This Week’s Menu

Monday

Breakfast: Green smoothie

Lunch: Chicken/cabbage/rhubarb/grape salad

Dinner: Semi-successful thyme & lemon chicken with rhubarb and sweet potato

Tuesday

Breakfast: Green smoothie

Lunch: Chicken/cabbage/rhubarb/grape salad

Dinner: Bunless burger with not-the-best hot chili sautéed broccoli rabe

Wednesday

Breakfast: Green smoothies

Lunch: Chicken/cabbage/rhubarb/grape salad

Dinner: Pork chops with chili blistered brussels sprouts

Thursday

Breakfast: Green smoothies

Lunch: Chicken/rhubarb/grape/pecan salad

Dinner: A ludicrously small amount of peas with broiled London broil

Friday

Breakfast: Green smoothies

Lunch: Chicken/rhubarb/pecan salad

Dinner: Out

Saturday

Breakfast: Out

Lunch: Out

Dinner: Pre-race fuel – my DH made his pre-race meal of rice & hamburger – mine was heavy on the burger/light on rice; his was heavy on rice/light on meat.

This Week’s Grocery List

Cage-free brown eggs, dozen ($3.79 @ Fresh Direct)
Sliced antibiotic-free rosemary grilled chicken breast, 6oz. x2 ($8.00 @ Fresh Direct)
Pat LaFrieda dry aged beef burgers, 6oz. x4 ($13.49 @ Fresh Direct)
English peas, 0.51lb. ($1.52 @ Fresh Direct)
Jumbo yellow onion ($0.60 @ Fresh Direct)
Rhubarb, 1.44lb. ($2.87 @ Fresh Direct)
Lemons x4 ($3.00 @ Fresh Direct)
Thyme ($1.99 @ Fresh Direct)
Grass fed ground beef ($9.99 @ Brooklyn Fare)

Smoothie Supplies

4 Apples ($3.99 @ Fresh Direct)
2 Avocados ($4.00 @ Fresh Direct)
Satur Farms cut mixed kale, 50z. ($3.49 @ Fresh Direct)

Totals

$53.01 Fresh Direct
$9.99 Brooklyn Fare

Budget Breakout

This week, I spent $63.00; $37.00 under budget. Yay, leftover meat from last week! Having leftovers from last week’s shopping really saved my budget this week. Enough so, I bought ridiculously expensive chicken for lunch without worrying about it. Hopefully I can parlay the $5 in budgetary overage I still have (last week’s groceries were $31.69 over budget) into a little extra meat next week to start building my emergency stockpile back up.

Leftovers From This Week

At the end of the week, I have 1 aging head of broccoli rabe, half a bulb of fennel, and two burgers left over. I need to incorporate these items into my menu for next week.

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Think eating healthfully is too expensive for you? Think again. According to the USDA, to ensure a nutritious diet as of December 2014, a family of two aged 19-59 years should spend between $388.90 and $776.10 on food per month, or $89.80 – $179.30 per week. Source 

For my family of two adults, I spend roughly $400 a month on groceries or $100 a week – and we eat well. Not caviar and lobster well, but I do manage to serve a predominately paleo diet with little to no processed foods, and I get to throw in a few luxuries here and there (like expensive snacks for the hubbs and the occasional ridiculously expensive bag of coffee). We even manage to buy “good” meat (grass fed beef and free-range chicken) most of the time – and I make this budget work even on the weeks we pay for convenience by getting delivery groceries. I make: 10 breakfasts, 5 lunches, and 10 dinners a week – plus enough snacks to satisfy and fuel two active adults.

I’m hoping that this series will help shed a little light on the day-to-day things a “paleo” person really eats — and how that way of eating can work on a budget. I want to nudge anyone sitting on the fence right over the edge by showing that it *can* be done and that you don’t just eat meat, meat, meat and more meat.