I get a lot of questions about how we eat, and the practical aspects of how I meal plan for the week, considering that we make all of our food from scratch and generally follow a paleo-style diet (no grains or legumes, easy on the dairy and refined sugar.) So, I thought I’d show you a week’s worth of paleo groceries. This is what we bought on Saturday, to feed three of us three meals per day, all week.
Our budget is £100 per week, or about $160. Here is everything that this amount bought for us this weekend– from our butcher, a quick stop at Aldi and our favorite farm shop. We spent about £90 on Saturday, leaving us with a little extra for things we need to get during the week.
A Week of Paleo Groceries
Proteins
- 5 dozen eggs
- 4 cans of tuna
- 2.5 lbs. oxtail
- 2 lbs. pork belly (we’ll cure it for bacon!)
- 1 lb. ground pork
- 2 lbs. ground beef
- 1.5 lbs. beef brisket (for making pastrami)
- 2 lbs. stew beef
- 1 chicken carcass for bone broth
Fats
- 1.5 lbs. butter
- 2 avocados
- sesame seeds
Vegetables
- 3 hothouse English cucumbers
- 3 lbs. leeks
- 2 heads cauliflower
- 5 lbs. carrots
- 1 bunch beets
- 1.5 lbs zucchini
- 2 fennel bulbs
- 4 heads lettuce
- 1 head of celery
- 1 lb mushrooms
- arugula
- 4 sweet red peppers
- 1 bunch cilantro
- 1 bunch rosemary
Fruit
- 2.5 lbs pears
- 5 lbs apples
Misc Grocery
- red wine vinegar
- 2 boxes tomato purée
- giant jar green olives
- small jar black olives
- 1 jar of tahini
- 1 bottle red wine
Of course, it’s important to mention that I have some staples at home. Each week, I buy a couple of staples that I won’t need to pick up again for a month or two. This week it was maple syrup, sesame seeds, red wine vinegar and green olives. Right now I already have lots of onions, a couple of lemons, sweet potatoes, some winter squash, nuts, coconut oil, coconut milk, garlic, spices, olive oil, chocolate, coffee, etc. in the kitchen. One other thing– the butcher at the farm shop gives me tons of beef bones for free whenever I ask. I still have plenty of beef broth from last week, but I almost always bring home a few pounds of bones for making bone broth.
Also note that we only bought one bottle of wine. We usually drink two or so, and one of our bottles of home brewed black cherry wine in the basement popped its cork yesterday. So you know what that means… Darn it, we have to drink the other bottles before they blow!
So, this is our week of paleo groceries. If you have some special concerns to work around with your diet, I hope this is encouraging for you to see– keep it simple and buy lots of meats and vegetables, some fruits and a few pantry staples. And don’t forget to wash your produce when you bring it home. To read about how we buy our food, you can see this post. The only change at this point is that an Aldi opened up and so we do make a quick stop there rather than getting deliveries from a larger grocery store, and we buy more often from our favorite farm shop where they give me lots of beef bones for free.
I am thinking about writing a follow-up post about how we prepared the food all week– all the meals we made. Would you be interested in that?
Yes, you asked for me to do that– so here is the post about a week of paleo meals made from this haul.
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I’d definitely be interested in a follow up post. 🙂
Would love the follow up post about preparing the groceries ~ that’s where I get stuck.
Yes, do share how you use all this good food in one week.
We have around your budget for 5 of us which can make it difficult at times. I’ve just gone gluten-free again (after being asked by the consultant to eat gluten in the run up to a gastro-endoscopy).
I was gluten and dairy free years ago and am working towards grain-free but we just cannot afford as a family (with buying either organic or meat from people I know who have raised the animals and with much of our fruit and veg also organic) for all of us to go paleo as the budget we’re on means we can’t eat meat every day (although I use a lot of bone broth/stock with our meals) and do have some legume-based meals instead (not Paleo – so we’re veering more towards GAPS).
My eldest daughter wants to join me being gluten-free though, so we’ll see how that goes (I’m hoping it will help with a few of her issues – although, in comparison to many, she already eats a very good diet).
My hope is, as we’re currently completely overhauling the garden to become entirely edible and medicinal that this will go some way to contributing towards our budget as the months pass (got a way to go there, though) and we’ve just added two more chickens to the 3 existing (although we may rehome the runner ducks) and that we’re able to save some money so we can do a bulk order from Suma (and then I may treat myself to some coconut and almond flours!)
I’d be interested on what you do on the breakfast front.
I hear you on the challenging budget! We have usually had less to work with, and it can be so tricky, being an idealist who would love to buy only local/ organic. We are lucky to have a butcher we really trust, who isn’t pretentious about ethically-sourced meats– he keeps everything really reasonably priced, as opposed to other places who advertise more about being sustainable. I think using soaked legumes is a great way to bulk things up cheaply. And it’s awesome that you’ll be getting more chickens and growing more food– I think that is really key, and something I wish we were doing more of right now.
I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed when you hear what breakfasts we’ve been eating this week, as it’s been unusually dull– eggs, eggs, eggs! But we usually alternate with bacon and breakfast sausage patties (https://andhereweare.net/2013/01/apple-leek-bacon-breakfast-sausage.html.) On the weekends, Jeff makes something baked usually, so that’s a treat.
Loving your blog and would love to read about what you do with everything!
Hi Ariana,
Though I have never commented in this space, I have been following your blog for quite some time. I chanced upon your blog some months back and have been reading it ever since. The way you write, the beautiful pictures, stories of your travels and the topics that you cover all make it worthwhile and I eagerly look forward to the next post every time. I especially loved the tours of your England home and of all the places you have lived so far. Needless to say, I would definitely be interested in reading a post on your weekly meals :).
Looking forward to your next post!
Bindu (India)
Hi Bindu,
Thank you so much for taking the time to introduce yourself, and for telling me so many nice things. 🙂 So glad your found me! I am working on the post right now about all of the meals we had this week.
Yes, please do a follow up post as to how you used these groceries. I am still learning about eating healthier, and tend to forget that eating healthy does not have to be hugely expensive.
Love seeing all you bought! Are the meats generally grass-fed and and the dairy as well? I see your meat prices and wish they were mine!! :’P We have a budget of about $60/week for groceries and our organic/grass-fed meats run about $5/lb at the lowest!! So hard to figure out really delicious and healthy meals. Gotta get creative. 🙂
Yes, that $60 budget is challenging! Keep in mind that the prices on my labels are in British pounds, so it is quite a bit more than it seems. I definitely recommend befriending your butcher and learning to use all of the cheapest cuts/ offal you can.
I’d love hearing about what meals you end up making this week!
Hiya – Yes, would love to see what you made with all this. It does seem like a lot of food for two adults and one child. Are you making three meals a day x three people? Can you really go through 5 dozen eggs and 3 pounds of butter in one week?
Laurel, we are making three meals a day per person, and we can definitely go through that many eggs! We are eating eggs for breakfast almost every day this week– but it’s not always the case. We usually alternate with bacon or breakfast sausages for the protein, but do have weeks like this too. Plus, we use it for baking, and a lot of grain-free recipes call for more eggs than traditional ones do. It turns out that I made a mistake with the butter– each package is 250g or about 1/2 pound. So that was twice as much– I’ll correct it in my post.
Yes. Yes! I would love another post with what you made out of all of these ingredients.
Is butter allowed on the Paleo diet? I thought there is no dairy. Just asking.
Hi Liz-Anne, there are a lot of variations to the “paleo” diet, and people who observe it very strictly would not eat butter. Our family handles it well, so we eat plenty of it. For me, it’s more about eating the foods that work well for us, rather than following a lot of rules. That said, we also eat use a lot of beef tallow, bacon fat, and coconut oil to cook with, so those would be good substitutes for people who do not want to use butter.
Would love follow up on meals!!
Losing weight is so difficult for me I lose and gain…thanks for giving useful psleo groceries.
http://ashealthline.com