'm mostly beyond that little crisis though...

I adore my birthday. I adore holidays in general. Any reason to dote on my loved ones (and myself), eat decadent food, sing, dance, shout, visit with all the people i love but hardly ever see...  Ben's present to me this year was to help me throw a giant party complete with shrimp boil.  We crashed a wedding in New Orleans a couple years ago (Thanks R&R) and the happy couple threw a shrimp boil during the weekend of joy and ever since then, i've wanted to host our own. To top it all off, my mama did a trade with some friends of ours: artwork for a performance (they're performers, Fairie Ring Theater). So they came and did a small story telling performance which was fun and funny. So many people came. So much good food was eaten. So many children and babies!!!! Years ago, Ben and I were practically the only ones with kids... In the last two years, it seems everyone we know has gotten  knocked up. It's pretty amazing seeing all these babies around and getting to enjoy babies without having to have any more of my own (this kitchen is closed!!!).

In other news, have i discussed my obsession with yoga this year? I have always enjoyed yoga and have had an on-off practice for probably 18 years or so now. But only this past year have i given it significant attention. It helps that I have more resources this year (can afford classes and workshops) but it also helps that I have new friends who are yoga instructors (Hi Nichole and Stephanie!!!) and can discuss and share the challenge of trying to bring the practice of yoga into all facets of my life. Grace, accepting limitations, strength, breathing, patience, and flexibility are not just for my mat. I have even gone as far as considering getting my 200 hour certification and possibly an aerial certification on top of that (i'm struggling with this in that is this ego or is this something i very much want to/feel driven to do). Not that i can afford it in time or money but it's an idea...

It has been a wonderful summer so far. I relish getting up an hour later every day and not having to pack lunches and backpacks and meet the bus. I LOVE spending the day with my kids, even if it can be frustrating trying to work and keep them occupied at the same time. I love the long days and the trips and vacations and feeling spoiled. I love our gardens and our bees and our chickens and this feeling of having enough (love, food, space, daylight, dollars, things to do). Soon as summer waxes and fall looms the feeling of enough will bloom into abundance and then back again to the deficit of winter... but for now, for this moment, it is all enough.

Extended family...

This is the legendary Jardeleza brood.

my grandmother, Lolita Jardeleza (or Oa to us grandchildren) and her 11 children. My mother is second from the back in the teal shirt.

Here they are again. My mother is the second one in from the left in the front row. 

And here is the greater portion of the family. There are still a few missing (maybe 10-15 people) but we are 74 strong here. This photo includes the original 11 plus most spouses, children/grandchildren, and children's children/great-grandchildren.

Family...

There's been a lot of deaths recently. My father's dear friend, Roger died a few weeks ago. The pictures below were taken during a bonfire in the hollow in his honor. A few days after this, my uncle Jim died. That same day his family's dog was put down as well as our dog Preacher... 

Anyone who knows me knows i'm uber emotional. I don't handle death gracefully and i become suddenly very scared that the people i love the most are going to be next. I feel extreme remorse for having taken them for granted in any way... of course that only lasts about a month and suddenly i'm back living life day-to-day... because truthfully, i don't think we're capable of actually cherishing every moment or living life as though any of us could go at any moment.

In Buddhism, enlightenment can only be reached if we let go of our attachments. This is probably the most daunting idea to me. I am not particularly materialistic (as any of you have witnessed in my tiny house, and heard me ranting about the constant "Crap Control"). But my attachments to people seem hardwired in me. I do not know how to let go of these people, to accept that they will too leave me some day or i them (though in someways me leaving first seems so much more easy)...  However, despite my immediate revulsion in the idea of detaching myself from these beautiful, amazing, inspiring, sometimes infuriating people; I can see that in order to avoid suffering (especially when they die) one would have to detach... 

all that said, i'm fairly certain i will never reach enlightenment in this life... however, i believe i've already obtained enrichment... these people enrich my life beyond measure...  

Playing Catch up: Winter 2013-14

This has been one crazy winter. It's been utterly frigid and snow storms one on top of another. I do like the snow and aside from occasionally going a little stir crazy being cooped up, i love the solitude and isolation of winter. I just wish that the rest of the world would hibernate too and i didn't have to get up at dawn to pack the kids off to school or go to work. If i could wile away the winter snuggled up in our big bed with my little family reading and watching movies, i think i would.

Early December found us trying to take a decent holiday card photo. I don't know why i still do this, it's always so hard to get ONE decent photo of all of us. Since only a couple of the kids' turned out well, our card had pics of only of them... Though a friend (CJ Winger!) pointed out that this was kind of cheating and if they have to suffer through having pictures of themselves in their card, so do we... maybe next year...

And then Christmas was upon us... Nothing major to report on christmas, except OH, my mother fainted at my Aunt's house Christmas night and woke up disoriented and nauseous. My brother, father, and I spent Christmas night at the ER listening to my mother make various nurses and attendant uncomfortable... 

my mother knit these for the kids, aren't they incredible?

And then came the snow and the frigid temps (which was fun at first)

 In January, Asa turned 5 years old. We were all partied out after the holidays and convinced him to have a family dinner at his place of choice. He chose Chuck E. Cheese's. I was there once as a child and didn't remember much about it. I looked it up online and discovered they have gluten free pizza and thought, what the hey. It was kind of a disaster. It was chaotic and loud and pretty much awful for all the adults. For the kids, it was just intense. The food is truly awful (i don't know why i expected otherwise) and Asa had a melt down when he discovered all the tickets he earned could only get him a tiny plastic frog at the prize counter. After a somewhat tearful exit and some pouting on the drive home, we decided in the future, we're going to go to Oma's house for Asa's birthday every year instead and that Chuck E. Cheese's is a bust. We went home and sang him happy birthday over a cookie.

And then came more snow and my new niece, Josephine Jones Tomaskovic. Drove up to Pittsburgh to be present for her birth. After a very long and arduous labor where my sister totally rocked it, little Josie decided that it was too much trouble to help her mom out and just turn her head a little... so was born cesarean section. Did you know that cesarean babies sneeze a lot? it's so freaking hilarious!

And then more snow and frigid temps came through...

And then came the ice storm which resulted in the 21 trees falling down across our driveway and week without electricity or water...

We celebrated valentine's day like other holidays, with food...

Oh and then... MORE SNOW!!!

And that more or less catches us up. The snow is starting to melt, though there are giant unyielding piles of it all about my house. Today, Asa is sick (again) with a nasty cold. We've seen our fair share of colds this winter but (knock on wood) no flu like last year. I have high hopes that the spring will start her mercurial awakening soon and banish the continuing cold temperatures. I'm ready to wake up and get out, to plant things and watch the forest turn varying shades of green around us. The chickens must feel the same way as they're laying multiple eggs a day now (i see a lot of quiche in our future). 

So anxious for the spring. I'm hoping to finally start a hive or two of bees this year. Sadly, despite my continuing love affair with the idea of raising goats, we will not be getting any kids this year though we continue to bat around the idea of a dog (a smallish one, not a monster like Thor and Preacher). My planning and day dreaming are alight, we're fueled with eggs galore and meat from this winter's butcherings... come on spring, give us light and veggies, and warm winds!