Monday, October 22, 2007

A Week's Worth

Wow. Okay. When I was trying to decide whether or not to start this blog, one of my concerns was that I wouldn't have anything good to talk about. (I know you're laughing about that, Sleek). Anyway, a few months ago Time magazine did a feature titled, "What the World Eats". It was quite interesting to get a peek into the kitchens (well, some didn't actually have kitchens) of people all over the world. One thing that surprised me most of all was how much some of these people spent on a week's worth of food. I almost fell out of my chair when I saw the food that the U.S. family chose to eat. I don't know why. I guess that is what people mean when they say "Standard American Diet". Plus, the amount they spent was just insane. How do people afford that? I try really hard to stick to a $100/week grocery budget. Some weeks I may not even spend that much, but of course other weeks I'll go over a little.

I thought it would be fun to take a picture of my week's worth of food and compare it to the families featured in "What the World Eats." It looks like we eat an insane amount of cheese, but my daughter insisted buying some Muenster cheese and my son just had to have string cheese. (And of course we're not going to eat that massive bag of dried chickpeas and the big bag of potatoes this week!)

6 comments:

SleekPelt said...

We can mark a box of Zatarain's off the list! Mmmm.

carrie said...

This is very interesting. I do my meal planning and grocery shopping on Saturday. I think I'll put my "weeks worth" up on .

I was shocked at the amount of money some of these people spend. Like you, we attempt to keep our weekly grocery bill at around $100. Sometimes it's under, sometimes slightly over, but it all equals out in the end to be about $100 per week.

By the way, I don't think it looks like you eat too much cheese. My kids LOVE cheese, and we have about that much each week. We are cutting back in an attempt to get closer to a vegan diet, but my kids aren't going to let go of the cheese. I've tried soy cheese and they want no part of it, so we are now attempting to buy rennet free when we can.

I love your blog, keep it up.

carrie said...

Sorry about the huge hyperlink, I meant to hyperlink to my blog and put the tag to end the hyperlink at the end of my blog name (which somehow didn't even show up here), but I screwed it up and put it at the end of the whole thing.....silly me. I guess that's what I get for not proof-reading and previewing my post.

Susan Chipley said...

carrie: Welcome! Your blog looks great too. I'll definitely be checking it out more later. As for previewing your post...Do people actually do that? :)

carrie said...

Dalai Mama -

I love your blog too, and I've been checking it daily since you posted it on MDC....someone out here's reading, so keep posting!!

BTW, I have a good friend in Morgantown, she's vegetarian, and as far as I know always has been. I sent her a link to your blog and she liked it a lot.....especially this post.

Susan Chipley said...

carrie: Sweet! That's so cool about your friend here in Mo-town!