I spent a good portion of yesterday crunching numbers on my food budget and I've determined I spend around $700 a month, give or take a case of wine.
We eat around 80 percent organic on produce and about 50 percent organic on staples. We eat 100 percent conventional meat, aside from my chickens. There is no way that I can afford to feed Greg organic meat. I can't see that happening AT ALL.
I am cracking up that the Paleolithic Diet is all the rage right now. Greg has been eating like a caveman since he was born. Fifteen years ago, I made my friend Laurie's spinach tortellini soup. It was delightful. It had beans and spinach in it. Then I made bread and a salad to go with it. Greg walked in, looked in the soup, and immediately walked outside and threw four chicken breasts on the grill.
"What are you going to do, Michele? Starve me? I need some goddamn meat. Do I look like I eat SOUP for dinner?"
My only hope to change over to organic meat would be to buy an entire cow and a pig and get a giant freezer.
So help me pitch this one to Greg.
"Hey, Greg. You know how if the kids leave on a single light in the house, you freak out and start bellowing like a scary man? I was thinking about buying a freezer so I can run electricity to it 24/7, even in the middle of summer when it's 115 out. I'm going to use it to store meat that costs 4 times more than the meat we buy now. Is that cool?"
That should work, right?
12 comments:
Yeah, good luck with THAT one.
Although I would be interested to compare the KW cost of a half-freezer in the garage against the savings on a half a cow, or a whole one. We used to do that when I was very little (only the cows came from relatives, they were definitely not organic, and we only paid slaughter costs) and my dad was the ultimate cheap-skate, so I have to think it's pretty cost-effective.
The paleo diet cracks me up. (A) We know nothing about lifespans back then; (B) Almost all of them say not to eat the terrible, sweet fruits but there were edible fruits milleniums before edible vegetables were bred; (C) Probably our earliest forms of protein were fish and BUGS; and (D) we clearly evolved to be omnivores. You know, a species that can derive its necessary nutrients from everything.
I ALSO love how the paleo diet blames everything on starchy foods, and not on the 8 gazillion chemicals we're using to grow that stuff.
We have a giant freezer. We butchered 2 of our pigs. (They filled our freezer up! I've heard a whole cow won't even fit in one freezer. We are buying a 1/2 of a cow as soon as our freezer empties a little. Anyways, my point is, that there really isn't a big difference in our power bill with the giant freezer. And ours is in a room with no heat/AC...we live in NC, so summers get pretty hot/humid.
My husband is like Greg...he believes there should always be a dead animal at a meal.
Wendy
(sorry I didn't sign in....I am boycotting google)
We have a freezer and buy half a beef at a time. We don't buy organic, but it only costs about $1000 for the half and will last us about a year and we get high quality beef. The stuff you buy in a grocery store honestly cannont compare.
I really want to raise my own pig and cows, but my husband won't let me. And he's even a farmer and I live in the middle of nowhere. It would work perfectly.
Sound like my dear husband's reaction when I had audacity to suggest introducing a plant-based diet (as in "Forks over Knives"). He wouldn't even DISCUSS it, but instead sped off to his PC to google "SCAM, FOK, "China Study," Esselstyn, etc.). So much for a civilized pro/con debate!
We bought a half a beef last fall and paid $600. It worked out to be $2 a pound. We also got to custom order the cuts. It's wonderful meat. Chest freezers are very economical to run so I say go for it.
Cavemen died in their 40's. Why would that be something anyone would want to emulate?
We're a vegetarian house so this hasn't come up. I'm sure we save tons not buying meat.
Vegetarians have higher depression rates and they are not "feeding" their brains essential amino acids and animal fat that our body's throughout evolution have to have in order to survive. I find it humorous when my vegan friends have higher fat % than most do, they are also thicker in the middle from all the grains they eat to make up for the protein they lack. There is something to be said for eating meat. Cavemen may have died at 40 but they had strong health bones, larger frames and completely HEALTHY teeth with NO FLUORIDE. Most scientist feel (used loosely) that these men died from some sort of infection, broken bones, or famine. Makes sense to me.
If you take a drive up here, you can probably get your meat a lot cheaper. I've found organic, grass fed beef and pork for $3.50/lb hanging weight. Have a little vacay and get some meat. You might also find good prices in St. George which is closer.
I wrote it on FB, but I'll write it again, I use my freezer to also store all the excess produce from my organic garden in the summer (whatever I don't can). I make freezer meals like stuffed peppers, etc. when I have organic peppers coming out of my ears, and they're FREE. I also freeze corn, zucchini, berries, sliced peppers and more. I'm basically stocking up for the year. Check the costs of the chest freezers instead of the upright. They are more efficient and lose less cold air when you open them because cold air sinks. Look for one with dividers and baskets so you don't lose anything that is more than 2 layers deep. Frigidaire and maybe Kenmore make those.
I took that class about the natural leavening and how it pre-digests the grains so they are more nutritionally available to our bodies. It was really interesting. I've been using my natural leavener and having great success with quick breads. I'm still working on my yeast breads not being dense. It explains why grains have become so toxic to us because we are preparing them different than we did for the first thousands of years.
oh my, our chest freezer had to work reeeeally hard during the summer in our garage in Vegas!!! It had a hard time! Not sure if it really contributed to our bill since we didn't have years of data to look at.
My man is super meat eater too. One of the first meals I made after getting married was spagetti w/o meat in the sauce. Erik was all, "um, honey....I like meat with dinner" I was all "you're weird!" haha! But oh yeah, NO ONE here eats soup and it drives me insane!!! I'm not a huge soup gal, but here and there it's yummy. They won't touch it.
you're not alone!!!
Emily
Try this--
You know all those hormones they use on factory farms ? I read that they cause male pattern baldness. Haven't you noticed a lot more men losing their hair earlier than there used to be when we were kids?
That's why we need to eat organic.
I haven't actually read this but i wish someone would fund this study. I'm sure it's true. And even if it isn't, just the urban myth would force factory farms to drop the hormones if it meant men became afraid of meat.
Or DUH, you could send his ass up here to poach a Moose, and he'd have all the damn meat he needed for the YEAR. :)
Well, maybe they'd need to poach TWO moose, cause I'm hungry.
My husband would eat meat for the main course and fish for the side meal and think that the fish was a vegetable.
BUUUUUUUT. We don't eat beef. It's grody.
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