This blog is an attempt to document spending $30 a week on groceries for two people living in Brooklyn, NY (yes, $15 each). While we’re trying to squeeze all of our weekly home-cooked meals with that $30, we still go out to eat once in a while. New York City has too many amazing restaurants to cut ourselves off completely. It’s still unclear what we’ll do about cooking for dinner parties…
All the meals featured here are 100% vegetarian, though they will often feature eggs and dairy. We like our cookbooks, but often make some crazy concoctions with whatever we have on hand.
Also, it’s worth mentioning that our ability to find healthy groceries on the cheap is made much easier by our membership at the Park Slope Food Coop.
If you want to reach both of us, send us an email here: thirtyaweek at gmail dot com.
You can also find us on Facebook.
To find Tina elsewhere on the internet, try here:
Man in Gray
And these are for Phil:
Enclosure of the Commons
Flickr
69 Comments
October 5, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Hey, Just found you guys and love what you’re doing. Thanks for adding me to your list of blogs too! I appreciate the support and I’ll be happy to return the favor. Good luck – do you have a time frame for this project?
October 5, 2008 at 3:59 pm
Time frame is until…whenever! Considering the way the economy is going, liable for a long time.
October 15, 2008 at 3:20 pm
I just found your website and am very interested in what you are doing, however I am a bit confused on one thing, do you post what you cook for the week? I was looking at your the receipts you posted and trying to figure out what meals I would prepare and was a bit stumped, especially for breakfast as it looked like you bought mainly veggies, it would be really interesting to see what meals you make.
October 15, 2008 at 6:21 pm
Hi Karen!
I should post all of what we eat on the site. For breakfast, it’s been a lot of granola and a lot of oatmeal and apples (due to some intense apple picking). However, like you said, it would be interesting to see the meals we make. I am trying to be better about posting recipes and such, but it’s been a crazy work week. Keep checking back!
October 15, 2008 at 11:52 pm
such a great idea! are you going to be featured in the next linewaiters gazette?
you should be!
October 16, 2008 at 12:36 am
Hi Anne! Thanks for checking out the site (my cards work, wahoo!). I should do something with the Coop…maybe a workshop or the gazette. Hope your grocery shopping is going well – lasting you a month?
October 23, 2008 at 9:56 am
Very cool blog! I look forward to trying some of your recipes.
November 24, 2008 at 8:31 pm
Hey Tina, I’d love to chat with you about an interview for our show. Where is the best place to reach you?
December 27, 2008 at 7:37 pm
Tina and Phil,
Lovely Blog! I am a newish blogger myself (since September) also blogging about cooking within a limited food budget– though your budget makes my six dollars a day look positively lavish. I’m just now trying to compile a list of relevant links… would you mind if I linked to your blog? I look forward to following your posts. Keep up the good work!
December 27, 2008 at 10:41 pm
I am new to blogging and planning a party for 8 (for under $100) next week and your blog is absolutely inspiring! I will certainly be reading it in the future.
I am curious if you omit alcohol from your $30 or if you just don’t drink?
December 28, 2008 at 10:59 pm
We exclude alcohol and restaurant meals from this budget, but try to minimize costs on both those fronts too. We generally eat out no more than one meal a week and opt for drinks with friends at somebody’s home rather than going to bars.
December 29, 2008 at 12:24 am
Great blog!! Love your budgeting and ingenuity. I do the same on my blog. I cook with what is in my pantry/fridge/freezer for the bulk of the meal and then supplement with purchased items. It’s mostly vegan also.
Nancy
http://testkitchenette.wordpress.com
January 8, 2009 at 6:19 pm
Happy I discovered you!
January 17, 2009 at 12:30 pm
Happened to see that Kate had become a “fan” of this site on facebook. This is great. Nice food photos
January 20, 2009 at 11:07 pm
Excellent and timely blog. I’m transitioning to mostly vegitarian (inspired by Mark Bittman’s “Food Matters”) and I love that you’re making interesting things without spending a lot of money. Looking forward to visiting (and cooking!).
January 24, 2009 at 9:32 pm
I discovered your blog a few weeks ago and just wanted to share that it is very inspiring!!! Your practical and well thought out approach to this challenge will no doubt benefit those who find it in the future. It has certainly inspired me to take a closer look at my food budget and determine how my husband and I can make healthier choices without spending a small fortune at the checkout.
Thank you for all of your efforts and keep up the great work!
January 25, 2009 at 12:12 pm
[...] I discovered a blogger in Brooklyn, NY, who set forth on a challenge to feed 2 people for $30 a week. The purpose of the blog, $30 Bucks a [...]
January 28, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Just found your blog. I’ll be following along. Good luck!!!
January 29, 2009 at 1:57 pm
I was very happy to find this blog . . .I too live in Brooklyn and shop at the co-op, but tend to spend way too much there! Thanks for posting your receipts—it’s helpful!
January 29, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I was spending A LOT of money at the Coop, especially once they started the debit card system. Keeping it to $30/week has really improved my shopping habits.
January 30, 2009 at 11:30 pm
yayyyyy i love this concept!! i am all about the budgeting. i’m going to blogroll you — is that ok?
January 30, 2009 at 11:36 pm
Glad you found us! We would love to be part of your blogroll.
March 7, 2009 at 6:03 pm
My family and I were trying to decide what to do for Lent when we discovered your website through a post on Professional Vegan. Awesome!
We live in Sunset Park, Brooklyn – just south of you – and we’ll be sticking to a $45 budget (for a vegan family of 3) from now till Easter. Thanks for the inspiration!
March 7, 2009 at 6:20 pm
That is so awesome! Best of luck and I hope you post your experiences on your blog.
March 25, 2009 at 9:57 am
This is very cool. And fascinating. I could read lists of what people made, ate, or bought at the grocery store all day long!
I post everything I make and consume from day to day (as well as recipes and stuff like this), but don’t track carefully what we spend on groceries. I probably should.
You’ve inspired me–I’m going to start keeping track and then see if I can’t get it a bit lower (I have a feeling it’s at least 3 times that now…eeek).
March 27, 2009 at 8:12 pm
This is an insanely great blog – I’m in the same boat as you, trying to get by withfeeding myself and my daughter on a dirt poor budget after being laid off work last Summer.
I’ve started growing vegetables and herbs on my balcony to hopefully supplement our food needs and I blog about the journey to semi-selfsufficiency.
Keep doing what you’re doing!
April 2, 2009 at 12:22 pm
Really cool idea!
I’d love to hear more about how you weigh eating inexpensively and eating good, nutritious food.
April 3, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Is that $30 for the two of you, or $30 each – $60 a week?
April 3, 2009 at 12:14 pm
$15 apiece – $30 a week for both of us.
April 3, 2009 at 2:41 pm
Thanks! Ouch, that would be a snug fit on rice and beans in West nowhere, let alone New York
April 7, 2009 at 2:29 pm
Hello from Austin, TX. My DH sent me the link to your blog, and I find it very interesting. I am not vegetarian, but your photos of your dishes make it all look so scrumptious! It’s nice to know and read what other people are doing to save money. I am sure this blog keeps you finding neat ideas and recipes to post. Looking forward to discovering some good vegetarian dished through your blog.
April 10, 2009 at 2:04 am
What a great idea and lovely blog! Is there some way to subscribe?
April 11, 2009 at 2:44 pm
hey thanks for sharing I’m listening to you on Good Food with Evan Kleinman
April 18, 2009 at 6:51 pm
Hi,
I found your site today, April 18, 2009, and have sent it to many friends. It encourages and challenges me to get my grocery bill way down. It would be so helpful if you could tell us what you are making with the items you buy. Could you please list what you are eating for breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks? Thanks again for the site.
April 23, 2009 at 1:00 pm
I came across your blog for Queercents – what a great site. I’ve actually been cooking and feeding my partner and myself on $60 a week – you’re definitely an inspiration!
May 5, 2009 at 4:30 pm
Any chance you will set up an email distribution/RSS list so we don’t miss anything? Thanks in advance….
May 5, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Hmm, let me see if Phil can take care of that.
May 5, 2009 at 5:01 pm
Hey Carol,
I’m not really an regular RSS feed user, but I do know that our RSS feed URL is the following:
http://thirtyaweek.wordpress.com/feed/
If you have an aggregator, you should be able to subscribe from there, right? Let me know if that doesn’t work and I’ll look into it further.
May 18, 2009 at 5:50 pm
Brilliant and timely! I especially love the soup stock tip of saving veggie scraps in your freezer & making homemade fresh vegetable soup.
I have been freezing my food scraps in BK for years in order to keep rats & roaches away until garbage day, and sooo thrilled I get to turn them into something good & healthy.
Keep the tips coming…
May 22, 2009 at 2:06 pm
Hi- Found your blog via the Kitchn and I love your concept! Excited that all your recipes are vegetarian too!
June 3, 2009 at 2:51 am
I just came across your AMAZING blog today and I’m totally in love with it! Food is really expensive here (Korea) so I’m always looking for tasty, cheap recipes (and the fact that they’re healthy is a huge bonus!)
Keep it up!
June 3, 2009 at 11:53 am
love this! My husband and I are vegetarian and always have a tough time finding cheap recipes that taste great. Thanks a bunch!
June 8, 2009 at 2:33 pm
Just wanted to say I’ve really enjoyed reading your blog. I stumbled upon it a couple months ago. Great to see that people can eat really well for very little money. Food you create looks delicious! I live on Canada’s East coast where I split my time between cooking and being outdoors. I enjoyed your post on camp cooking.
Keep up the great blog!
June 25, 2009 at 1:09 pm
Awesome blog idea! I like reading about more efficient ways of creating delicious meals. Keep it up!
August 9, 2009 at 2:25 pm
Hi guys,
I found you a while back, and have been following you since then via the magic of Google Reader. Our household finances took a nosedive recently, and I’ve started a little left coast 30-buck project myself. Or I’m trying, at least–not quite there yet. Thanks for the blog, which is a terrific inspiration and source of ideas, as well as a reminder that I’m not nuts to think we can cut the grocery bill, and still eat like human beings.
Karen
August 11, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Hey, This is a cool blog..I like your recipes and tried some of them…excellent stuff. Just stumbled and submitted your site to http://Viralogy.com. Hope you get some great traffic from it. Your blog is here http://www.viralogy.com/blogs/my/6253
August 11, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Thanks Josh!
August 11, 2009 at 2:29 pm
out of curiosity, does your coop require a paid membership? if so, do you count that cost towards your food totals?
August 11, 2009 at 2:38 pm
Honestly, we’ve been members for about 6 years now, so I don’t remember! A quick look at the PSFC’s Membership jogs the memory a bit: we paid a one time fee of $25 (6 years ag0) and an investment of $100. If we quit the Coop, we get our investment back. And we don’t count that in our current food budget since it happened so long ago!
You can read the fascinating manual here if you like: PSFC Manual
August 12, 2009 at 10:32 am
Wow, you’re lucky, our coop here costs much much more than that–they’re relatively new and still have start-up costs to work off. We couldn’t afford a membership although we’d like one (it’s also only accessible by car, which we don’t have). Thanks for the info though, fascinating manual indeed;)
August 12, 2009 at 1:58 am
Just stumbled upon the site!
Like what you have going on here!!
August 21, 2009 at 2:03 am
Okay, wow. I thought $50 a week was impressive…you two are total rock stars.
September 3, 2009 at 12:06 am
Hey! VERY inspiring blog! Just moved to park slope, poor grad student with boyfriend in tow. We will aim to hit 30 a week too, maybe we’ll run into you guys at the co-op and you can give us pointers
September 4, 2009 at 4:00 pm
I’ve been reading your blog for a while but wanted to finally comment. I really enjoy it! It always inspires me to experiment with what I have in the kitchen on hand, and your photography makes me hungry. I can’t manage $30 a week yet but you inspire me to keep trying – thanks!
September 14, 2009 at 1:52 pm
Wow… you guys rock incredibly hard. My wife and I got married two years ago (both volunteers and work part time). I went from 45K a year to 90+K a year and we still can’t save. We tried very hard this month to cut back on our food expenses… still wound up at $603.25. We live on the central coast of CA, expensive area as it is, but if you guys can handle this in Brooklyn (lived there 2 years, I know how pricing is) I don’t think I have much of an excuse anymore. Keep going guys, and really appreciate the recipes! Always open to new veggie ideas!
September 19, 2009 at 9:33 am
Hello! I love your blog.
I was wondering if you also make your own lunches — do you work from home and eat at home, or do you make food at home and eat it at the office? Just curious.
Keep up the great work,
Tamara
September 19, 2009 at 9:13 pm
Hi Tamara,
We usually bring our dinner leftovers in for lunch. If we don’t have enough dinner leftover, we’ll usually cobble together a sandwich or salad for lunch. Occasionally, we forget and have to pay the price of getting lunch round work, but since it’s so pricey, we attempt to bring our own lunches always!
September 27, 2009 at 10:44 am
This is a nice blog but quite frankly, I’m utterly confused… have finances forced you into this situation and if so, are there not other expenses where you could cut back? I find so often that people are happy to shell out for brand name running shoes, an iPhone or cable TV… yet they obsess to scrimp on life’s most basic necessity, not to mention its most basic pleasure. I am European and I guess we have a different attitude from Americans: my food budget is one of the last places where I would scale back, and this is coming from someone who already lives without a TV or a cellphone.
September 27, 2009 at 10:47 am
Well J.C., if you read the blog thoroughly, you would see that we answer your question a bit. Basically, this is just a challenge. Finances have NOT forced us into this situation – as we’ve said in our about page, we still go out to eat (we love food and live in a city with some of the greatest places to eat in the world) and I feel like the food we make on our budget reflects our love and respect of food. We discovered (over a year ago!) that we were spending a lot of money on food that was just getting wasted. Vegetables would wilt in the bin, fruit would get spoiled, we wouldn’t eat leftovers, etc. $30/week was an attempt to curb our grocery budget while still maintaining quality.
We don’t pay for cable/tv and aren’t extravagant in many ways. We like our wine and bourbon and pay accordingly for those (not included in our budget). If you have more questions, feel free to email us.
September 27, 2009 at 11:20 am
In other words, it is a fairly continuous theme on this blog that spending less money on food does not have to mean eating lower quality food, let alone depriving oneself of life’s basic pleasures. If anything, I’d say we have developed a fuller appreciation of our relationship with cooking and food since embarking on this project.
September 28, 2009 at 5:11 am
Wow. What an enjoyable lovely blog
Just writing to say thanks I guess! As a vegetarian I get very excited when I can look at all the food and not feel guilty for admiring a meat dish. I have a quick question, from looking at your site I see that we spend roughly the same amount on vegetables, but I am always caught out by staples that always need topping up – flour, sugar, nuts etc. How do you manage to keep those costs within your budget? Thanks!
September 28, 2009 at 10:08 am
Hi Lauren! Thanks for the excellent comment. In terms of staples, we are lucky that our Coop has bulk bins. I usually just get what we need for the week in terms of flour and rice and things of that nature. Of course, if it pays off sometimes to buy flour in 5lb bags when they go on sale at the supermarket too. I try to keep a look out for specific sales on those things.
Hope that helps!
September 29, 2009 at 4:14 pm
Very impressed. Would love to see breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks for $15 per person per week.
Your recipes are good and simple.
September 30, 2009 at 10:33 am
I’d like to add my thanks for this blog. I’ve been feeling like my food/cooking options were either to eat healthy or buy cheaply – I didn’t feel like they could possibly be done together. You two have shown this is possible to the extreme! I’m sure I’ll never get as low as $15/wk for myself, but I have something to aim for! Keep it up!
October 1, 2009 at 11:21 pm
I am SO impressed by your blog and ideas. My new favourite place on the ineternet!
Amazing!
October 2, 2009 at 12:51 pm
How many times a week do you guys go out to eat? I ask because my husband and I spend $100 on groceries per week, but we do not eat out at all (with the exception of a very occasional donut). Thanks!
October 3, 2009 at 3:10 pm
Hmmm, it depends. Some weeks we’ll go out once or twice, other weeks not at all.
October 12, 2009 at 1:06 pm
Hi,
I am a fellow Park Slope cooper, Very cool project!
I will forward this to my broke artist friends–who want to eat healthy but don’t have much $ flowing in right now.
Happy Cooking and Eating,
K
November 7, 2009 at 2:17 pm
Hi. I really like your blog and am so glad I found it. We are a vegan and vegetarian family of four. I try to feed us on $50-80 a week. It is nice to see your blog and how you save. I look forward to reading more posts.