Shannon Phillips

This week our veggie box held: beets, chard, two bunches of lettuce (one romaine and one red leaf), a bag of arugula, a bunch of cilantro, a big bag stuffed with baby bok choy, a pint of cherry tomatoes, six medium red tomatoes, four gypsy peppers, and four Gala apples. We ate the beets first, in a salad, and then last night we had steaks and another salad (with avocado-buttermilk-cilantro dressing; a Cook’s Illustrated recipe and very good). Robin has already eaten all of the apples too!

Tonight we’re having chard quesadillas; the recipes in the box recommended it, and I think it sounds like a great idea. Tomorrow night we’ll have Indian-spiced okra, with the tomatoes, over brown rice. Sunday I’ll roast a chicken, and then Monday I’ll use the carcass to make broth for hot-and-sour soup with the bok choy. Tuesday night, leftovers.

I mentioned that I’ve been tracking my expenditures closely over the past week. We spent $245.54 on groceries last week: that includes lunch and dinner for all of us, cat food for Marlis, a couple bottles of wine, $31.50 for the weekly veggie box and $41.77 on Sunday brunch — but doesn’t include things like diapers and dishwashing detergent. That’s insanely high, right? It seems insanely high. I’d be really interested to know what other people budget for groceries, especially those living in the Bay Area.

One thing we could do to rein in our food costs would obviously be to switch from eating out once a week to once every other week. Another would be to stop shopping at Whole Foods, but since that’s actually a high point of my day, I’m pretty reluctant to give it up. A third thing would be to cut back on the most flagrantly self-indulgent foodie purchases, like, say, the rosemary pheasant paté that I bought at Whole Foods last week. (I was just so charmed by the idea of putting paté in Sam’s bento!) Thrift, it does not come naturally to me. I’ll see if I can do better this week.