There are two adults in our house, one child age ten (who is actually only here half-time), and two cats whose food and litter get added to the grocery bill. Surprisingly, we only spent $3514.52 in the past year on groceries, which works out to $68/week. It's even more surprising when I look and realize that LCBO (liquor store) purchases are in there too.
We have a lot of routines we're happy with, when it comes to cooking and eating food. For much of the year we got the Good Food Box, a big box (about three grocery bags full) of fruit and veggies for $17. We've used the local farmer's market that opened in our neighbourhood this summer. We tend to shop "around the edges" of the grocery store, buying almost no pre-prepared or packaged foods. (My husband's boxed cereal is the biggest exception). We only buy meat when it's close enough to its best-before date that the grocery store has slapped a 30% off sticker on it. I'm kicking it up a notch by starting to clip coupons seriously, joining a coupon train to trade the ones I don't need for the ones I do, and tracking the best possible price using the website
In general, though, we keep agreeing that we want to spend *more* on groceries; I'm a good cook (if I do say so myself), and we'd both like to get away from the number of times a week we have sandwiches for supper because we're too tired to fix something more complicated. We don't order in, but neither do we enjoy all that life has to offer in the eating category. When we're retired, eating quality food we made ourselves is one of the things we expect to bring us considerable joy.
October 1st, 2008 at 03:13 am 1222830811
i have found that it's much better to, when you are inspired, cook up large batches of food and freeze them in individual portions. even if it's just pasta sauces, home made pies, quiches, vegetable tarts, and curries, there are many varieties you can experiment with within these examples to freeze, and atleast you won't be eating sandwhiches for dinner!