10 Days of my Paleo Grocery Budget

People ask all the time about how expensive eating Paleo is, so I thought I would take a look at one of my normal re-stocking trips and evaluate my grocery budget for you guys to see. Just in case you’re curious. Because I know that I am totally nosy about stuff like this, haha.

So really I should have planned this out “perfectly” to show you a more typical 7 day grocery budget window. But the thing is that I don’t really shop weekly. I live an hour away from the nearest town, so I try to grocery shop as few times per month as I can to save on gas AND time. What I’m showing you here is what I bought to get through the ten days until the end of the month.

Paleo Grocery Budget

How can I afford to shop so infrequently? Here are some of the ways that I make our purchases and grocery budget last longer:

  • We eat in order of what will perish first! So things like berries, tomatoes, avocados, salads & fresh herbs are eaten first, whereas apples, citrus and root vegetables & squashes will see us through towards the end.
  • I supplement our fresh fruits and vegetables with bulk purchases of organic versions. That way I’m never without a meal ingredient or side even if I’m all out of the non-frozen versions.
  • I bulk cook things like soups and stews using fresh ingredients, then freeze single portions for later on in the month – or just to keep adding to our Winter food stash like I’m doing now. Because we sometimes get snowed in!
  • I vacuum pack meat into 2 person portions, using our Food Saver, when we get home from a grocery trip. That way I only need to defrost what I need rather than have it go bad in the fridge waiting to be eaten.

10 Days of my Paleo Grocery Budget

Pictured:

Pantry

Fruit

  • 5lb Clementines
  • 5 Avocados
  • 1 Pineapple
  • 5lb Apples
  • Bunch Bananas
  • 3 Grapefruit
  • 2lb Tomatoes on the vine
  • 2lb Strawberries
  • 3 Lemons
  • 2 Limes

Vegetables / Salad

  • 8lbs White Sweet Potatoes
  • 1 Spaghetti Squash
  • 1 box Arugula
  • 1 box Baby Kale
  • 3 Leeks
  • 3 White Onions
  • 1 Red Onion
  • 4 Zucchini
  • 1 Jicama
  • 1.5lb Turnips
  • 4 Poblano Peppers
  • 6 little (hot) Yellow Peppers
  • 2 Plantains
  • 2lb Carrots
  • 1lb Parsnips
  • Bunch Green Onions
  • Bunch of Mint
  • Bunch of Thyme

Not Pictured:

Frozen

  • 2.5lb Wild Caught Cod Fillets
  • 2lb Ground Pork
  • 3lb Grass Fed Chuck Roast
  • 2lb Grass Fed Ground Beef
  • 4lb Green Beans
  • Bag of Frozen Spinach

Fridge

  • Block of grass fed cheddar (actually, that is in the picture! Will last longer than the week.)
  • 1lb grass fed butter (Will last longer than the week.)
  • 18 eggs

Total spent: $194

Using these figures, we will spend under $600 / month on food. Obviously, how we spend the money shifts the bias of our grocery budget a little each time. This trip my grocery budget did not have to accommodate stocking up on any dry goods or flours, for instance, but we did have to purchase meat. Whereas next month we will be spending several hundred dollars on a large meat order for our chest freezer which should see us through until late spring! I’m also buying and making a little more food than normal, like I said earlier, to store meals away in the freezer for in case we get snowed in come winter. Because when you can’t leave your house for a week or so, you want to make sure you have food in the freezer! On average, though, I think this figure reflects what we spend.

Do you have a strict grocery budget or does yours fluctuate according to what you need?

9 comments

  1. $600 a month for a family of 2??? That seems really high to me! I have to feed a family of 6. I could not afford to feed my family at that rate.

    1. Actually, your comment raises a good point: it’s all about perspective. This is an older post and back then, $3.50 / meal was cheap to me because prior to going Paleo, I spent an insane amount of money (way more than I could really afford) eating out or buying “convenience” foods that were actually really expensive. I’m glad you commented because it’s given me the idea to create a new post about what our food budgeting looks like now and how differently we eat: it would be interesting to do a comparison of then and now 🙂

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