We’re not even halfway into March, and our food spendings are already up to $600 (including splurging on Zoe’s birthday treats). We will still need some fresh produce and dairy, so I will allow us to spend another $75 on dairy and $55 on produce for the rest of the month = $130, but other than that, I have to curb our spendings. And even so, that means we will have spent right around $830 on food in March… I want to see our budget shrinking, not ballooning up!

I think we may need to cut up or take our credit cards out of our wallets, and go back to good old fashioned cash money. Maybe I will even keep a jar on the counter with my “grocery money” like the housewives of the 50s did (I’m sure I’ve seen that in some movie??) except I will be the one to give Dan his allotted $100/month for lunches…

I think maybe I am going about this whole project completely backwards. Maybe I should have set a budget FIRST, and then just spend whatever I allocated for food? Instead, I bought food in bulk meant to last us many months, which meant that the up front costs were naturally high. I just really hope this will all even out over the longterm because I’m really starting to feel discouraged seeing how much I have spent on food in just under a month and a half.

I have been trying to figure out if there is a better way of calculating the true cost of feeding a family of 4 for, say, a year. Poking around on the internet, I found a few references to Mormons and their belief that you must store one year’s worth of food in case of the Second Coming (or something like that). They even have a handy dandy food storage calculator, according to which our family would need:

Grains
Wheat 525 lbs
Flour 87 lbs
Corn Meal 87 lbs
Oats 87 lbs
Rice 175 lbs
Pasta 87 lbs
Total Grains 1048 lbs

Fats and Oils
Shortening 14 lbs
Vegtable Oil 7gal
Mayonaise 7 qts
Salad Dressing 4 qts
Peanut Butter 14 lbs
Total Fats 88 lbs

Legumes
Beans, dry 105 lbs
Lima Beans 16 lbs
Soy Beans 35 lbs
Split Peas 16 lbs
Lentils 16 lbs
Dry Soup Mix 16 lbs
Total Legumes 204 lbs

Sugars
Honey 10 lbs
Sugar 140 lbs
Brown Sugar 10 lbs
Molasses 4 lbs
Corn Syrup 10 lbs
Jams 10 lbs
Fruit Drink, powdered 21 lbs
Flavored Gelatin 4 lbs
Total Sugars 209 lbs

Milk
Dry Milk 210 lbs
Evaporated Milk 42 cans
Other 45 lbs
Total Dairy 262 lbs

Cooking Essentials
Baking Powder 4 lbs
Baking Soda 4 lbs
Yeast 2 lbs
Salt 18 lbs
Vinegar 2 gal

Water
Water 56 gal
Bleach 4 gal

I’m not quite sure how they came up with these figures, and why they think you’d need SO MUCH SUGAR (not to mention bleach??), but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. Maybe next time I have insomnia, I will price it all out and see what it would cost…?

Awkward teenager chicken phase has begun!