How we eat on $100 a week (and eat healty, organic food)

I don’t need to tell you that times are tough, we all know this. My husband and I have taught ourselves how to eat on $100 a week. I calculated this and that averages out to less than $3 a meal each!

I wanted to share our strategies with you in hopes that you find tips you can implement in your own life.

Step 1 – Meal Planning

Before we head to the market, I sit down with an ongoing list of dinners I plan out for the week. It helps for me to see what we’ve had in the previous weeks so hopefully I don’t have to think too hard about it. Of course, they change with the seasons: we eat much lighter in the summertime and have lots of soup and heartier dishes in the winter. I also bring out my bag-o-recipes to see if there’s anything we want to change up for the week. Yes, this can be time consuming and tedious, but it’s the first step to staying within our budget. Once I jot them down. I post the list on our fridge. Mike never has to ask me “What’s for dinner?” Those of you with kids I’m sure will appreciate this!

My meal list. Please don't judge how much we eat fried chicken.

We really only plan dinners as our breakfast stays pretty much the same: whole wheat toast, fruit and either orange juice or coffee during the week.  Pancakes or French Toast, eggs and coffee on the weekends.

Lunch is either leftovers from the night before or I’ll have a baked potato and Mike will scavenge something at his office.

During the meal planning, I also go through our refrigerator and cupboards to see what we need to stock up on.  How many of you think, “Oh, I’m out of ________, I’d better pick up more” only to discover it was in the back of your fridge the whole time? And now you have two (or more). This ends up being a waste of space and money! I’m in my kitchen a lot and have intimate knowledge of what’s in there and what isn’t.

I also refill my small decanters of items such as olive oil, Balsamic vinegar, salt, flour, etc. which I buy in bulk to save money and packaging.

Yep, that's my main cupboard. My spices are on a three-tiered spice shelf I picked up from the Container Store.

When I meal plan, the dinners that call for a lot of fresh ingredients get made earlier in the week and the items with heartier ingredients (like soup) get made later. I love winter time because I’m able to make one-pot meals that last over a few days, which saves money and saves me from having to cook every day (yay!). Every once in a while I’ll have to stop into the store again during the week to pick up a few fresh things like baguette…no big deal as long as I plan for it ahead of time.

Step 2 – Making the List

After I write down the dinners we plan for the week and take stock of my kitchen arsenal, I gather my recipes and make my list. This might sound crazy, but I write my list in the order of our path through our market. It saves time as we aren’t back-tracking our steps and saves money because there is a set list with little room for impulse buys.

This is the order I go in but it of course will change for you depending on where you shop (Mike and I shop at Diablo Foods, a family owned grocery store in Lafayette, CA)

•           Produce
•           Dairy
•           Household items (cleaners and whatnot)
•          Frozen goods
•           Canned/dried goods
•           Meat

Step 3 – Calculating As We Go

This works well when you have two people shopping, but it can be done if you are by yourself, it’ll just take longer. As we go through the store, I pick the items and Mike pushes the cart while adding them up on his Blackberry. Sometimes this can be tricky when you’re dealing with produce, say if you just need one red pepper and they’re $1.99/lb, we just guess that it’s about a half a pound. It doesn’t have to be perfect, it’s just so you have a good idea of how much you’re spending as you go so when you get to the checkout counter you aren’t struck with sticker shock. 

This strategy is also helpful because meat is our last stop before checkout. If we’re getting too close to our limit, we make a quick adjustment and substitute a nice inexpensive spaghetti dinner rather than something with meat in it.   

Here are some things we don’t include in our calculations:

•           Household cleaners
•           Staples that we buy in bulk (as listed above) since these items are relatively inexpensive and are used over a long period of time
•           Any special items that a recipe calls for e.g.: cheesecloth
•           Spices

Doing this leaves room on our budget for fresh food.

I have to get on my soapbox for a second here: Mike and I stay away from processed foods. Oh sure every once in a while we’ll have mac and cheese out of the box (Annie’s!) and we’ll even have a fast food meal here and there. But for the most part, we try to buy all organic produce and grass fed meats. After watching the movie “Food Inc.”, I realized how we eat not only affects our health, it affects the health of the planet. And guess what, on our toast we have real butter (not nasty processed “I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter), in our coffee we have real half and half (rather than crappy Coffee Mate that’s full of sugar). Who needs that processed stuff that’s supposed to be better for you? I know the obesity problem in this country stems from all this processed crap…so we just stay away from it as much as we can. 

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! But I can believe that it's shit.

So that’s basically how Mike and I shop for groceries. When we get home, I unpack everything and separate out the refrigerated goods from the cupboard goods before opening the fridge to put it away, just so I don’t have to keep opening and shutting the fridge door to save energy. That’s just my crazy eco-mind though.

I will say that with holidays like Thanksgiving and Christmas, we don’t worry about staying within $100 because that’s impossible, this is more for everyday shopping. 

I hope this helps you on your next trip to the grocery store!