OK! I'm back out to sea and have some time to post the results from our first month. Here they are!
Groceries:
$750!Dining out: $250 (
BOO! HISS!!)
Apples: $330 (
WHAT?!)
Total: $1330Groceries: Fing (pr. effing, as in short for fucking) awesome. So stoked about this as it is a savings of $500/month!
Dining out:We did awesome until my parents came for a visit. As in $0 for the first 25 days of the month, then $50/day on average for the days they visited. :/ The big money came when we all went out to eat and we dropped $55/person on an amazing evening. It gave me a little heartburn to spend the money, but, not too much as the experience was awesome. We started the night having fresh river oysters on a deck over looking the bay listening to live music and enjoying a drink. That was followed by a nice walk by the water, then a four course meal at a five star restaurant in our town that specializes in fresh, local, organic, and housemade fare (so good!). We ended the night watching Phoenix (a
great movie). So, we dumped some dough for sure... buuuut, made some awesome memories. :)
Apples: You may be wondering wtf, mate? Well, we went to a u-pick and picked 220 lbs of organic Macs! They normally go for $1.79/lb. We got ours for a $1.50, which is a great deal for Maine. This is a big tradition for us every year. We make applesauce and apple scrap vinegar. Tons of it. We made 13 gallons of applesauce and are estimating we will make 10 gallons of vinegar. We're going to try to sell 8 of the gallons of vinegar at $40/gallon (Bragg's goes for $50/gallon). By making $320 on the vinegar, that will bring the cost of the applesauce down to a paltry $.76/gallon! :)
That's it.
I am stoked. Taking the apples and annualizing the cost (even without selling the vinegar) brings our grocery bill for food this month down to $777!
Which is a 48% reduction!!! WOOHOO!! Even with adding our nightmare dining out costs ($1027), we still come in WAY below our previous average. How'd we do it? We followed the GGP that I posted earlier. It worked like a charm, too.
Some highlights from September:
- Bought 3 butternut, 2 acorn squash at $1.29/squash, picked 8 volunteer Delcottas from our compost pile, and was gifted an enormous blue Hubbard. Baked and froze 4 of them for easy sides for my wife.
- Was gifted 3 gallons of canned tomatoes, 2 gallons of pickles, and 2 gallons of beans from my wife's parent's. They are two completely awesome old Mainers.
- Made a gallon of homemade ruby red sauerkraut from 2 $1.79 red cabbages. :)
- Made drop biscuits 100% from our pantry. Froze two family servings of them.
- Made a gallon of chicken broth from chicken leftovers and froze it.
Some non-food wins:
- Sold $135 worth of quarter sawn red oak at $3/bf that I had sawn for $.70/bf.
- Sold a dining room table we inherited for $475. With that and some creative reusing of materials, we were able to redo our 9'6" x 10' master bedroom for a cost of $150! The work even included redesigning and repairing the bed I broke in half due to being drunk on hard cider. :p
Short story long, it was an awesome month! Super stoked.