Canadian Thread?

[Island Mommy]

Just wondering if there are enough Canadian mammas perusing this forum for us to support our own thread? It's not that I don't find the information posted by our American friends useful or helpful it's just that so often it is not relevant to our situation. And the price differences between the 2 countries are still so large, particularly with groceries.

I plan meals (well, somewhat) and cook almost exclusively from scratch. We eat vegetarian a lot but when I do buy meat it's organic and/or free range. Ditto for most veggies, yogurt and milk. I don't buy organic cheese because the price would kill me. At my local store, 2 organic chicken breasts cost over $8. Needless to say, we eat thighs and legs mostly. We try to eat fish because we understand it's health benefits but WOW! the price!!

Anyway, enough venting. FWIW, I track every penny we spend so I can say with certainty that groceries for just me, dh and dd average about $725/month and household products average $23/month.

[FancyD]

[canadiannancy]

I would be interested!

[Shantimama]

We spend about $600 a month on groceries and household items combined, for two parents and three school aged children.

We eat a little meat occasionally. Just about everything is made from scratch and I menu plan which helps keep the cost of food down. I also buy in bulk just about anything that can be bought in bulk

[bwylde]

I would be interested . I spend less than you guys but we're still spending half of DH's income just on food, which is scary.

Plus a lot of their financial information is irrevelant to us.

[Dillpicklechip]

I would be interested.

I am in Southern Ontario, and my husband is currently unemployed. He was in manufacturing, which has dried up, so he's going to go back to school, which will mean we'll be struggling financially for years to come.

I stay home with the kids and work part time, so most of our money comes from government assistance. The raise in grocery prices is really tough for us, although I try very hard to take advantage of sales and make everything from scratch.

We probably spend between $450-500 on groceries and toiletries per month, for a family of four.

[Sour-Jane]

A Canadian thread would be great. My boyfrusband and I are living with my mother until the baby is born, rent is $450 a month, and we pay about $80 a week for groceries, although that will have to be revised I think, because it seems like an awful lot. Originally we were just going to split the grocery bill into thirds, and here I had to pull $80 a week out of my arse, of course my mom agreed...


I'm trying to get myself organized now though for when we do move again, I really want to plan meals and budget properly. I'm in the process of typing out recipes I make well and making a household management binder.

I'm tired of not knowing where the money is going..

[mtm]

I'd be in! I'd love to know if any Canadians do well with coupons. Other than combining store sale with a coupon I have no luck. I'm in TO. We spend about $500 a month on groceries and household for 4.

[sweetcheeks]

I'm in! I'm an American living in Canada and almost 5 years later, I still haven't recovered from the sticker shock of the prices of groceries up here!

We spend about $500/month on groceries and household items combined for 2 adults and 2 children. I do meal plans, make almost everything from scratch, hardly ever buy convenience foods and buy whatever I can in bulk (there's something cute about my cupboard shelves full of glass jars w/all the stuff I buy in the bulk section ). I also have no problem w/buying the markdowned meat and throwing it in the deep freeze for later use. I'd love to buy organic but it's just not in the budget for us ATM.

Looking forward to participating in this thread!

[karliyanchus]

i kwym about grocery bills. i can't believe how much we spend, and i don't even try for organic or free range stuff. i used to work in a little grocery store and i KNOW we don't eat nearly as much processed stuff as other families, but our grocery bills are still out of control.

i just love to cook so much i want to experiment and make lavish things. throw into the mix that i also want to lose weight, and it's really expensive.

what i need to work on is dong simple rice and beans a few times a week so i can splurge on other days or something. the fruit and veg sure add up.

i'm not a clean your plate mum either but when (expensive) food gets wasted i get pretty mad. part of our plan lately is to involve the kids in choosing/preparing meals more so that they are more likely to eat it. but darn it I LIKE to do that planning and cooking stuff, lol.

[Rhiannon Feimorgan]

I'm in northern BC. There is only one local grocery store. I have to drive about 2 hours to get anything else which I do about once a month and stck up at Costco. Our local store is very expencive. I have managed to get our monthly spending down to about $500/month for 2 adults and 2 children (3&7) This includes other househols products like vinnigar for cleaning, soap, toilet paper ect.

I use cloth napkins and rags for cleaning. I cook from scratch. I garden and pick wild food. I stay away from processed, individualy pakaged food and try to buy in season as much as possible.

I've had very little luck with cupons as they are usually for things I don't buy.

We don't eat that much meat. When we do it's not expencive cuts. Is stock up when i can. For instance last year during the salmon run I was able to get a bunch of pink salmon for $4 each. This is for a fish that will serve us for 2 or 3 meals or work for a dinner party. I have a bunch of them in my freezer. We have friends who are hunters who will often give us game.

I have just found a local rancher who is willing to sell me a cow. We are going in with another family so we will each get half. With the butchuring it will work out to about $1.99/lb for pastured, homone free, local beef of various cuts. I'm so excited!!!!!! There should be enough to last us a year or more. I will probably use some of it as trade items too. 4 steaks for a couple dozen free range eggs. That sort of thing.

[seeingeyecat]

I should really add it up. I dont know exactly what we spend, but it's between about $200 a month at the grocery store, and at least another $100 a month at the local farmer's market.
We save and eat very well by:
-working for a local organic farmer selling produce at the Saturday farmer's market. They pay me, and I get loads of food for free.
-Dh bought me a small deep freeze for mother's day and my first birthday after DD's birth. We USE it!
-we bought half a pig from a local grower who is trying to scale back and go organic. It was a wonderful bagin.
-Dh works for a local organic coffee roaster, so we get all the beans we want for free, and organic tea, and fair trade sugar and coffee at a discount.
-we love our slow cooker.
-we freeze a lot of fruit and veggis when they're in season. I bought a grocery store bag full of red pepers (about 8 pounds) for 50 cents a pound in August. We roasted then under our oven broiler and froze then in bags. we're still eating them on pizzas and in sauces.

I'd love a Canadian thread!

[carfreemama]

Hi From Nova Scotia! I'm interested!

We are a family of 3 humans--dh, me and dd (almost 4), plus one big mutt and a cat.

Our grocery budget is $600 per month; though I was able to save $25 one week. Boy, did I work HARD that week! But I think I can get it down to $500. I'm never sure how big the differences are in grocery prices between the US and Canada, so don't know how much I'm overspending relative to others.
I bought a flour mill, which was the BEST purchase ever. Now I save $ on bread grains and organic bread is really, really cheap to make.

I have had the best luck relentlessly pursuing alternative options to the grocery store. I have just nailed a source for local, hook-and-line-caught fish through a contact at work. He works at the fish plant and knows some fishermen who go out in their boats every few weeks. Whatever the fish plant doesn't take, his girlfriend sells for $4/pound! I buy in 5-pound bags. Now she's offered me haddock scraps for $1 pound! And I got halibut cheeks for $4/pound. I also have found an organic butcher and I can get ground beef for $3/pound and other cuts for $5-6/pound. I've found a source for free-range chickens, too. We don't have a car, so we have to negotiate delivery a lot, but there's always a way.

I am also really interested in Canadian-based online sources for good toys, books, etc. I had to order playsilks from the States and it my order cost me something like $50 in duties. I love the stuff, but surely there are less expensive Canadian alternatives.

[the_lissa]

It is so weird re: price differences. Somethings are so much cheaper and some things are so much more expensive.

[Shantimama]

I have noticed that too. When we visit family int te US I can't say I see lower prices there, except for junk foods. I looked at a lot of things in the grocery stores where MIL lives and the sticker price was heh same or higher for most things - and at that time, the US dollar was stronger so it made the groceries more expensive than what we pay here in rural Ontario.

I have a son who is just gearing up for a growth spurt - he is just about the age where his dad shot up to almost 6 feet tall and that has definitelty affected our grocery bill. Feeding younger children was so much cheaper

I don't have much luck with coupons - they are rarely for items we use. I do watch the clearance shelves in the store and shop 98% at No Frills and the Bulk Barn and that helps.

[FancyD]

I find that I save quite a bit by going to Safeway on the first Tuesday of the month. They usually have a ton of sales on, so I save about 40$-60$ on my 'big shop'.

[Aubergine68]

We spend probably about $700/mo on groceries, but we're feeding two adults, three children and another 3 home daycare children on that.

We shop Costco, Superstore, some Safeway and the farmers market, from May through December. Coupons are useless around here, except for some of the Superstore ones. Trying to grow more food in the garden, too. Thank God for our two apple trees!

I am trying to cut down on spending, but also to buy more organic, which are sometimes mutually exclusive options.

I am happy with how much we have cut down on processed food in the past year. Haven't bought goldfish crackers, bear paws, Kraft dinners, frozen lasagnes for months and months now!

I am buying too much canned soup, though. I need to find good soup recipes that my family will eat.

This year, my food frugality resolutions are as follows:

--use my breadmaker twice a week
--use my rice cooker twice a week (for rice and whole grains)
--oatmeal for breakfast at least once a week.
-- do a menu every two weeks based on using up what we have in the fridge/pantry
--go to a upick and actually pick strawberries and saskatoons for fruit spread!
-- eat some vegan meals (have a vegan child in our home daycare, so that helps)


Experimenting with making my own yogurt this week...

[mama_ani]

Another Canadian mama here! I'm in Southern Ontario. We are a family of 6 - almost 7 - myself (32 weeks pregnant), dh, three dds ages 12, 11 and 10 and ds age 2.
We spend between $500-$600 a month on groceries including cleaning supplies. It doesn't include my son's rice milk ($85/month) or diapers - but we are switching to cloth.
I am finding it frustrating that food costs just keep going up even on basics! In a way it's been good for us, we're eating a lot healthier because prepared food is just way out of our budget, but I want to cry when I just want wholesome, healthy food and every week it's a little more expensive!

[organic-momma]

I'm happy to see this thread! I was just thinking we needed one!

Our grocery bills are high (usually around $600/mo) for 2 adults and 1 toddler (although my son eats more than I do I think). We are big meat eaters, but trying to cut down and hopefully transition into mostly vegetarian, for health & financial reasons. Plus I really like to experiment in the kitchen so I buy a lot of specialty foods.

[Aubergine68]

[QUOTE=carfreemama;10515548]I am also really interested in Canadian-based online sources for good toys, books, etc. I had to order playsilks from the States and it my order cost me something like $50 in duties. QUOTE]

Me too. I'm trying to get rid of some of the plastic in my home (and home daycare). There are a lot of things I think we could make, but educational toys and play materials seem to be mostly US and the duty is a big bite, for sure.