The food blog is no more. Ah well.
Honestly? I’m not sorry to see it go.
As a tool for reining in our family budget, and showing us how much more we were spending than we needed to, it’s been fantastic. We learned a lot about our shopping and eating habits, and we adjusted accordingly. Our finances are in way better shape now than they were at the beginning of this experiment. For those of you who didn’t follow along over there, the idea was to spend no more than $50 a week per adult on food, while still eating well (which for our family means fresh, organic, and local). That includes groceries, meals out, snacks, etc. Everything you eat. We were allotted $125 a week: $50 each for me and Billy, and $25 for the kiddo.
That actually sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it? It didn’t when we started the blog, but a few weeks in, when we’d made the necessary adjustments, it became clear that that is ample money to feed a family of three very well. Which was part of the problem with the blog. It was a very reasonable goal to work toward, but it didn’t exactly create blog magic, did it? Low bar. I have no problem with that. I wouldn’t feed my family on much less than that a week. But the blog got to be a drag after a while. How many interesting posts can you pull out of your ass, when you’ve committed to two posts a week and they’re all a variation on: “Yep, we stuck to the budget” or “Whoops. We shouldn’t have ordered that Thai food”? You know?
I learned all there was to learn from the project in the early weeks, which is:
Cook almost all our meals at home.
Plan meals so we’re only buying what we actually need at the store.
Grow or make as much as possible, within reason. (For us that meant growing 90% of our vegetables year round, baking 90% of our bread and baked goods, and canning all of our jam. None of this is that hard, because you don’t do everything all at once.)
Once I figured that out, there wasn’t that much left to say. That’s not why the blog died, though. The blog died the way nearly all blogs die. My co-bloggers stopped posting. I’m not sure why. And when they stopped posting, it made me not want to be the only jackass still doing the work. You know? After a couple weeks, I “prompted” Adam, as he put it, to post some kind of explanation.
Like I said, ah well.
For those of you who followed me over there from here, thank you for reading. And if you enjoyed what we were doing over there, I’m sorry for the abrupt end. The good news, for those who read $50 a Week, and those who did not, is that now I won’t be spreading my blog fodder quite so thin. And I get to post about gardening, baking, cooking, etc without having to talk about money. Because, really…do you care how much I spend on groceries?
We’re sticking to the budget, still, because it’s good for us. But I won’t be blogging that number anymore. And you know what? That’s a relief.
C’est la geurre. It was interesting to read–but maybe more so when you were harvesting vegetables? I think maybe your posts from both blogs have run together in my memory.
I’m always happy to see a post from you on any topic.
That’s funny, I was just thinking our food budget is about 125 a week for the family. Then I couldn’t decide if that was too much money or pretty reasonable considering the food we buy. Actual food like fruits and vegetables. Not eating out definitely saves the budget. I just need to get better about not eating lunch out when I’m at work. Forethought is sometimes a lot of work.
This just occurred to me this morning, sorry I didn’t ask sooner when you were looking for blog fodder (or, I’m sorry if this was covered in the other blog).
Question (because I live in the land of low-risk always be prepared disaster-mongers): if you needed to survive for 3 months on stock at hand, could you do it?
This is one of the hard ones for me – yes, grow your own, buy what you need and make most stuff from scratch but I can’t (and don’t want to) lay in a supply of stored goods. (Well, except maybe coffee.) (And Chocolate.)
One of the guys from work handed me an entire year plan of stocking up and rotating through dried goods. (That could make sense – but the shelf life of good organic unpreserved flour is not a year. And I don’t want to eat the other stuff if I don’t have to. I don’t want to stock something I don’t want to eat regularly.)
Any thoughts?
p.s. I totally thought I blew the food budget yesterday, then I remembered there was holiday gift/baking in there. Whew.
Will miss the food blog (really liked some of the adventures!) but totally understand that when it feels like work it’s no longer fun. I’m baking all our bread now, have made tons of jam from freebie fruit from the neighbors, and just planted more spinach (’cause I love it). No real budget, but definitely more consciousness. Looking forward to seeing you here more.
I, too, enjoyed the food blog. But I’ll be happy to see those food posts over here! You learned some lessons, probably helped some readers learn a bit… and now the experiment is dead. Oh well!
Keep up the great writing and food adventures! (Oh, and knitting too!)
Well, I did enjoy that blog, but more for the stories and the strategies than for the numbers game. If it counts for anything, reading that got me into baking bread again after a long absence.
Which I’m not honestly sure has been such a good thing, since I’ve gained some weight from having great bread around, and now everyone I know expects me to bring them bread….
But I’ll be happy to read about the cooking/gardening stuff here again.
I’m dying to know how the yogurt turned out — was hoping you’d say something here or in FB, but can’t find it.
And my latest kick (another back-to-the-’70s-or-early-’80s “fad” reborn) is sprouts. Having a BALL with them, eating them like they’re going out of style, feeling super-healthy for it, and feeding them to Mr. Jefferies as well.
I’m just happy that you blog here. I enjoy reading your blog posts.
Hi Cari
Another message from all the way downunder. Thank you for your post about bagels – evocative floury photos and a supremely satisfying recipe. I like the make and do! Glad you’re still blogging. I feel we nearly lost you for a while there.
Jacqui Downunder
I was not a regular reader of the food blog but I enjoyed the handful of times I looked at it.
I’m a regular reader here, though, and I enjoy the cooking and gardening posts, in addition to all the rest.
Well…keep the gardening and cooking (and knitting and whatever) posts coming over here. I enjoy hearing from you.