I spent $179.93 on food this week (a little over my allotment of $165.50 per week.)

I got… raw cheddar! I am so excited to try this.  I didn’t even know the regular groceries were aloud to sell it, but there this little brick was, tucked underneath the hanging bags of Kraft at H.E.B.

This whole buying your meat from a butcher (even if it is an in-store butcher) and getting to know them is totally working out for me.  At Kroger, I asked the man behind the counter about hormone free meat.  He steered me away from the Angus beef (“That’s the opposite of what you’re looking for”, he said) and towards some free range chickens.  Well, hrrmmm.  Free range isn’t free range, anymore, ya know?  Those little chicks are still debeaked and stuffed in a shed.

Well, not these chickens.  It turns out that this man is from Colorado, where the chickens come from.  He’s been to the farm where they are raised and told me that they are pastured chickens, allowed to peck at the grass and bugs.  They are not organic, however, because the chicken farmer’s pastures are not certified organic.  Well, I’ll take a pastured chicken over a chicken-shed one fed an organic chicken.  These hens are $1 per pound cheaper than the organic (but not free range) chickens I have been buying.  He also alerted me to the fact that Kroger natural beef from the butcher case is, in fact, antibiotic and hormone free and not from CAFOs.  Also not labeled organic, it is the kind of beef that is within my budget.  You have to go to the fancy Kroger to get it, though, my neighborhood Kroger doesn’t carry it.

After that I drove to the super nifty HEB, about 15 miles away, which is where I get all my nice happy bison and organic potatoes.  They had a killer deal on grass fed round steak, $6 per pound.  I wanted five pounds, but Butcherman only had three pounds left.   However, he knows me well enough to ask where all the kids are if I’m alone, and gave me two pounds of natural (hormone and antibiotic free, but grain fed) to round out the order.  Then he charged me the natural meat price – a dollar cheaper!  So I got grass fed round steaks for $5 a pound!  Whee!

A good shopping day.

I got 2.5# bison stew meat, #5 round steak, 4# eye of round roast, a bunch of link sausage (MSG free, without fillers) for husband, a quart of half and half (Promised Land), 1 doz. eggs, 2 quarts milk, 6 oz. raw cheddar cheese, 14 oz. organic non-GMO firm tofu,

2 boxes organic granola (there’s a new kind that I’m nuts over.  Har har.), 6 cans green beans, 3 cans corn, 2 bags dried cranberries, 1 pkg. dried shitakes, 3 dried Thai chiles, 20 oz. oatmeal bread, 1 box energy mate tea,

10# organic potatoes, 5# organic carrots, 1 large bunch organic collards, 4# bananas, 4# anjou pears, 2 bunches organic spinach, 9# organic apples, 16 oz. organic spring salad mix, 5# butternut squash, 1 quart grape tomatoes, some fancy butter lettuce (with roots!)

Anyway, here’s what we are eating.

Sunday, Jan. 31: Roasted chicken (free range!), cauliflower/broccoli/carrot mix, brown rice.  I’ll be seasoning the chicken with tarragon.  I went for 31 years without tarragon.  Now we’re BFFs.  So tasty!

Monday, Feb. 1:  Thai inspired chicken over rice (lettuce wraps for Atkins Man), hot and sour soup.

Tuesday, Feb. 2: Beef strips with creamy mushroom sauce, brown and red rice pilaf, (I had red rice for the first time last month and it is so good!  The texture is a cross between brown rice and wild rice, love it!), spinach.

Wednesday, Feb. 3: Bison stew with carrots, potatoes, and onions, cornbread muffins.  Husband hates cornbread (don’t know what’s wrong with that man) so they won’t tempt him.

Thursday, Feb. 4: Eye of round roast with carmelized onions and balsamic reduction (oooh, that sounds so restauranty!  Much fancier than just adding vinegar to the pan drippings a cooking up an onion in a frying pan!), that fabulous pecan-blue cheese salad that I love, brussels sprouts supreme

Friday, Feb. 5:  Sausage on a stick (we weren’t home last Saturday so we didn’t eat it yet), fried potatoes, braised red cabbage.  What can I say, we’re Slavs and Germans around here.

Saturday, Feb 6: Chicken and dumplings, collard greens, and more with the cornbread.  Mmm.  Cornbread.

Check out more menu plans over at OrgJunkie, and see more grocery cart roundups at Grocery Cart Challenge!