Being Real About Our Food Budget, Menu's and Grocery Receipts.

Buying food for our family is the second highest allotment in our families budget...right behind our house payments and followed closely by fuel for our vehicles :P We can't do anything about the house payment at the moment, and my husband has to commute for work, so that won't be changing any time soon (if anything, it seems to be going up! )

Our food budget is something that I have decided to tackle and I want to "be real" about it here. We have $400 a month to spend for food...I'd like to trim that down to $350 (or lower.) For now, I'm going with the $400, and any excess will be going towards our food storage. I'm going to write out our menu plans, and the grocery lists for them. I'll even report back after shopping to write out my grocery receipt. If I have the poor judgement to buy Twinkies (yuck!) I'll "be real" and write it out here. I'm also going to write out a post (and have it linked to my sidebar) that will be a running tally of my stored dried/canned goods. And I'll make sure to mention if some item from our menu will be coming from our stored foods.

I want to pause for one moment and just say that nutrition is very important to me. I would love to buy nothing but all organic, natural, whole foods for our family. Unfortunately at this time we can't. I'm going to do the best I can, within the budget that we have and I'm going to trust God to take care of the rest. I go with the "good, better, best" theory.

"Good" would be homemade bread, made with white flour. "Better" would be homemade bread, made from store-bought whole grain flour. "Best" would be homemade bread, made from fresh milled whole grain (rye, wheat, spelt etc.)

Making homemade bread with white flour is still better, and cheaper, than store-bought bread.

Here's an example:

I have $5 left of my grocery budget. I need to get the most food value for the money. Am I going to buy 5lbs of wheat flour, or am I going to buy 5lbs of white flour, 1 gallon of milk and a cabbage. Obviously the wheat flour is better nutritionally, but by buying white flour, I would also be able to buy a gallon of milk and a cabbage.

God knows our circumstances and He honors our attempts to live according to His word. Do you really think white flour is going to stop God? If we are doing the best we can with the blessings He has given us, we need to trust God to take care of the rest!