On Friday, I finally broke down and went to do some shopping. Well, my husband went on Thursday night and spent $17 buying two pounds of butter, one gallon of milk, one dozen eggs, and two small containers of heavy cream. I then went shopping on Friday. First I visited my local Amish store to buy some cilantro, which I was completely out of and need to make salsa, and some whole bay leaves that I then crushed. I also bought two 16 ounce containers of sour cream. Total cost of spices and sour cream was $8.
My next stop was the local cheese factory. I am not sure why, but for some reason I thought that the cheese factory store would be more expensive than the local stores in our area. I had resigned myself to paying slightly higher prices in support of a local factory that supported all of our local dairy farmers. To my surprise, prices were cheaper and I ended up saving an acceptable amount. I spent $49 and bought two medium blocks of cheddar and colby cheese and one huge block of mozzarella. I also purchased four pounds of butter because it was only $2.49 per pound instead of the $3.49 and more being charged at the store. And, since the kids were with me and hungry, we bought a package of freshly made cheese curds for $3.18. I recognize that this is a Wisconsin thing, but yummy!
So, I paid $36 for my cheese. I generally use just shredded cheese so as soon as I got home I set up the trusty food processor and began shredding. The medium sized blocks of colby and cheddar cheese each yielded ten cups of shredded cheese; the mozzarella came to twenty cups. I then vacuum sealed these in bags holding about five cups of cheese each. So, I got eight bags of shredded cheese for $36 or roughly $4.50 a bag. I was curious as to how much this same amount of cheese would have cost me at the Wal-mart store located about an hour away from me. I looked at both the generic and Kraft cheese. Personally, I think that our factory cheese is closer to the Sargento brand quality wise, but getting those prices for comparison purposes from online was challenging. I had to convert the advertised prices to a per cup value since Wal-mart does not carry five cup bags of cheese. So, the result?
If I had purchased an equivalent amount of the Wal-mart generic brand of cheese, it would have cost me about $46, or $10 more than I had spent. But this is really good, high quality cheese, so I truly do believe that a more honest comparison is to look at a good brand of cheese, such as Kraft. If I had purchased an equivalent amount of Kraft cheese, I would have paid closer to $56 or $20 more than I had spent.
Lesson learned? Well, even though we might have an impression that something or some place is more expensive, we may be pleasantly surprised to learn that we are wrong. While the goal of eliminating the grocery store was to drastically reduce the amount of money that I would be spending on groceries overall, I anticipated that I would be paying, in some situations, more money but for better quality. To find that I will actually be saving even more money was really nice.
The other good news for the day? I found a source for farm fresh eggs for $1.50 a dozen. A $1.50 per dozen! The same quality of eggs at the grocery store - more than $4 a dozen! And, I can get whole chickens from the same farmer. Double score!
The bad news of the day? I had to buy some carrots and celery to make some more of my convenient meals. So, I bought two packages of celery, one five pound bag of carrots, two loafs of sandwich bread (since I am still working on solving that issue!), and some whipped cream for our homemade apple pie we were having for dinner that night. I also grabbed a bottle of wine and two bottles of sparkling grape juice for the kids. So, I bought a total of nine things at the grocery store. Total cost? A whopping $40! So frustrating.
Overall, we spent a total of $106. I am happy that we didn't buy anything for over a week. And I am happy about the money that I saved purchasing the cheese at the cheese factory as well as my Amish purchases and the new sourcing for poultry products. There is nothing I can really do about the carrots or celery purchase because, let's face it, it's the middle of winter right now. Wine, too is a critical component of our weekly Sabbath so not much I can do about that either, other than learn how to make my own wine. Which requires fresh fruit. And then we run back into the fact that I live in a frozen wonderland.
How did you do this week? What were your grocery expenditures like? Are any of the things that I am doing encouraging you to make changes for your family? Let me know!
Be blessed!
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