100 Mile Monday

So last week I said that I would try to get down to $40 at the farmer's market. Well I didn't. I went to the market at 8am the day after a snowrricane (that's right a snow hurricane- that's what NY1 called it and so am I). I went by myself as the kids slept with the Hubby. It was kind of sad not having Joe there to pick out a new "adventure veggie-table", but it was a faster trip for sure.

I brought $60.00 with me, because I wanted to be on the safe side especially since we needed proteins. I know the meat delivery is coming this week sometimes, but I'm not sure when so I wanted to be prepared with options. I sat down on friday night and made a list of things I wanted to cook for the week, and then made a shopping list for those items. This was really helpful in terms of getting in and out of the market, but because of budgeting I still had to walk through the market about 4 times!

Here is what I bought:

6 carrots- these carrots were about as thick as my forearm and each about 9 inches long, there were no purple carrots or tie-dye carrots in the rainbow bin this week so we had to make due with plain old orange.

onions- we use a lot of onions and garlic in this house. Garlic is not in season so I've been buying it from the green grocer. I need to figure out something for garlic....but onions were in abundance.

rutabagas- they were AMAZING last week, so I bought some more. I want to do more research into them, they seem to be like potatoes in the ways you can cook them, though they are sweeter. Joe liked them raw.

Potatoes- I bought bakers this week.

Jerusalem artichokes- these were my "Adventure Veggie-table". I saw a guy last week get two huge bags of these and was intrigued. Apparently (from my tiny google search) these are part of the sunflower family and native to the Eastern US. They are a carb but they break down into fructose not starch- and the inulin they produce is not digested well by some leading to gastric pain and flatulence. That last part is why I only bought a few.....

A chicken- a whole chicken. The chickens were about $4.50 a lb. I bought a 4ish lb one. I am hoping it will make two meals.

BACON!- $8.50 worth of bacon. Looking at it made me very excited for bacon, tomato sandwiches...I got home to realize I forgot to buy both bread and tomatoes....

Flounder- more than I wanted to buy in all honesty, but when I bought it at the grocery store I cheaped out and bought too little. It's Lent and there is only so much canned tuna on fridays that I can stand....

Wine- I can't help it. We liked the wine I bought last week, and mama needs a drink with dinner more often than not.

So I spent $58 on food this week at the market. The big ticket items were the chicken and the flounder both topping out over 10 bucks. The bacon, wine and veggies were all about the same. AND the wine was the cheapest...