Cooking for the Family on a Budget: Resisting Shiny Ball Syndrome

We’ve been try­ing to stick a bud­get for our gro­ceries and my back to school refo­cus on health will again be an essen­tial part of that.  Our stay­ca­tion this week­end in just another way to pro­vide a lot of options to reduce costs–like camp outs, cook outs, & find­ing inex­pen­sive local fes­ti­vals. The joys of shar­ing food can­not be beat.  I really believe food has heal­ing & bond­ing pow­ers, so hav­ing good food to share as a fam­ily is essen­tial to me.

Right now D-man is still on breast­milk only.  He is mov­ing to cereal and then he’ll join the rest of us in eat­ing baby ver­sions of “reg­u­lar” food.  Which means pretty soon that num­ber will be 6 peo­ple eat­ing in this house and let me tell you these kids can EAT!!  It’s insane how much their lit­tle bod­ies can pack in.  They already get SO hun­gry,  THEY ARE STARVING TO DEATH. Or at least that’s what they’ll lead you to believe even if they just at 10 min­utes ago.  I trem­ble at the thought of their abil­ity to pack it in as teens.

And then there’s me and gro­cery shop­ping.  With back to schools start­ing we’ll have to pack lunches, snacks, & prep more food for my evening classes away (Hubby & I trade off, I start din­ner & he fin­ishes on those nights). AND I have to admit with food it’s REALLY EASY for me to over spend.  Like seri­ously EASY. I can go in for 2 items, say bread and milk.  But I have shiny ball syn­drome with food, I get eas­ily dis­tracted and want what­ever is new.  I will find 122 items I think I *need* and end up spend­ing way too much money.

Usu­ally these are things that later I will regret.  And this is the issue with eat­ing healthy, I know bet­ter but if I’m not focused it’s like I LOSE CONTROL.  I will buy any­thing and every­thing that is prob­a­bly a trans­fat (oh trans­fats).  Leav­ing me to walk a food hall of shame the next morn­ing after going town devour­ing an entire box of cook­ies. Not that I’ve ever actu­ally eaten an entire box of cook­ies, but let’s just pre­tend I have.  (Please indulge me here, I know I should have stopped after the first 3 cook­ies, but they were so GOOD).

STICKING to budgeting

Not just doing it but stick­ing to it really is nec­es­sary for us so we can have a lot of good food avail­able to eat for those starv­ing kid­dos.  And because there are times when I don’t get a pay­check due to the adjust­ing of the pay peri­ods of the school semes­ters.  This means keep­ing money aside to cover that, if either myself or Hubby goes to the store & over­spends we are SCREWED BIG TIME (& it’s not even any fun).  Really I don’t know any­one who hasn’t felt the pinch lately with the econ­omy, where we live it’s been really tight & lots of peo­ple have been hit hard or worry about being out of a job even if they are OK right now.

Still, the dif­fi­culty stick­ing to a bud­get and eat­ing healthy are prob­lems for me, if I don’t keep them in check we could end up hav­ing lots of food but no house to put it in.  I mean really I can rake up a gro­cery bill like no tomor­row if I’m not focused going in.

We have to do some things to keep the shiny ball syn­drome with food in check.  Hubby also has the same syn­drome, it’s why we are a good fit.

Here are some ways we’ve found to keep it in check:

• Make a list & Check it twice: no list then I’m leav­ing with 122 items ver­sus 2
• Shop sales: I’m not going to go all over God’s green earth to save a $1 but I will plan ahead & know what’s a good price
• Shop local: farmer’s mar­kets are great for this
• Menu plan­ning: we aren’t super strict but we make a loose menu plan that way we can move things around & we can menu plan around sales & good finds
• Veg­gie gar­den: we have done a small one for the last 2 years
• Stock­ing up the pantry & freezer: when prices are good & only do what we like, no sense in stock­ing up on items we hate
• Shop gener­ics: most of the time a generic isn’t dif­fer­ent than the brand name
• Don’t shop with the kids: really they try to sneak things & wear you down.  If I hear “Can I have this??” too many times then I’ll over­spend on a big­ger bot­tle of liquor.

We do shop at the local gro­cery store, but also check out Costco & Trader Joe’s. Those help a ton since Mr. J can­not have very much gluten and Mamacita can­not digest diary (cow’s milk prod­ucts). Buy­ing a few spe­cialty items at Trader Joe’s really helps cut costs & Costco can have great bulk items (but a list is REALLY IMPORTANT or you can eas­ily over­spend).  I adore our local farmer’s mar­ket, it has some really great selec­tions & the cost for fresh grown food can­not be beat.  There are also good deals on buy­ing meat from a farmer in bulk, I’m talk­ing the “good stuff” (hormone-free, grass feed, etc…).  A deep freezer is nec­es­sary if you decide to do that though, because buy­ing meat in bulk takes up space.

I also LOVE hav­ing tips from oth­ers to help me. By far the cutest lady offer­ing food tips out there is Clara and she is fea­tured on Depres­sion Cook­ing with Clara . She offers great sto­ries with her food videos. I just adore her and have watched every one of her videos. She reminds me of my Grand­moth­ers in a good way.  I pic­ture her being that tough but lov­ing Nana, I want to just go to her home & let her cook for me for hours & tell me all sorts of sto­ries of her life.   She makes me ache from her adorableness.

And then there is a good gen­eral sec­tion on All­recipes for Cook­ing on a Bud­get. The site over­all is good for fig­ur­ing out how to use pantry items, since you can enter in ingre­di­ents that you want to use and select those you don’t want in a recipe. And I’ve def­i­nitely been faced with a “WTF?” night on fig­ur­ing out what to make out of ran­dom pantry items, this fea­tures kicks BUTT! The recipes also get a lot of feed­back which helps when fig­ur­ing out about try­ing some­thing dif­fer­ent, I also like being able to get other ideas for healthy food choices. We’ve been refo­cus­ing on adding in on extra veg­gies and fruits either to the meal or as snack items.

I’m hop­ing to con­tinue to hone my skills at bud­get­ing & offer­ing good foods.  I get all giddy when I’ve man­aged to get a lot of deli­cious items but not gone broke.  It’s like a con­tact high.

And since I’m always look­ing for more tips, feel free to share your own tips on keep­ing shiny ball syn­drome when food shop­ping in check. I’d love to read them & I’m sure oth­ers would too!!

Tagged as: cooking, family, food, food and drink, food budget, frugal, savings, shopping