Heather — I am excited to hear you are ready for some fam­ily wide changes. What a great way to raise the next gen­er­a­tion so they dont think twice about the choice between a pop tart or a banana when they are adults. The old man will come around even­tu­ally. That, I am sure of.

The gro­cery bill ques­tion is one that we get a lot from par­ents and a valid one to ask. Yes, organic pro­duce, nuts, and nat­u­rally raised ani­mals are, to vary­ing degrees, more expen­sive. I have found that answer­ing this con­cern is best done with a few ques­tions to ponder.

How much do you cur­rently spend on breads and grain based prod­ucts per month or week? Remem­ber this includes not just bread, but cereal, muffins, bagels, pan­cake mix, flour, etc.

How much do you spend on soft drinks?

How much do you spend on milk, or milk based dairy prod­ucts? Yogurt, cheese, etc.

Lastly, how much do you spend on any­thing that isn’t edi­ble in its orig­i­nal form? The processed and boxed stuff.

Take a long hard look at these items and con­sider them earnestly. Also take some com­fort in that you are not the first to won­der how it can be done on a bud­get. This is the same con­ver­sa­tion my wife and I had in the begin­ning, and it was some­what heated because I was so gung ho. We quickly real­ized how much we were spend­ing on just milk and bread per week because our gro­cery bills were bal­anc­ing out much dif­fer­ently than we expected after we started.

It is impor­tant to note that we didn’t go organic and grass fed overnight. This was a process that started by sim­ply not buy­ing any­more processed foods while burn­ing up what we had on hand in the pantry and frig. We spent hard earned money on the other “stuff” and couldn’t afford to waste it. We also didnt buy much organic in the early days.

On the sec­ond or third week of con­vert­ing our lifestyle (don’t remem­ber exactly) we finally gut­ted the pantry and frig with­out con­cern for throw­ing money away. We were so con­vinced of what we were doing that we donated any­thing canned or unopened to fam­ily and threw the rest away. This was exhil­a­rat­ing and eye open­ing as it showed us how much junk we actu­ally had on hand. When we were done our pantry looked like old mother Hubbard’s cup­board. The only thing that was miss­ing was a cute lit­tle spi­der web in the cor­ner for effect. If you ever go on the same quest, even if only to rid your house of the evils called corn and soy, you are going to be shocked.

Now the pantry, frig, and over-sized fruit tray on our bar is full of good stuff that you don’t have to think about or read the label of before you eat it. As you can see by the vol­ume of nuts, we eat a lot.

All of that being said, we spend just a lit­tle bit more than we did before believe it or not. Besides not buy­ing the other foods, we don’t eat out nearly as much as we used to either. The econ­omy played a role in that but it was more about qual­ity than cost for us. The one place we do feel okay eat­ing at runs us about $45.00 for a fam­ily of four to eat lunch or din­ner. You can make a lot of good food at home for fifty bucks so we only splurge once in a while.

Best of luck and let me know if we can help. I will keep prod­ding Mr. Grumpy about his Moun­tain Dew and peanut but­ter crack­ers addiction.…

Bert — That depends on where you are get­ting it from. Sounds like a con­ven­tional gro­cery so I would err on the side of cau­tion and buy less until you get a feel for how long their stuff lasts. Pineap­ples are funny bug­gers to begin with. A pineap­ple around here only lasts a few hours once it cut. The ques­tion is how to know when its ripe. With pineap­ples I go by smell. If I can smell it, its ready to eat.

The pro­duce at the farm­ers mar­ket stays fresh much longer than the stuff from the gro­cery store. At least in our area it does. It is a bet­ter value all around in my opin­ion because it costs less too. Check these two out. http://www.jessicasorganicfarm.com or http://www.detwilersfarmmarket.com. They are local to your area.