Grocery Bill Part 2

I was writing this out as a comment for Kristine, but it got so long that I thought I might as well post it here. LOL! In answering her, perhaps I'll satisfy even more curiosity!

Hi Kristine, what did you mean by the cheese seemed $$$$? Did you mean expensive? Mmm, well it is very good mature English cheddar cheese, so I'd expect to pay that. You can buy very cheap mild cheddar, but I don't like it. {LOL!} I would only buy, English, Irish or Canadian cheddar. I use it a lot for cooking, so I need it to be flavourful. I don't normally buy that much in a week. It just happened that I was out and the Wensleydale was on special offer. I use that in recipes which call for feta cheese, which is much more expensive.

The peppers. Well, prices of fresh produce definitely fluctuate according to the seasons here! Those were very cheap and in season. In February though, I spent 92p on a single green pepper, which was obviously out of season and had been flown in from Africa or somewhere. Ridiculous. I shouldn't have bought it really.{g}

We do eat cereal for breakfast. Our staple is Weetabix and I had lots of that already in the house. But it gets boring every day so hence the other 2 boxes of cereal I bought this week. Breakfast is usually cereal and milk, fruit or fruit juice and toast or bagels.

Lunch is a DIY affair, usually a sandwich, often leftovers from dinner the night before and in the winter, I'll make a soup for lunch about once a week. Sometimes the kids will cook an egg or two in some way for lunch.

Apart from the milk, and I will need to get eggs and possibly more apples this week, yes it was a week's worth of items.

Next week, I will have run out of different things, but the amount I spend on each of the categories will be remarkably similar. So, I'll estimate needing about £20-25 for fruit and veg, £10-15 on frozen stuff which often includes some fish, £5-10 on fresh which might include a little meat if on offer, and £10-15 on store cupboard stuff. Sometimes, at the end of the month, I only have a few pounds left, but that's not a problem. I spend it on fresh organic milk and fruit and the rest will be freezer/store cupboard meals.

Ten years ago, when Jamie was an impoverished student for a few years, I used to spend £40 a week on the 4 of us and that was for all my other household items too. Food prices were higher then, it seems to me, and it was a real struggle to eat healthily.

We don't buy any sweets or high fat, high salt snacks, unless perhaps tortilla chips to go with my black bean soup! That is not to say that G and J might not buy chocolate or crisps when they are out and about with their own money, though! {vbg}

The groceries, and our budget reflects our lifestyle. If I was at work full time, the bill would go way up because I would need to buy more convenience products. If I was home more and not so busy being out and about during term-time, I'd be able to bake more and do even more 'from scratch' cooking than I do. For example, I'm sure I could have made all the tortillas which we ate last night, like Lisa does, but that would have added maybe 30 mins to the meal prep which I didn't have yesterday. So I paid for the tortillas! There is a price for going out a lot, like I do! {vbg} But we have reconciled ourselves to that price, for the moment.

Luckily, I have the skills to revert to more economical cooking, should the situation change, like Jamie losing his job or something. I have compassion for those poorest in our society who do not have those skills.