Weekly shopping 3/25/2012

I have figured out why I have been going over my budget the last few weeks!  I have been bringing David with me.  Not that my husband is a profligate shopper, but we have doubled up on things without noticing, and our inner mental menu doesn't necessarily match.

We spent 250.00 again this week.  46% of our purchases were P6, (Edited to add: someone followed my P6 link and ended up at a porn site!  Ack!  My link was good, so I think the P6 site is hacked.  I broke the link and will see if I can find a different P6 link. ) which is pretty good considering we are in the absolute winter produce doll-drums right now.  We manage that amount by buying all local meat, eggs, and dairy.  Which, by the way, is mind boggling.  Think about how much more sustainable my animal products are than the produce I bought.  If we didn't have an oil based shipping economy my family could still eat the same animal products, we would probably eat less rice and more oats, buckwheat, and tubers, and during March the only vegetables we would be able to eat would be sauerkraut and stored winter squash.  So much for a vegetarian diet being sustainable.  I wonder how high I can get my P6 percent during the summer?

Meat: we still have hamburger and the never ending supply of frozen chicken from several weeks ago, so we just bought ox tails which were on special, and lamb soup bones, an enormous ham, also on special, and a variety of sausage and some bacon. Our fish this week is frozen wild Alaskan Sockeye. Meat sub total: 75.00  (actually it was 72.something, but close enough.)

Dairy: We got lots of yogurt, whole plain, and flavored, 1/2 gallon of whole milk, a pint of cream, butter, cream cheese, cottage cheese, 3 dozen eggs, colby jack and muenster cheese.  Dairy sub total: 106.48  All of our dairy products cost about 5.00 per unit, I wonder if that's some sort of psychological dairy purchasing limit beyond which people don't like to go.

Fresh produce: bag of almost over the hill peppers, bulk spinach, #5 potatoes, daikon radish, shitake mushrooms, bag of oranges, mushrooms, asparagus, cucumber, onions, beets, garlic, limes, kale, lemons, ginger, orange bell pepper, scallions, avocado, green beans, bananas, kiwi, bag of pears, broccoli, sweet potatoes, bag of apples.

Cans, boxes, and bags: nut thin crackers, crushed tomatoes in a glass jar, rice noodles thick and thin, buckwheat groats, frozen raspberries and blueberries, veggie burgers, rice, coconut milk, rice thin crackers, tortillas, and dried kelp, because I just read an article about kelp and I had to have some.

Apparently the co-op tracks purchases for members and can provide a purchase history for us.  I am both intrigued and horrified by the thought of seeing my grocery shopping broken down over a quarter.  Maybe once I have been shopping weekly for a while I will give it a try.