One week, one Benny.
Part One of a (pointless?)(valuable?) experiment.
Butter looks a little different this week, and it’s coming at you in two parts: this one is probably best titled, “Can I feed a family of four for $100 a week?,” and the second one will be called either “Yes.” or “Hard no.” as appropriate.
Inflation has received plenty of media coverage lately, so I’m not going to add to the discussion (although we did cover a grocery costs a bit here). “Things are really expensive right now!” feels sufficient; the statistic from this newsletter that the average American household is currently spending $500 more per month than they were a year ago resonates. Inflation is unsurprisingly a frequent topic of conversation amongst friends and colleagues, and the general sentiment - also unsurprisingly - seems to be, “I want to spend less.” And someone asked me, recently, if I thought I could cut my weekly grocery bill down to $100.
Can I? Can you?
Let’s find out.
Grocery-budget challenges are not new, and I know that what I’m doing is not even remotely unique; Google “$200 meal plan” or “$150 per week groceries” or any other similar thing and you’ll be treated to (subjected to?) thousands of returns. But, I’m doing it anyway: I’m attempting to cover meals for four people, for an entire week, for $100. A single Benny. (A Benny, here, being a Benjamin Franklin - not, as I fear the subject of this email may have led you to believe, either an Eggs Benedict or a benzedrine.) And I’ll share the results, with a bunch of mini-recipes and cost-similar substitutions, in a second edition on Sunday.
Here are the notes and disclaimers and things you need to know:
Yes, white platform Crocs are cool.
Yes, I got everything from Trader Joe’s, and yes, this makes me feel quite a bit like a shill for TJ’s. Most of my groceries come from Costco, Whole Foods, and Trader Joe’s, and it’s probably a pretty even dollar split across the three outlets. But the truth is that I don’t think I could do $100/wk at either one of the other two stores - or successfully divide $100 amongst two or three stores - without a lot of planning and limitation.
I have a well-stocked kitchen and pantry (privilege, gratitude), and while I managed to spend about $100 on all of this, I can’t turn it into meals without the use of things I already have: oils and butter, salt, garlic, vinegar/lemons, spices, condiments, that sort of thing. Here’s the thing: this challenge is not dogma. I spend a lot on groceries - it ranges from $250-$350 a week (again: privilege, gratitude) - so if I can get anywhere close to $100, this is a huge victory and a successful effort. What’s more: I expect to use 100% of what I purchased this week, whereas I’ll only use minimal (sometimes inconsequential?) amounts of the things I already own; the precise dollar value of two cloves of garlic or a tablespoon of butter feels like nitpicking, and I don’t have the energy or the desire to nitpick myself.
The exact total for everything you see above was $104.32, which is (obviously) more than a hundred bucks, BUT, I give myself this pass: I am attempting to make meals for four for a hundred dollars, which does not include the fruit that makes up the bulk of my kids’ snacks. Of that $104.32, exactly $19.99 was fruit for them - bananas, 4 pounds of strawberries, a watermelon, and a bag of frozen cherries for hot days. So that means that technically I only spent $84.33 on meal items, which hopefully means that you’ll take that extra $15.67 and call it a good cover for the olive oil and hot sauce and maybe a few eggs that I’ll be digging out of my pantry throughout the week?
“Four people for a week” is a little broad, so here are some clarifications: one of those four is a picky two-year-old, whose eating habits and volumetric performances are completely unpredictable; two of those four are kids (the toddler and his older sister), so portion sizes are far from consistent amongst all four participants; my husband and I don’t really eat breakfast; my daughter’s summer camp provides her with lunch.
I have absolutely no plan for the items pictured above; I grabbed family-favorites, a few things I’ve never tried before in an effort to spur some creativity, tried to go for variety, kept a vague mental tally of the cost of my cart, and $104 later, here we are.
The list of what I bought, forgetting the aforementioned fruit, is as follows: some cubed chuck, a sack of frozen tots (???), a bag of jasmine rice, some sliced cheese, roasted (frozen) corn (which feels like sacrilege mid-summer, I admit), Hawaiian rolls, organic black beans, a Thai green curry sauce (never tried before), half of a kosher turkey breast, persian cukes, organic gluten-free lentil and rice spaghetti (I have no idea what I was thinking there), ten sweet potatoes, a pack of corn and wheat tortillas (also new to me), a sack of organic kale, a bag of frozen oatmeal bites for my kids’ breakfasts, organic broccoli and cauliflower, a bag of purple potatoes (also organic), salsa verde, spicy pasta sauce (again, new to me), and three zucchini that happened from a local farm (thanks for supporting, TJ’s!).
I haven’t yet told my husband about this (or, more importantly, about the implied lack of restaurants and takeout this week) so this thing could dead in the water. You just never know.
If you have meal ideas: send them to me! (Please.) Everyone else: talk Sunday. xo.