Fermented Vegetables<\/a>\u201d to help me expand my options of healthy food. Maybe I will. But, considering I have never had a pickle outside of my mother\u2019s potato salad, I am a little nervous about branching out successfully.<\/p>\nSo, this month I\u2019ll stick to the basics. What can I eat now that I like?<\/p>\n
Back to the groceries.<\/p>\n
I adjusted my budget from $525 to $650. Lets face it, natural is just more expensive.<\/p>\n
I picked a handful of meals that I have made before from my budget books and tweaked them for me. I bought the spices needed, but rather than a whole bottle of them, I bought just what I needed from the bulk aisle.\u00a0 Now I know this is potentially more expensive in the long run, but it saved me from buying 4 bottles of spices at $8 a pop. Instead, I spent less than $8 for all of them. That\u2019s already a savings of over $24 bucks!<\/p>\n
Instead of paying $6 per dozen eggs from the store (the ones that didn\u2019t test positive for potato), I searched for neighbors that sold eggs for $3. As luck would have it, a kid walked to my house selling eggs this month for $2 a dozen.<\/p>\n
My first door to door egg salesman!<\/strong> Unfortunately, she hasn\u2019t been back, but it worked for this month.<\/p>\nA couple rules for me:<\/p>\n
Force myself to focus on each individual meal,<\/strong> rather than the potential what ifs of mealtime and the \u2018I may need that\u2019 trap of so many healthy alternatives. Who can\u2019t use another bag of unsalted sunflower seeds?<\/p>\nPlan out my snacks so I buy only what I need for the month<\/strong> and I don\u2019t \u2018buy the farm\u2019 on the one brand of crackers I can eat. I already have 2 boxes, but I could run out any moment!<\/p>\nForce myself to go to the store once a week to buy fruits and veggies<\/strong> (I prefer the two week plan, but then several items seem to go bad on me). Money thrown in the trash can!<\/p>\n****************************<\/p>\n
In the end, when I did the grand total I had to admit it worked out for me. I didn\u2019t feel like a lost kitten in the four new stores that I had to add to my shopping regime. I had a game plan and a list. Granted, I did buy a couple non-list items, but I said no to more things than not.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
My goal was $650. I spent $702.75. I over spent by $52.75, but I considered it a victory compared to my overspending the month prior by $531.62!<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
I think I could improve if I just honed in on exactly what tastes good without sugar and starches. It\u2019s hard to spend forever making something that you pray is edible and then find out you hate the taste. Time, wasted. Money, wasted. Hunger, worse.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I intended to hone in on it over the next month, but things changed. Pain started. And my whole roller-coaster yeast infection threw me a curve ball.<\/p>\n
***************************************************************************<\/p>\n
We’re still praying for Erin to experience complete health!\u00a0 In the meantime, if you relate to her journey, leave her a note of encouragement!<\/em><\/p>\n***************************************************************************<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n
Marie<\/h4>\n
posted on Tuesday, March 17, 2015 1:16:44 PM America\/Denver<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Erin was told that her chronic pain was caused by a combination of things, to include sugar and an allergy to potatoes.\u00a0 As it turns out, potatoes are in nearly everything in some form (even your table salt). \u00a0 She had to dump nearly all of the spices and pantry staples she owned and find […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3020,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[229],"tags":[380,379],"yst_prominent_words":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/I-spent-how-much.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Fvks-MB","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3013"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3013\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3020"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3013"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pantryparatus.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=3013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}