A number of people I know are completely flabbergasted when contemplating sticking to a budget while eating a primarily “paleo” diet. I’m hoping to shed a little light on that issue for those of you on the fence about eating healthfully in this manner – it *can* be done – and done well – without spending all the money. All it takes is a little planning. 

A little background: I live in Brooklyn, NY, and the grocery prices here are definitely not the same as what you will find in other areas of the country. If you live in say, Raleigh NC for example – you may very well be able to cut this grocery bill by a third, depending upon where you shop. For where I live, where I shop and what I buy, $100 a week is a doable budget without having to sacrifice the quality I want too much. My DH thinks $130 is probably more realistic with our morning smoothie supplies, but I want to shoot for $100. I aim to make 4-5 dinners for two and 5 lunches per week, plus two smoothies per day six days of the week with my budgetary allowance and update you all weekly on what’s going on. Let’s see if I can make it. 

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My CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) shares are going strong, so I will be doing things a little differently with the vegetable portion of my meal planning for the next few months (until October). My share averages out to $25 a week, which will come off the top of my budget allotment and will comprise the bulk of my non-smoothie-related vegetable purchases. If you’re curious to see how I use my CSA veggies up, check out my What To Do With A Box Of Vegetables posts.

Current Box of CSA Veggies

Menu for Last Week (Week of August 4 – 8)

The Plan vs. Reality

This week’s meal planning was efficient – I ended up making pretty much what I set out to make.

Monday

• The Plan – Slow cooked beef (barbacoa) with spicy broccoli slaw + red onion, cucumber & lettuce cups
• Reality – The beef and broccoli slaw were good, but I forgot the lettuce cups.

Tuesday

• The Plan – Paleo lasagna with zucchini noodles + leeks
• Reality – This was pretty good, but I forgot to add leeks.

Wednesday

• The Plan – Barbacoa with CSA veggies
• Reality – I had leftover lasagna instead.

Thursday

• The Plan – Chicken & kale zucchini harissa pasta
• Reality – Yum.

Friday

• The Plan – Eat out
• Reality – That happened.

Lunches

• The Plan – Salads & leftovers
• Reality – Lunches this week were light on salads and heavy on leftovers again. I had tomatoes pretty much every day, had a warm skillet day with pattypan squash and dandelion greens, and had salad 1 day.

Extras

• The Plan – Nothing.
• Reality – Nothing made.

This Week: August 11 – 15

I have leftover CSA veggies this week and $75 to spend on groceries.

This Week’s Proposed Menu

• Monday: Meat with zucchini fries
• Tuesday: Stuffed eggplant with ground beef
• Wednesday: Fingerling potato-leek hash with chard & eggs & bacon
• Thursday: Meat with CSA veggie
• Friday: Meat with CSA veggie or dine out
• Lunch: Tuna salad with cucumber, broiled lettuce with broiled tomato salad, zucchini bowl with kale, leftovers
• Extras: Pickles or veggie stock if I have enough leftover. 1 ingredient ice cream.

Shopping List & Cost Breakout

Grocery Store Key: TJ = Trader Joe’s, O = Optional if budget allows

Shopping List

Extras: Coffee ($4.99 @ TJs), Thai Lime & Chile Cashews ($6.99 @ TJs), Old Amsterdam Gouda ($7.58 @ TJs)

Total TJ: $72.42

Total For The Week: $72.42; $2.58 under budget. Yay! Back to under budget – despite the snack foods we bought this week.

Pantry/items repurposed from last week: fats, spices, CSA veggies. 

This year’s CSA is from Paisley Farm, a 25-acre operation located in Tivoli, NY. Paisley Farm grows organically and plants with the chef in mind. The 22-week CSA runs from June – October and I purchased the standard vegetable share. This share includes 8-9 vegetables and herbs per week (8-12 pounds) – enough to provide a family of three with 3-4 dinners’ worth of veg. The price equals out to $25 per week, the cost of which will be accounted for in my weekly Adventures In Budget Paleo Cooking posts.

Paisley Farm 2014 CSA Box 9

Leftover From Last Week

Carrots (non-CSA)
Cucumber
Spring garlic
Spring onions
Beets
Lettuce (2 heads, which were wasted)
Zucchini

How I Used My Share

I used half of the zucchini to make zucchini fries, which were great but need a little tweaking to be perfect.

I had a couple BAS (Big Ass Salads) with lettuce & cucumber for lunch.

I used more cucumber in a hearty salad with broccoli slaw.

I used 1 zucchini (and wasted most of 1) in a paleo lasagna.

And I plan to use the kale this week in a zoodle dish (providing I get more zucchini this week – I planned poorly and should have used the pattypan squash in the lasagna instead of the easily-zoodle-able regular zucchini. My bad.)

And that leaves tonight’s dinner, which will involve barbicoa and either a salad or some sort of massive stir-fry. Or I may just say screw it and work on my zucchini fry recipe.

My Favorite Dish From This Box

Those zucchini fries were crazy salty, but I can’t wait to tweak the recipe and share with you guys. The lasagna wasn’t half bad, either – the hubbs even ate (most) of it.

Next Week

Going into next week, I have ancient carrots, 2.5 pathetic looking heads of lettuce, 1 sad bunch of dandelion greens, a few shriveling beets, 1 lonely long zucchini, 3 huge pattypan squash, 5 cucumbers, 2 heads of kale, 2 spring onions, 2 heads of garlic and 3 leeks. Hopefully I can knock at least some of that out with dinner tonight, otherwise I’m not sure how I’m going to jam this week’s CSA bounty in my fridge.