October Spending Challenge - Week 4

Today ends Week 4 of Northwest Edible Life's No-Spend Month of October.  To participate, I didn't join full-on, but decided to challenge myself to spend zero money in restaurants and as little as possible on food at the grocery store. 

This week (10/20 to 10/26) was spendy compared to the past three weeks:

Restaurant spending:  $9.96
School lunch spending: $4.30 (2 lunches)
Grocery store spending:  $48.86 (includes sales tax)
Pork processing fees:  $209.00 (already had these funds set aside)

At the stores this week, I bought: 2 packages of hot dog buns, 1 loaf of oat bran bread, 1 bag tortilla chips, 10 pounds of whole wheat flour, 5 pounds of Clear-Jel thickener, 1.25 pounds barley, a few ounces of dried basil leaves and a couple of ounces of ground nutmeg. 

I also (finally) found a source for raw milk and bought two gallons.  With bottle deposits, the total was $12.  Ive also included the cost of two dozen farm eggs that I forgot to include when I bought them last week - $5.

I blew my perfect record in the restaurant category yesterday.  My daughter (Kat's mom) rode with me to pick up our pork from the processor.  While we were out, I felt a migraine coming on, so I decided it was probably not a good idea to skip lunch.  I bought us each sub sandwich and put her in the truck's driver seat for the rest of our trip.

You'll notice I have a fourth category this week, which is the butcher's fee for processing. I had set aside $250 for processing, but I'm happy to say that some of that money will go back into savings.

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Here's what we ate this past week, most of which was already in the freezer, fridge and pantry:


Breakfasts and Lunches: 

• Our breakfasts and lunches were very similar to earlier, consisting mostly of hot cereals, leftovers and/or simple sandwiches.
• Kat requested two school lunches this week.  The first was meatballs and gravy over rice and the second was sliced ham with French toast sticks.  Each came with a choice of two out of several fruits and vegetables.

Suppers:  (This week's menu centered around chicken, with three meals made from one whole bird.)

• Leftover chili (from my dad), hot dogs on buns, salad with homemade dressing.
• Sausage-and-stuffing stuffed acorn squash, salad with homemade dressing.
• Chicken Oreganato, salad with homemade dressing, green beans.
• Chicken enchiladas, refried beans, salad with homemade dressing, homemade salsa.
• Chicken enchiladas leftovers.
• Bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwiches, pumpkin applesauce, tortilla or potato chips. 
• Fried catfish TBA.

Drinks and Snacks:
Drinks this week were water, coffee, iced tea, raw milk, lemon-lime soda, and beer.  Snacks were potato chips, tortilla chips, peanuts, peanut butter and jelly on flour tortillas, string cheese.