I don’t know about you, but the cost of food in our area seems to have risen 25-30% in the last year. I think my children will be happy about that today because they’re going to get a day off from Saxon Math.
Instead of the textbooks, today we’ll be figuring the cost of our favorite meals so that we can plan cheaper menus. Although our home is not a democracy, the children will be involved in this process for a number of reasons:
- They eat.
- They plan meals and cook them.
- They love an excuse to “skip math.” Will they consider this to be math? Only if I tell them. They can be naive that way. Kaitlyn is reading over my shoulder and thinks I’m being naive to think so.
- Although math theory is crucial for obvious reasons, I think applied mathematics is far more useful for everyday living. What good is theory if you don’t know how to apply it? It becomes nothing but useless trivia.
By the way, I searched for a free image of groceries and couldn’t find anything I liked, so I took a picture of our fruit platter.
Do you think that looks like a lot of bananas? That’s half of what I brought home Tuesday afternoon. We try to grab 15# twice or three times a week. The Boy alone eats 2-3 each day and if they get too ripe before we eat them all we make banana bread or put them in the freezer for peanut butter-banana smoothies. That’s a nice thing about South Texas. If you’re willing to wait a week, you can count on nice warm smoothies days almost any time of year.
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For some reason I thought a smoothie was cold… brrrr cold. Must be the Canadian blood. Warm smoothies? Sounds yucky.
Perhaps I am missing out on something…
I love your math lesson and try to “skip math” this way every now and then.
No, that’s not many bananas at all! I always buy lots of bananas because we eat lots here. too. I joked to the cashier once that I had a couple of monkeys at home, and he gave me the strangest look…I guess he thought I was serious! LOL
Jennifer
jordanfamilyhappenings.blogspot.com
Andrea,
You’re right. That was clear as mud.
What I meant was, you can count on a nice warm day to enjoy cold smoothies. South Texas has cold days now and then but the cold never lasts long. If you’re longing for a frozen drink and it’s too cold today, just wait til the weather turns warm again in a couple of days.
Is that a pomegranate? I honestly don’t know what to do with a pomegranate.
Michele,
Yes, it’s a pomegranate. We rarely buy them but they were marked down to less than a dollar the and the children love them.
They’re fun (and very messy) to eat with fingers, a bit at a time, as you disassemble them. But we prefer to sprinkle them into fruit salad. It adds a nice touch, extra flavor, color and crunch, and even a simple bowl of one or two fruits suddently looks fancy with bits of pomegranate in it.
I too noticed groceries have gone up and started going to Walmart instead of Weis. There stuff is definatly less. I often wondered how mich you spent/bought a week on groceries…….care to share?
mj,
Until the recent price hikes, we used to spend ~$600/month for the 10 of us, including pet food, paper products, diapers, etc.
Now I’m afraid it’s crept well beyond that – probably in line with the 25-30% increase in prices that I see wherever I turn.
I’ve done the same thing – skip the Saxon and use grocery day as a math lesson. I agree, if you can’t apply the theory than math is useless. Around here prices have risen also. Just this week, I was trying to reevaluate our menu too so I could squeeze more out of our food budget. It is frightening when a pound of butter has risen to $3.33, and that was on sale!
Oh and the bananas we go through a 15# bag in a week easy, probably more if I let the baby eat more than 1 1/2 a day. So that is pretty much what our fruit basket looks like too.
Good luck with the menu.
Blessings
wow I would love to know how you do it on that budget I think I spend about $300 a month for 4 of us and I don’t buy much prepackaged foods. Plus I only buy chicken and pork the rest of what we eat is venison. I get all my toiletries and cleaning products at cosco if the price is right. Do you ever worry that when your kids get bigger you’ll go broke??? My friend has 5 boys and a girl and all I can think of is what will happen when they are all teenagers and have huge appetities. I remember when a gallon of milk was $2 seems like along time ago but then a gain gas was $1 a gallon too.
OK, so I’m not the only one with a banana-gobbling Ape Baby? I thought that he must be weird; he’ll eat a couple a day plus an entire chopped apple and handfuls of raisins- and finding raisin skins stuck to the walls of the washer after a load of diapers was rather upsetting the first time.
We also have 8 children and I think we spend between $600-700 a month on groceries. (we’re in CA) I’m always glad when it is orange season because we get free oranges then.
You have bananas that get too ripe!!! Wow! I have never made banana bread although I love it and would love to make it, but when I buy bananas usually about 6 #s they are gone before I get the groceries in the house and unloaded and if I buy 9 lbs there maybe possibly some for the next morning, but that is if I hide them in the oven. Otherwise they’ll be gone too.
Are you going to share your results? I would love to know what your most inexpensive meals are…and maybe some recipes too.
angela,
I posted results this morning in the next post.
I’ve always limited my kids to one banana a day because I thought there was danger of too much potassium. I don’t know where I heard that, but have thought it for some time. Maybe my limit is too low! Have you heard anything about this?