One Week’s Food: Our Version
Posted on January 14, 2008 by Melissa
Filed Under Food, Groceries
Last November, Eric wrote about an interesting photo essay by Time magazine called “What the World Eats”. We were so inspired by those photos that Eric and I set out to create our own photo. If you haven’t seen this series of photos yet, make sure to check it out. It’s truly fascinating (and sometimes humbling) to see what families around the world eat in a week.
Here is my family’s photo:
If you mouse over the food items, you should get a popup that tells you what the item is. This food is what we are actually going to eat this week. We tried very hard to make it as accurate as possible; even including condiments and cooking oil. But, instead of showing the actual amounts and varieties of spices we used three bottles to represent all the spices. I also didn’t have a small enough bottle of canola oil so I substituted a bottle of almond oil in the photo.
So, what’s on the menu? This week, Eric is attending an intense class to prepare for his big certification. This means he will be gone until late in the evening every night. I wanted to make dishes that would reheat well for lunches and late dinners. I also wanted to make some of Eric’s favorites so he has something comforting to look forward to during the tough days ahead.
The menu:
| Sunday | Roasted Chicken Legs w/ Veggie Medley |
| Monday | Chicken Tomatillo Enchiladas w/ Black Beans & Yellow Rice |
| Tuesday | Chicken Divan w/ Rice |
| Wednesday | King Ranch Chicken |
| Thursday | Pork Adobo w/ Baked Sweet Potatoes |
| Friday | Leftovers |
| Saturday | Leftovers or Turkey & Cheese Sandwiches |
Breakfasts will be cereal for me and granola bars for Eric. For lunch, Eric gets leftovers from the night before (or a turkey & cheese sandwich) with a fresh salad and nuts and I’ll have soup, sandwich, or a Hot Pocket (they were on sale). Dessert will be peppermint ice cream. This is the only time of year they have this flavor and we both love it!
Actual cost of the items we bought from the store: $67.25
Estimated cost of additional ingredients from home: $9.15
Total expenditure for one week’s food: $76.40
That is right on target for getting my food budget back on track. Our monthly budget for groceries is $350 but I try to aim for $75 a week. It feels good to be budgeting again!
One of the USA’s families spent $350 a week for food! Granted, they had two teenage sons but wow! Judging by the brand name and fast foods I see in their photo I have to assume they weren’t eating on a tight budget.
I would love to see other frugal-minded people do the same sort of “what the world eats” photo. Lots of American families eat really well on a budget. What would your photo look like for a week’s worth of food? Consider doing your own version and sharing it with us!
If you create your own version please trackback, pingback or send me an email - I’d love to link to it.
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I saw a website the other day that showed what the average family of 4 ate in 1952. In their grocery budget was about 1/4 of their monthly income, in today’s dollars about $625 a month!
I’m not sure if I remember how many children you have? We spend about like you, $75-ish a week (for a family of four.)
Excellent post. Thanks for the insight. I love the photo essays on this topic. I am stunned by what some of the family’s consider food.
Melissa,
I remember Eric’s article well — as a family we looked at the entire photo essay together and discussed it. I’m inspired by your photo and essay and I would love to do the same though at this point I’m doing well to have anything in the house to throw together for dinner. Planning out a whole week’s worth of meals and shopping ahead will be a serious challenge.
I’m going to enlist my son. He’s quite into cooking, loves the cookbook he got for Christmas, and this would be a great homeschool project for the two of us. I’ll let you know when our “food for the week” project is done.
I’ll check out that photo essay, but I know we could never make it through the week on what you have in your photo - there wasn’t any peanut butter! LOL - my 12 year old would never make it!
This is a cool idea, so I need to plan a week’s worth of menus and line up all the ingredients. i think my daughter would enjoy seeing this and would be enlightened by it. We would definitely need the peanut butter, though - and at least 2 gallons of skim milk.
check out the beautiful book Hungry Planet. Same idea.
http://www.menzelphoto.com/hungryplanet/
Picture looks like you eat healthy. I’d consume it all except the Diet Twist! :-)
this is very interesting! For my family of 6, I bet the photo would be very large. I spend around $100 a week and it would certainly be a process to get everything together. I will think about it though.
I enjoyed your photo…I always love to see what other families eat. Sounds like a good week of recipes. Yes, I remember the photo essay by Time, it was what drew me to your website and ultimately subscribing to your blog. Keep up the good work.
It must be more expensive there. I am in Oregon, and for a family of 11 I spend around $450-$500 a month.
Dana
I remember that post well and I think I ended up linking to it. Great photo of your food and planned meal ideas. We have a family of four and spend about $250 on groceries each month. If I can get the motivation, I will definitely post our groceries. It is hard for me because we shop once a month so it makes showcasing it difficult ;) I do post my planners though each month to offer menu inspiration!
Thanks for sharing this!
Hi All:
What great reading! I thought it would be interesting to throw a challenge out. I would like to challenge everyone to try to feed their family on $50 per person per month. I would love to hear detailed accounts of how, when, what, where it could be done.
I have two young boys and they ALREADY eat so much that there is NO WAY I can do it right now. We spend about $600 per month for my family of 4.
That is still double what some of you spend. I don’t know how you do it!
I don’t want to make this a commercial post, but, I thought it would be useful to also mention that you can find the best deals for what you buy online if you use a site like ours http://www.mygrocerydeals.com.
Would love to hear you all.
I love that you created your own photo!
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