The Kitchen Playground

I have seen some pretty tight jeans around lately. I also went into this week’s food shop with $20.41 left of this fortnight’s food budget. Which of course is not really being fair as the bulk shopping I did last week will last for months, not just the fortnight. I do like to recoup as much as possible straight away though. I think I did pretty well. I had plenty of fruit and veg left from last week so I filled the gaps with some average quality produce from closing time at Preston market. I also did some very minimalistic supermarket shopping as the pantry and freezer are well stocked and I wrote my meal plan accordingly.

So here it is;

Aldi
organic honey 5.49
plain crackers 1.19 *
long grain rice 1.99
TOTAL $8.67

LEOS
sugar 1.25 #
organic yoghurt 4.38 *
free range eggs 5.56
organic chicken breasts 7.00 ~
organic panella 4.80 ^
organic oats 7.10
TOTAL 30.09

PRESTON MARKET
1kg polenta 3.20
7 bananas 1.00
11 mandarins 1.00
2 large zucchini 1.00
15 medium carrots 1.00
6 red onions 1.00
10 brown onions 1.00
2.8kg red grapes 5.00
TOTAL $14.20

* unnecessary expenditure, I should have baked the crackers like I normally do and I should have made the yoghurt but accidentally used all of the last batch and didn’t save nay to make more with. I blame this crazy cold that has been plaguing me. annoying.

# I know I am generally speaking the anti-sugar but I need it to brew kombucha. ONly sugar will work for some reason I can’t remember and I can’t be bothered getting off my butt to look the reason up.

~ half price, can’t go past that even if I did stock up last week.

^ panella is similar to muscovado, unrefined, evaporated cane juice. Muscovado is cheaper but they were out of stock so I had to get the panella.

Week’s Expenditure = $52.96

Over budget for fortnight = $32.55

I should be able to easily recoup that over the next fortnight while reaping the rewards in terms of meat and toilet paper bought in bulk last week for many fortnights to come. See, I told you I had a plan. This is how bulk buying can really save you lots of money IF you have or can create the cash flow to allow the bulk purchases in the first place.

If cash flow is a problem, another way around it may be to pool in with friends and family to buy bulk at the cheaper rates and then split it. So a 4 kg hunk of beef topside for $30 could be bought between 4 households who then get 1kg each for $7.50, a $5 box of apples containing over 3kg could be similarly split, $17 for 72 rolls of toilet paper and so on…you get my drift.

Tags: food budget