{"id":2095,"date":"2012-03-07T07:00:58","date_gmt":"2012-03-07T12:00:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/?p=2095"},"modified":"2014-07-17T16:54:58","modified_gmt":"2014-07-17T20:54:58","slug":"36524f-week-3-bargains-splurges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/36524f-week-3-bargains-splurges\/","title":{"rendered":"Food Stamps: Bargains & Splurges"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>

pretzels & cottage cheese \ud83d\ude42<\/p><\/div>\n

Week #3 Grocery Shopping: Depending on how you figure it, this week we came in either $4.06 under budget or $5.06 over budget. We\u2019re under budget if I figure just<\/em> this week. We\u2019re still a little over budget if I factor in the $9.22 we overspent last week.
\nBottom line? It\u2019s getting quite complicated to figure this all out. To summarize, I subtracted the 4 days I will be out of town but added the 5 meals that guests would be eating with us.
\nLesson? It takes a lot of arithmetic to make this work. Most people who are eating hand to mouth probably just buy til their money runs out. Maybe they then go to a soup kitchen or buy less nutritious food to stretch their money.<\/p>\n

Saved some money this week by buying:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. More English muffins than we needed. They were two packs for the price of one. We\u2019ll freeze them.<\/li>\n
  2. Green peppers for stuffed peppers since they were cheaper than the red or yellow ones. (I didn\u2019t know the color affected cost.)<\/li>\n
  3. One onion (rather than a bag of onions). They were cheaper by the bag, but we didn\u2019t need a whole bag.<\/li>\n
  4. A fresh pineapple. The \u201csavings\u201d part was because it was on sale. Otherwise it\u2019s a splurge.<\/li>\n
  5. Medium (non-organic, non cage free) eggs. Apologies to all you caged chickens.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Things we didn\u2019t buy but wanted to:<\/strong>
    \nRed\/yellow peppers, hamburg buns, Nutella, spices, jelly, yogurt, rice cakes, croutons, Coke<\/p>\n

    Insights:<\/strong><\/p>\n

      \n
    1. We spent most of our week\u2019s food allotment by the time we left the produce department. This was because we were determined buy nutritiously so as not to sacrifice our health \u2013 even for a noble experiment.<\/li>\n
    2. We were able to \u201cwin back\u201d some of last week\u2019s over-spending by not buying any meat. We\u2019re not vegans (or even vegetarians) but we planned meatless dinners for this week.<\/li>\n
    3. Did you realize that bread & butter pickles sliced lengthwise for sandwiches are $2.69\/jar while the little round ones are only $1.88? Ugh, I prefer the long sandwich style but we bought the cheaper ones \u2013 at least for this round.<\/li>\n
    4. Jim, smart shopper that he is, passed up the bottle of coriander spice saying it would be cheaper at the natural food store. Indeed it was half as expensive at Clifton Natural Food Store, BUT, it takes a car (which we have) and is way out of our way to get there. We decided to wait.<\/li>\n
    5. Although we feel bad for the chickens, we balanced out our moral compromises by packing our groceries in reusable bags. When the Challenge is over, we\u2019ll go back to saving the chickens.<\/li>\n
    6. Splurges: In addition to the pineapple, Jim likes pretzels as a snack and sometimes eats cottage cheese for lunch (which I hadn\u2019t factored into our lunch menu). Since we were saving money by not buying meat, I graciously granted these \u201cwhims.\u201d After all, he bravely chose to forgo buying Coke. To stay within the Food Stamp Challenge and still eat nutritiously has meant giving up most \u201ccomfort foods” and any extras.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Week #3 Grocery Shopping: Depending on how you figure it, this week we came in either $4.06 under budget or $5.06 over budget. We\u2019re under budget if I figure just this week. We\u2019re still a little over budget if I factor in the $9.22 we overspent last week. Bottom line? It\u2019s getting quite complicated to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[26],"class_list":["post-2095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-food-stamp-challenge","tag-food"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2095"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3323,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2095\/revisions\/3323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.susanvogt.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}