Sunday, September 19, 2010

Week 1: Nature's Bounty

Wednesday marks the beginning of our "going local" journey, so today was our first official grocery run. As usual, we headed to the Ballard Farmer's Market to shop, which wasn't too crowded thanks to the torrential downpour earlier in the morning.

On my "to-do" list this week is homemade lamb stock for freezing, so extra carrots, celery, thyme and onions were all needed. My dad is also staying with us this week, so we ended buying much more than usual.

Here is what we ended up with, for a grand total of $95.00:

* 2 types of cheese
* 1 giant bag of a variety of peppers for Dan's Chili Powder experiment
* 3 bunches of Thyme
* 3 bunches of the prettiest carrots I've ever seen
* 1 giant bunch of celery
* 8 onions
* 4 organic peaches (the size of a large softball)
* 1 bag of salad greens
* 1 bunch of purple kale
* 1 bunch of rainbow chard
* 1 leek
* 1 fennel bulb
* 2 yellow squash
* 1-5lb bag of yukon gold potatoes
* GIANT bag of local (!!) peanuts. Nut butter, here we come!
* 64 fl oz of milk (Golden Glen Creamery)
* 4 lbs of flour for bread making (Nash's Produce)

Separately, at PCC, we spent another $5 on greek yogurt, another $5 on butter, and another $11.50 on a giant jar of local honey. So this week, we are at $116.50.

I recently read that a household of two spends an average of $165 a week on groceries. This is what we are trying to keep our average under this year.




We picked up our lamb this weekend, which yielded around 25lbs of meat, balancing out to be about $9 a pound. While that doesn't seem like the best deal to me, we still ended up with two racks, two leg roasts, a shoulder roast, three packages of chops and about 10 packages of stew meat.



Things like roasts and racks can be EXPENSIVE to buy at a butcher or at the market, so I think we actually got more for our money, even if we didn't save any.

2 comments:

  1. The veggies look wonderful! I have never figured out how to use fennel - there are a couple volunteers in the garden from the ones I planted last year. I think they have to get a lot more mature than when we pulled them last year.

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  2. I've never cooked with Fennel, either, but the lamb broth recipe called for it. It smells AMAZING. I can see how this is going to be a fabulous addition to our lamb broth.

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