Locavore

As I mentioned in my previous post, my husband has gone totally vegetarian.  I'm not quite there yet, but I'm darn close, usually only eating meat once a week, and at this point it's only at a restaurant or at my parents' house. 

One area where I have pretty much committed is eating local as much as possible.  Yup, I'm a locavore.

Here's this past weekend's farmer's market haul:

I wound up roasting a lot of those veggies for dinner on Tuesday and served them with some gnocchi.  There were basically no leftovers.  I think I need to make more time for those kinds of meals, because they are easy to prepare (I was able to quickly clean and chop up the veggies while Amelia amused herself in her high chair), and they are actually quite inexpensive. 

That's the neat thing about shopping at the farmer's market:  When you're buying produce, it's often both fresher and cheaper than the grocery store stuff, and quite frequently it's organically grown as well. 

The budget busters at the farmers market tend to be the pre-made foods.  $6 for jam, $4 for black bean hummus... I could certainly get those things cheaper at the grocery store, but the truth is that the local stuff truly tastes better.  Those are our splurges, which we justify because overall we're still saving money.  And when I get the chance, I make my own hummus, which is even cheaper than buying it at the grocery store.

Have you seen the USDA Food Plan charts?  They're updated monthly.  For June, the "thrifty plan" for 2 adults aged 19-50 is $378.90/month.  I'm pretty sure we did go over that a bit this month, but most of the time our food budget is in the $350-ish range.  That includes non-food groceries and my extra 500 calories a day.  As long as you don't live in a food desert, it's definitely possible to eat well on a budget.  And for the record, we found ourselves relying on convenience foods more than usual this month, in part because I went back to work full-time and was working off-site a bunch.  We went over budget by something like $100.  Time to start menu planning!

So, which plan do you fall under on the USDA charts?  Is it just me or do those numbers seem kind of high?  Or do I just have our farmers market and mostly cooking from scratch to thank for our comparatively low budget? 


And here's some fun stuff that's been going on with Amelia lately:

Not even 6 months old and the kid can already stand while supporting herself on furniture!  Time to start baby-proofing??

Elvis was kind of wary of this new little person at first, but yesterday he jumped up on our bed and laid down next to her.  He was letting her hold his paws and touch his face, and it was adorable.

Here's a picture Glen took of the two of them:

Amelia's face in that picture is pretty much the greatest thing I've ever seen!  

Time Flies

I haven't so much as signed on to Blogger in 2+ months, and now my baby girl is 5 months old! 

I haven't done her 5 month pictures yet, but here she is at 3 months:

And at 4 months:

And here's one of my absolute favorite pictures of her, taken during tummy time:

And here she is during her first time in the pool, last week:

It's been pretty crazy trying to juggle a new baby, two jobs, and still trying to maintain a social life, which is why my blog's been kind of neglected lately. 

While I can't say I regret my decision for my blog to take a bit of a backseat, I found myself missing it, and the the people I've connected with through it.  Especially since I feel like I have soooo much to say lately.

Glen and I have always been a bit on the crunchy side, but I definitely feel like having a baby has enhanced the crunchy factor. 

• We've always gone to our local farmers market, but now I'm also planning to use the produce we buy there to make our own baby food.
• Our decision to cloth diaper is going wonderfully so far!  Good for the environment AND the bank account!
• At 5 month, Amelia is still exclusively breastfed.  This was important to me for a variety of reasons.  There advantages of breastmilk that formula can't replicate, such as antibodies to help boost her immune system.  It's cheap (would be free if I didn't have to pump at work).  I am lazy (for real, I can't imagine having to prepare formula and warm a bottle - I don't envy my mom or Glen the task of preparing a bottle for a hungry baby while I'm at work!).  But also, less waste.  There's the pump and bottles, but no formula containers to throw out and fewer bottles to wash.  
• We switched our regular laundry detergent to a clean-rinsing one.  This was mostly to avoid residue on the cloth diapers, but we use it on everything now.  We also started using dryer balls instead of fabric softener sheets.
• Glen's gone vegetarian.  I'm debating eventually joining him in that since meat isn't a big part of my diet anyway, but I'll never go vegan.  You can pry the cheese and eggs from my cold, dead hands!

I'm sure there are more, but those are the big ones that come to mind.  I'm leaning toward going a bit green with this blog and doing a series of posts about some of our crunchier lifestyle choices.

I'll also be making the rounds, visiting the blogs I technically follow but haven't visited lately.  I hope you're all doing well, and I'm looking forward to seeing what everyone's been up to!