On my previous post, you might have noticed that our grocery budget is RIDICULOUSLY small. Like, below the USDA Food Estimates by a lot. You can find them HERE.
For clarity:
On their cheapest plan, they expect us to spend $90 a week or $390 a month for both of us combined. But our budget weekly is $30 and our budget monthly is $120, you might say. How are we going to do this?
It’s unpossiblé!
Let’s talk about Bipolar and Paranoia.
I have Bipolar I as you might already have notice me mentioning, and I have a lovely side of Paranoia to go with it when I’m sick. And my paranoia comes in one flavor: the end of the world is coming and WE MUST BUY FOOD.
Food that I then refuse to eat or let my husband eat. This has been a point of contention in the past.
How much food, you might wonder?
A lot. All of it frozen or nonperishable. I have small pantry full of food, and a standing chest freezer full of food. Besides that I have two buckets of rice, a bucket of beans, and a half a bucket of gluten free flour. Five gallon buckets. (I would have more flour, but WOW that stuff is expensive.)
The freezer is full of ground turkey, bacon, block cheese, and about a bajillion bags of frozen veggies.
I have entire shelf in the pantry of condiments including salsa and soy sauce.
We have a rice maker that we use daily (and a second one in storage at our inlaws). I like pinto beans cooked a variety of ways. My favorite is beans over rice with shredded cheese and salsa. Simple, easy to make, and entirely out of my storage.
When we’re shopping for the upcoming months, we won’t need to be buying staples – just extras to make them tastier. We’ll be buying eggs (lots of eggs! we love them and they’re good with rice and beans) and other foods my husband enjoys. All from ALDI which is SO CHEAP. We love you ALDI. Your food is good and you still save our budget. We bought a dozen eggs there this weekend for 43 cents. No joke.
So, it’s not as unreasonable as it looks.
The downside is that I won’t be able to Keto while this is going on. The upside is, no one overeats rice and beans. It will be an impromptu diet of it’s own sort.
We’re tightening our belts, but it isn’t a hardship like you might have imagined. *smile*
Do you have good rice and beans recipes? Or rice recipes and bean recipes? What other foods would you consider staples in your household? How about recipes for eggs? Where do you fall on the food spending chart? Inquiring minds want to know!
At least you’re set in the event of nuclear apocalypse, right? We’ll all head over to your house for rice and beans!
Right? Rice and beans alone is pretty boring though – I may have to expand.