So how did we do on the $21 Challenge last week?

Total spend on food for one week (for a family of 6) was $39.13.

And we certainly would have made it, if I hadn’t already committed to blowing the budget with the birthday dinner.  The birthday boy chose lasagne, and a strawberry cheesecake for his candles, of which I needed to buy mince, strawberries, cream cheese, grated cheese and I ‘splurged’ on a French stick for some garlic bread – so the total spend for that spread was $23.80.  Realistically, that could have been our whole week’s purchase as we had plenty of food in the house.  The other food purchases were some fruit from the market ($5) and $10.33 for fresh milk and some yoghurt (we knew ourselves well enough to know we would buy these too).

Definitely a good exercise to understand that when you have a pantry and freezer pretty much full, and a garden with some produce, there is indeed a good supply of food that can be used up instead of buying more.