Super Shopper

I know that this is an uncomfortably fuzzy picture, but if you focus in on the middle of the page you'll see "Your Savings 112.87."

This morning, I ran to the grocery store to restock our empty pantry.  Jay doesn't cook and Twitter provides all of his meals, so  I left the cabinets empty and returned to find them empty.  While the girls and I were away on vacation I can not find evidence that my husband ate anything here at all.  You'd think that he might have bought an oven roaster chicken or there'd be some remnants of take out burritos from last weekend, but nope.  Nothing.

Normally I break my shopping trip up into several different stops based on price and quality, but I usually do my shopping while the girls are at school and technically they are still on spring break and therefor are home today.  There are two things in the world that my children hate:  1.) spending more than 20 minutes in the car and 2.) long trips to the grocery store.  My children are lovely little people with whom I wholeheartedly enjoy spending the bulk of my time, but they transform into demanding, complaining, fighting, tantrumming, begging monsters in both of these situations and it makes for a truly horrible shopping experience.  Given that I am exhausted and jet lagged, impatient and grouchy today, I thought better of my normal grocery shopping routine and decided to just do the whole list at my local Safeway.  I don't mind going to Safeway, though it's not ever my first choice.  The money I spend there goes toward our escript commitment at the school, so it has its benefits.  On the other hand, it can be a little bit pricey in my opinion, so I set out with the intention of buying only what was on sale.

Now I am always a pretty good grocery shopper, but THIS savings was my best effort yet.  Normally, after a big shop I've saved anywhere between $40 and $80, but I really outdid myself today.  Here's to eating well!

My Favorite Day of The Week!

It's Thursday! I love Thursday.

Generally, Thursday morning doesn't have ANYTHING on say, the occasional Saturday morning adventure or on a lazy Sunday morning full of a whole bunch of nothing but a blessed bloody mary and marathon of Mad Men.

Thursday begins like every other day. My husband flicks on the lights and forcefully drags me out of bed We get up at 6 and everyone complains that they are too tired to live and at least one person hates what I made them for breakfast. Someone will cry when brushing her hair (sometimes this is me) and everyone will gripe when it's time to get dressed (including me).

But on Thursday morning, something MAGICAL happen when I am dropping Jay at the train station and the kids off at school. Someone comes to my house and drops off a large green carton full of really healthy, wonderful, often locally made/grown food. Every Thursday I come home and am greeted at the door with what I have come to feel is treasure. Sure, sometimes during the week I go into my order and tweak it, depending on whether or not I still have purple onions left from last week. But sometimes I don't look at the order at all. So, when I open the green box everything inside is a big surprise!

The company who does this is called Planet Organics. I know that there are a lot of co-op's out there and a lot of produce delivery services available, but Planet Organics rocks my world. I mean, I find the entire thing completely exciting. After all, nothing is more depressing to me than a trip to Whole Foods, where I go to grieve for the fact that I am not a millionaire and inevitably walk out of feeling a.)hungry, b.) robbed and c.) like I will return to a house full of genetically-modified-high-fructose-MSG-Nitrate-infused -apples that have been injected with Red #5 and casein just because my daughter is allergic to it. Planet Organics is pretty much Whole Foods, but small, independent, friendlier and online. So, I signed up for a delivery each week. And in case you missed it, it comes on Thursday. I pay a certain amount of money and they fill my basket with stuff and deliver it. We have two lemon trees, a peach tree and an orange tree, so I clearly don't want any of those. I was able to go in and just check a box that said to never deliver them to me. I also was able to check off preferences, like I always want cilantro.

It really doesn't get better than this. You know, you can even give them a key and they'll let themselves in and unload your groceries for you. No joke. I think that's a little creepy, so I don't do it. But I could do it. And I like options.

Groceries

So, the thing about me is that I love food.

I love to eat. I love to grocery shop. I love to cook. I love to bake. I love to prep. I love to feed.

I just love everything about food.

Here's something that you may not know about me, (though it's possible that I may have mentioned it before). I, Anna Holler, might just be the world's most savvy grocery shopper EVER. I mean, I don't want to toot my own horn, but I suspect that I could make a career out of the skill, THE TALENT that I have for buying food. Grocery shopping is the only kind of shopping that I enjoy. I could (and often DO) do it for hours and am sincerely a little bit sad when it's over and that I only get to do this once every two weeks.

Recently, I turned to facebook to ask people how much money they spend on groceries each week. I found that the majority of people came within about $50 of what we spend. I was also pleasantly surprised by how many comments I received. It seems that a lot of people care about this. It's not just me!

We shop at two different places and buy all organic and mostly locally grown/organic food. We buy all of our produce and meat from the Reading Terminal Market and all of our dairy and general aisle foods from Whole Foods Market (which I would marry if it were socially acceptable and legal). I spend between $300 and $350 dollars every two weeks. The number depends on how many high priced extras that I need (things like dish washer detergent, soaps and household cleaners... which reminds me that I really need to begin making these things on my own again to keep my bills down)!

I think that this is a good place to add that I cook a few meals every day. I make decent breakfasts for my daughters each day. Generally I also do one big breakfast on the weekend. I buy at least 4 dozen eggs each time I shop (between breakfast eggs and baking eggs, I go through at least 2 dozen every week!!!! I realize that this seems impossible.) And I make big dinners each night. Lunch involves more assembling than cooking, but I do send Jay to work each day with a sandwich and snack. At times I'll also send the girls with a packed lunch, though they typically prefer to buy it at school.

The break up of my grocery bill looks like this:

$130 meat

$60 produce

$100-150 dairy and aisle foods (cereal, granola bars, pasta, pasta sauce, school snacks, sorta healthy "junk food," frozen foods).

I realize that I could spend a lot less money at the grocery store and still feed my family. I see articles like this one and know that I could technically spend $100 every two weeks and we could all eat. That said, I could also spend $800 every two weeks if we bought ALL of our groceries at Trader Joes or Whole Foods. I care a lot about things like avoiding HFCS and nitrates. I don't want to eat animals that were grown on shelves or lived their lives in misery under disgusting conditions. More importantly, I don't want to feed these things to my children. As it is, I have an organic, healthy diet on a grocery-chain budget.

I realize that not everyone has an organic farmers market or organic butcher at their finger tips, but I wonder what kind of other options there are. Also, outside of meat and dairy, I don't think that everything needs to be organic all the time. I feel more comfortable with organic food and I prefer it, but I will eat out from time to time and have something that isn't organic or healthy. All within moderation, I suppose!

Where do you shop? What do you buy? What do you spend?

Here's a little article that I found about ways to save money on groceries! Enjoy!!!!