Food budget in Chile

So Kyle's last post is about how much she spends on groceries a month in Chile. She said she was getting emails from people asking her that. I started commenting and realized I should just write my own post. Anyone else who's interested in blogging on your food budget in Chile (or elsewhere, I suppose), please do. We could make this topic into a group post if people are interested. I'll post the links to the other blogs on my entry.

So I'll be guesstimating. But I have been saving my receipts for the last 4-5 years, and when I get around to looking at them and figuring out what my food budget has been I will probably get back to you all. Back in Valpo, I easily spent 80.000-100.000 a month in groceries, but V and I were drinking lots of milk and eating lots of yogurt in those days. And we used to eat tons of chicken and beef. Now that I've gone flexitarian, I'm probably spending between 50.000-70.000 a month in groceries. Although I will know better if I ever organize my finances.

As Theresa in Mérida commented on Kyle's blog, this number will depend on what people eat. So to give you an ideea: I will cook cazuela de ave, for example, or porotos granados (apparently called cranberry beans?) (1500 the kilo-desgranados, peeled) and those dishes will last us like 3 days. Plus, if say, the green beans are out-of-season, I won't put them in the cazuela. I mostly use in-season food, which makes my cooking better and more economical. Another thing that makes my cooking much more economical, is that I cook lots of Chilean dishes, so I almost always use Chilean ingredients: zapallo (300 pesos the chunk), porotos granados, porotos verdes (can't remember), choclo humero (10 in 1000 pesos), etc. I even use typical Chilean ingredients in my own concoctions.

Also, when I get a chance, I do my shopping at the vega, which makes fruit, veggie, chicken shopping a bit more economical. And when I don't have time, I go to a market/vega that's a bit closer to home.

I also, am not a fan of chicken. I will eat it, if that's what's for lunch or dinner (hence flexitarian), but I think about the fact that it spent it's whole life in a cage and that it's been injected with hormones, and I would rather eat more pesticide-covered corn and pumpkin, rather than hormone-injected, cage-grown chicken. (Let's call a spade a spade.)

Other foods we eat a lot of and their current prices in Chilean pesos:
we eat bread (pan pita integral, 800) and avocado (1500 the kilo), or oatmeal (1300 the kilo), bananas (450 the kilo), yogurt (300 pesos for like 150 grams, I believe), fruit,
mote con huesillos or without huesillos (dried full-sized peaches, about 3000-4000 the kilo). I also like to have mote (can't remember the price) with coconut milk (1,100 the can) and pure maple syrup. Yummy. Speaking of, I go through a lot of coconut milk. (The maple syrup was given to me by my mom who was just in Chile. I don't buy maple syrup here.) Sarotti chocolate - 1400 for 100 grams, but waaaay more satisfying than Sahne-Nuss (1000 pesos for 180 grams). Although I still get a Sahne-Nuss fix from time-to-time. I do wish my supermarket would get this brand to try it out. I like getting my products as directly from the source as possible.

We also eat a fair amount of nuts. I just bought 2 kilos of cashews for 16,000 pesos. We eat almonds too, but I can't remember what they cost.

We eat lots of quinoa too, although not lately. (Over a year ago I bought 25 kilos for 25,000 pesos from a dealer in Parque Forestal - there was a bicycle culture festival, and people were selling things like quinoa and vegetarian empanadas). Normally quinoa costs (for quinoa negra) around 2000 pesos for half a kilo, if I'm not mistaken. You can get it at the tostudaria talca. Its uber-expensive at the grocery store, like 2000+ pesos for 200 grams of white quinoa. But 25,000 pesos for 25 kilos is quite the deal, even if we don't finish those last 5 kilos before they go bad.

We also eat pasta, beef, rice, beans-black and tórtola (perhaps around 2000 the kilo), garbanzo beans, crackers (300 for 180 grams or so), quesillo (around 1000), olive oil (maybe 5000 the liter?), regular oil, and lots of spices. When the corn's not in season, I get frozen corn (2000 the kilo?). These last prices I don't remember as well.

That's all I can think of for the moment. I'm sure we eat other foods as well.

Other gringas on their food budgets:

Kyle (the person who started the topic)
Katina