A grocery experiment: Slight change of plans

Due to a few prices being out of this world (frozen oj for $4.70) at Good Earth, we've decided to add back in Trader Joe's for some of our grocery experiment shopping this month. We think this will still help us accomplish our two goals in doing this:

1. Buying local on produce, meat, chicken, eggs, honey, milk, yogurt, and possibly cheese. (we couldn't buy local frozen oj, seafood, and many canned goods, so we'd like to save a little money by buying from TJ's).

2. Buying Trader's Point milk and yogurt and seeing if this is reasonable for our budget.

So here is sort of what I will buy at what store:

Trader Joe's

frozen foods that I haven't been freezing from what I have bought or grown
frozen orange juice and other juice
seafood
cheese (unless we can get it from a local source)
canned goods
paper towels and toilet paper
tortillas (unless I find a local source--Mexican store or something?)

Locally Grown Gardens

Eggs
some produce
maple syrup


Farmer's Market

some produce
some meat
chicken
honey

Good Earth

TP yogurt
TP milk
some produce
bulk grains and beans
dried bulk herbs and spices
TP beef

Garden

tomatoes
basil
green beans
spinach and lettuce once I plant our fall crop


I'll be making my own bread (something I haven't been doing for awhile) and english muffins when needed.

A grocery experiment: Menu for Week 1

Edited to add: links and notes
Note: side dishes of fruit or veggies not included in menu

Monday:
B:Granola with milk or yogurt, fruit and oj
L: leftover tacos, corn, tortillas, carrots with peanut butter for dip
S: Chocolate banana shakes and peanut butter and jelly (Nate at boy night)
(Note: for the banana shakes recipe, I use cow's milk for almond milk and chocolate syrup for sweetener and cocoa/carob...granola recipe to come, I hope)

Tuesday:
B: Baked oatmeal
L: Smoothies, muffins or quick bread, and left over ham and potato soup (from freezer)
S: Homemade pizza (sauce, cheese, and pepperoni from freezer)
(Note: for baked oatmeal recipe I up milk to 1 1/4 cups and cut sugar to 1/2 cup...for soup, I use Organic Better than Bullion (from Meijer) instead of bullion cubes...pizza dough is made 1-2 days ahead of time and stored in fridge--so good)

Wednesday:
B: Eggs and toast or tortillas
L: Left over baked oatmeal or pizza
S: Community group--bringing either fruit or dessert

Thursday:
B: Baked french toast (recipe from Weight Watcher's cookbook)
L: Left over pizza and smoothies
S: Edwina's Mustard Maple Crockpot Chicken(haven't tried this one yet)

Friday:
B: Granola with milk or yogurt and fruit
L: Leftover chicken
S: Chili with cornbread

Saturday:
B: Pancakes and fruit (make two batches)
L: Not sure
S: Zucchini pie and homemade crescent rolls (maybe try to post these sometime--at least the zucchini pie--could email the crescent rolls if someone wanted them)
(Note: We don't do dairy free on the pancakes, but you could if you couldn't do milk.)

Sunday:
B: Leftover pancakes with fruit
L: Smoothies (and bagels at church)
S: Left over zucchini pie

A grocery experiment: Explanation

Disclaimer: In no way, by this experiment, am I looking down on people who aren't making the same choices with their shopping or food. Just wanted to clarify that. The last thing I want to do is put an extra burden on others who already have much to deal with. We just thought this would be an interesting thing to do.

After visiting Trader's Point Creamery this past weekend, Nathan and I got to talking about groceries, and particularly about milk. TP does the minimum amount of heat and time for pasteurization (destroying fewer nutrients) and does not homogenize their milk. This, along with a few other reasons, made us wonder if we could drink less milk, but get more nutrients from it. Since we don't have a raw milk source right now, this seemed like a good option.

So all this and more of the conversation, let us to think about trying to avoid grocery stores for a month (yes, even my beloved Trader Joe's--I do still heart you, TJ's, and I don't completely fit you in with the others) and see just how much it would cost us compared to how much we spend now. The goal is to buy more local food, if possible, but at least, support small local stores.

For the next month (starting tomorrow, a day early), we will shop at:

The Good Earth (a natural food store that carries the beef, milk, yogurt, cheese, bulk grains, dried beans, dried herbs and spices, etc, that we will buy)

Locally Grown Gardens (a kind of every day farmer's market bringing in mostly local produce, but some from SC--peaches--and some from Florida--citrus)

The local farmer's market on Saturdays (we can also get beef and chicken and dairy here, along with our produce)

I will attempt to keep track of our weekly costs and menu on here.

Lacking posts

It's officially been a month since I posted on here. How did that happen?

I guess we've been busy. July was nice weather, so we were out a lot. I went to visit my parents with the girls last week. We had a nice time visiting with our friends visiting from Portugal, my parents, my brothers, sister-in-law, nephew, other family, and friends. I got my Morning Star, Snug Harbor, and Butch's Beach Burrito fixes while I was there. Oh, and ice cream a couple of times too. :)

We've been eating lots of tomatoes, or I should say that I have been eating them because I'm the only one who does. Our friends' garden has given us small, sweet cherry tomatoes that I've been enjoying with pasta with pesto made from their basil. I just ate one and a half Brandywine tomatoes today...our first ones we've harvested. So amazingly delicious. I love them sliced on toast with some mayo and cheese slices. I found the first teeny, tiny green bean on our bush beans. I'm hoping to plant some spinach in the next few weeks for a fall crop. Not sure when to plant them.

Nate's parents are here for a couple of days. We are going to look at minivans tomorrow. No buying yet, just looking. We might try and take the girls to the children's museum one of the days too.

Let's see, what else. I tried freezer paper stenciling for the first time yesterday. I did a stencil of a VW Beetle on a onesie. I still have to heat set it, but it turned out cute.

Oh, and I broke our digital camera while at my folks'. It was inside the pocket on the Ergo when I tossed the Ergo over about 8 feet to the cement. I might try and get it fixed. But I also really want a digital SLR. Nate wants a small digital camera.

I think that's all for now. I did update the girls' blog with a post about Ally. It is lacking in pictures since I couldn't get them to load up on the website, but I'll add those later.