Food shopping since deciding to be eco-frugal

We had almost eaten everything in the house, and I was starting to eye the canned fruit salad that has now been in at least three cupboards, so I had to go food shopping.  In a perfect world I would be surrounded by local farmers' markets and be able to buy absolutely everything within five miles, organically and fresh. In a perfect world.  In this world, I shop at Wegman's.  Wegman's is a regional grocery store that actually has some good reputation as a place to work and as a philanthropic organization.  A few years ago there was a major protest at how Wegman's egg suppliers treated their chickens.  I don't buy their house brand and never will, but I can't find any recent protests about cruelty issues.  I am eventually going to look into discount warehouse shopping and a store a friend has told me about that sells organic and natural surplus foods and recently outdated foods at a deep discount.  But today, I needed to go to Wegman's.

Most people who are not Wegman's shoppers claim they can't shop there because it is too expensive.  And yes, their pre-prepared foods are pricy, but I wasn't going to be hitting their gourmet bakery or take home dinners sections.  I had a list that I needed to stick too primarily, and a willingness to bargain shop.

First of all, as I have mentioned, I primarily purchase organic foods.  I find that I just feel better about not having pesticides, herbicides, antibiotics or growth hormones as part of my food.  Granted I do eat out sometimes and that is rarely organic, and not even everything we purchase is always organic.  In fact the colas we buy never are.  And yes, I know cola is bad, that's a topic for another day.  So while I prefer organic options, I have to save money. So it was time to make choices.

All the fresh vegetables I bought, except for the jicama I want to try, were organic.  My soy milk was house brand, but organic. All pasta except the egg noodles for noodle kugel were organic. All the beans for spicy bean soup, organic.  Basically anything we consume very regularly was organic.  I did purchase Kashi cereal, which is not organic, but my rice cereal and oatmeal are and I have quite a lot of them.  Treat items, like cola, ice cream and french fries were all house brand.  I did go to a non-organic house brand loaf of bread.  I couldn't spend the extra three dollars for a smaller loaf of organic right now.  I am hoping to relearn how to make bread at home which will make that a non-issue as I have quite a lot of organic whole wheat flour looking to be used.

In the end I filled a medium sized shopping cart and spent about $120.00.  Had I not compromised, it could have easily been much closer to $200.00.  Of course the hubby complained that I didn't get much "snacky snacks" for him, but he's going to have to adjust as well.  I got a lot of food to make meals that will last and feed us several times.  If only I had been able to get coupons to use as well...Maybe next time.