A lot of this shift has been influenced by the work of Dr. Will Bulsiewicz, also known as Dr. B or The Gut Health MD. I first read his book Fiber Fueled during pregnancy, and more recently read his newest book, Plant Powered Plus.

If you’re new to Dr. B’s work, he is a plant-based board-certified gastroenterologist who studies how our diet and lifestyle directly impact our gut and in turn impact everything else -- our immune system, our hormone health, our mental health, our energy levels.

I’m planning to revamp my “Budget Eats and Receipts” series in 2026, but before I do, I wanted to share with you how my grocery cart has changed in the last couple of years.

For starters, my grocery budget is much higher. Womp womp.

This is partially due to unavoidable inflation, but the bigger shift has been in how I think about what we’re consuming.

Some things are worth intentionally making room for in the budget now. And as a stay-at-home mom living on one income in a high-cost-of-living area, I don’t make that statement lightly. We’re not able to make these changes because we suddenly started making a lot of money. We didn’t.

We’re making these changes because we’ve actively chosen to prioritize our health — and we’re able to do that by living debt-free, driving 20-year-old cars, skipping most vacations, and living an overall simple life.

So with that in mind, here are the things I’m paying more for now.

1. Better Beans

Eating an overwhelmingly plant-based diet means beans are basically a food group in our household. We easily eat a few pounds of beans every week.

For the cost savings alone, I’ve always prioritized dry beans over canned varieties. But what I didn’t know until reading Dr. B’s work was that every canned food on the grocery store shelves is lined with a thin layer of plastic. It has to be -- without it, the aluminum would react with the food.

The problem is that canned beans are cooked and sterilized inside the can during the sealing process. When plastic is heated at high temperatures, it releases microplastics and endocrine disrupting chemicals like BPA and BPS into the food.

Although I’ve always preferred cooking my own beans from scratch, it does require planning ahead and with a young baby at home, sometimes life has different plans.

For those days, I like to keep a few cans of beans on hand, too!

Instead of grabbing the cheapest cans at Walmart, I now look for these better (albeit much more pricy!) options:

1. Beans in glass - Jovial Foods is the brand I find most often

2. Beans in Tetra Paks - Tetra Paks, while not plastic-free, are generally lined with polyethylene plastic instead of epoxy-based plastics, lowering your exposures to BPA and BPS.

3. Eden Foods canned beans - Eden Foods is the better canned option because they are not only BPA-free, but also BPS and phthalate-free.

2. Acidic Foods and Ferments in Glass

A natural follow from the beans conversation. Similarly to beans, acidic foods like tomatoes, salsa, pasta sauce, and ferments like sauerkraut and kimchi are especially problematic in plastic or lined cans because acidity accelerates the leaching of chemicals and microplastics.

Basically, the more acidic the product, the more you want it stored in glass.

I now buy crushed and diced tomatoes in glass jars wherever I can find them. Same with salsa, pasta sauce, and any fermented product. Glass is inert and it doesn’t react with food.

Now be warned. Glass packaged tomatoes are significantly more expensive than canned, but if there’s one category worth prioritizing, it’s swapping to glass for acidic foods!

If there’s a skill I should be adding to my tool belt it’s home canning -- it would be SO much cheaper and more delicious!

3. Avoiding foods with “GRAS” status

Learning about this one in Dr. B’s work genuinely surprised me and is probably the knowledge that has changed how I read ingredient labels the most.

GRAS stands for Generally Recognized as Safe. It sounds fine, but what it really means is that ingredients classified under this umbrella have been deemed safe based on existing knowledge at the time that it was approved, not because it was rigorously tested by modern standards or human health.

Common examples of ingredients classified as GRAS are “natural flavors” and emulsifiers. “Natural flavors” sounds harmless, but its a broad catch-all term that can include hundreds of different chemicals that have never been truly tested. The FDA does not require companies to disclose what’s actually in them.

Similarly, emulsifiers are additives used in processed foods to improve texture and extend shelf life. You’ll find them in things like plant based milks, salad dressings, ice cream, bread, and countless other packaged foods. Common ones include carrageenan, polysorbate 80, and lecithin.

Dr. B has spoken about research suggesting that a majority of emulsifiers disrupt the gut microbiome and contribute to inflammation — which is a big deal given how central gut health is to everything else.

4. Organic and Glyphosate Free Foods

I was on the fence about organic for years. When the price difference was small I’d choose organic without much thought, but when it was significantly more I’d go conventional and tell myself it probably didn’t matter that much.

I’m convinced now that it does matter a whole lot. Glyphosate is the active ingredient in Roundup, one of the most widely used herbicides in the world. It is sprayed on conventional crops and residues regularly show up in our food supply. Research into its impact on the gut microbiome is still emerging but what’s being found is concerning enough that it changed how I prioritize my spending at the grocery store. Dr. B recommends choosing organic wherever possible and I’ve taken that seriously.

The Environmental Working Group publishes a Dirty Dozen list every year showing which conventionally grown produce carries the highest pesticide residue. Strawberries, spinach, peppers, and apples are consistently at the top. For the Clean Fifteen, it’s safer to buy conventional, but if you have the budget to buy all organic, I don’t think you’re wasting your money.

I also look for glyphosate free certification on oats, grains, and legumes specifically since these crops are often sprayed right before harvest. It shows up on packaging more frequently now which makes it easier to find.

5. Brands that Test for Heavy Metals

This one started with my morning matcha.

During pregnancy I developed an extreme aversion to coffee but still wanted something warm to start my mornings. That’s when I switched to matcha and almost two years later, I still drink it every single day. But when I started researching brands I fell down a rabbit hole about heavy metal contamination in tea that I genuinely wasn’t expecting.

Plants absorb whatever is in the soil they’re grown in — including heavy metals like lead, arsenic, and cadmium. This is especially relevant for tea and matcha since the entire leaf is ground and consumed rather than just steeped. But it also applies to protein powders, supplements, baby food, rice, and certain spices.

I now look specifically for brands that third party test for heavy metals and publish their results transparently. The brand I landed on is Pique Life. They source their matcha from Japan, test every batch for heavy metals, pesticides, and toxins, and publish their certificates of analysis. The flavor is smooth, it doesn’t give me the jitters that coffee did, and knowing exactly what’s in it matters to me now in a way it didn’t before.

6. Whole Foods Over Ultra Processed Foods

I ate a fully plant based diet for several years and during that time, ultra processed meat and dairy alternatives were a regular part of my grocery haul. Beyond Meat, Impossible Burger, plant based sausages, vegan cheeses... I bought them regularly and felt good about it because they were vegan. But pregnancy made me start reading ingredient labels more carefully and what I found gave me pause.

Most meat alternatives are heavily processed products with long ingredient lists full of the exact emulsifiers, natural flavors, and additives I mentioned earlier. The fact that something is plant based doesn’t automatically make it a whole food. Dr. B is clear on this. Ultra processed foods, regardless of whether they’re animal or plant based, are not good for the gut microbiome.

This is where the decision to add meat back into my diet made sense to me. The less processed something is, the easier it is to know exactly what you’re getting.

Plant-based recipes still rule my kitchen because wow meat is so expensive -- especially when prioritizing local, pasture raised, grass-fed and grass-finished livestock.

7. A Wide Variety of Plants

Dr. B’s single biggest recommendation is eating 30 different plants per week. Not 30 servings of the same three vegetables — 30 genuinely different plants including fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, nuts, seeds, and herbs. Research shows that plant diversity is the single greatest predictor of a healthy gut microbiome.

This one changed how I think about meal planning. Before I wasn’t intentionally buying the same things every week but I also wasn’t thinking about variety at all. I bought what I knew I would use and what fit the recipes I had planned. Which probably meant I was eating a much narrower range of plants than I realized.

Now variety is something I actively think about. I try to rotate what I buy week to week, introduce something I haven’t cooked in a while, or grab a fresh herb I wouldn’t normally reach for. It sounds like a small shift but it adds up quickly.

I’ll be honest — this has increased my grocery budget. Intentional variety costs more than routine. But this is an area where I’ve genuinely made peace with spending more because the evidence behind plant diversity is so compelling.

8. A Quality Gut Health Supplement

38 Tera is Dr. B’s own supplement company and their flagship product is a prebiotic supplement called DMN or Daily Microbiome Nutrition. It combines three classes of prebiotics derived from seven different plants and is designed to feed and diversify the gut microbiome. I started taking it after following Dr. B’s work for over a year and feeling like I wanted to do something more targeted for my gut health beyond just food.

I won’t pretend it’s cheap. It definitely is NOT. But you can shop DMN by 38TERA and get up to 33% off with my exclusive code HOMECOOKEDROOTS. I’ve found it genuinely worth it for where I am right now, particularly postpartum when my body has been through a lot and my gut health feels like a real priority.

If you want to learn more about the science behind it, Dr. B explains it far better than I can. Check out his podcast appearances, as well as his Instagram @theguthealthmd and his books Fiber Fueled and Plant Powered Plus. He explains it all far better than I can and I genuinely think you’ll find his message as eye opening as I did.

And while I agree that budgeting can provide the guardrails to keep you on track, after budgeting every dollar for the past ten years, I’ve realized it’s not quite that simple.

For some background, I’ve always been a natural spender. I loved shopping and, as the saying goes, always had a hole burning in my pocket. As a kid and even into my early twenties, I couldn’t spend my money fast enough.

Everything changed when I graduated from college. My minimum student loan payments were more than $1,000 a month (thanks Sallie Mae 🥲), and it became painfully clear that I would never be able to afford the payment, let alone pay off the debt, if I didn’t completely change my spending habits and my relationship with money.

Not long after, I started listening to The Dave Ramsey Show religiously. Literally three hours a day for a little over two years — the entire time it took me to pay off my $70,000 worth of student loan debt.

Love him or hate him, Dave Ramsey taught me discipline with money, and I’ll always credit him with changing my life for the better.

Because the thing is, learning to be good with money isn’t about being good with numbers. You can be super savvy with a spreadsheet, but if you can’t control your spending habits, nothing will ever change.

And that’s exactly why I think the phrase “A budget gives you permission to spend” resonates so deeply with people like me who are natural spenders. Once you make a plan for your money, you can spend confidently within the plan, knowing your dollars are going where you intended them to.

But let’s talk about spending within the plan, because unless you’re giving yourself a lot of margin each month, it’s not as simple as it sounds.

Imagine it’s the first of the month. All of your budget categories magically replenish themselves, and the clock starts over. You have permission to spend every single dollar you have allocated inside your various budget categories. Truly one of my favorite feelings!

Maybe it’s finally time for that Costco run to restock all the grocery staples your family has been running low on. Or maybe you order the organizing supplies you’ve been eyeing so you can finally tackle the linen closet. Or perhaps this is the month you plant those privacy trees you’ve been talking about for months.

All of those purchases fit within the budget, so we have permission to spend the money…right?

But then you remember buying that new pillow last month because it was within the “home” budget. As the month went on, though, you ran out of toilet paper, paper towels, dish soap, and shampoo. By the end of the month you’re in the red, feeling guilty for buying the pillow because it turned out you couldn’t really afford it this month after all.

It’s almost as if the phrase should really be, “A budget gives you permission to spend…as long as you won’t need the money for something more important later in the month.”

I’ve certainly improved my impulse control and built the habit of saving consistently.

But choosing not to spend money my budget says I can spend, simply because I might need it later in the month, is still incredibly difficult.

It helps me understand why people resist budgeting in the first place. Because even though a budget does give you permission to spend, it can still feel restrictive.

But maybe it’s supposed to.

For years, I thought this was simply the tradeoff of budgeting. You either spent the money and hoped nothing unexpected came up later, or you left it sitting there and felt frustrated because your budget suddenly didn’t feel like it was giving you permission to spend at all.

It wasn’t until recently that I realized that just because my budget says I can spend money doesn’t mean I should.

One of the most important lessons I’ve learned since taking control of my own finances is the value of delayed gratification.

And I’ve come to realize that, for someone who still regularly feels a hole burning in my pocket, the budget gives me permission to spend, but it doesn’t require me to. In fact, it often teaches me to wait.

Let’s say I have $500 budgeted for home purchases this month. Instead of spending every available dollar on things I could buy, I focus on buying only the things I actually need for the entire month. Whatever is left stays in that category and rolls into the next month.

Now I have my rolled-over money, plus another $500 for the new month. And now the budget gives me permission to spend on the project I’ve been thinking about while still leaving room for the inevitable home expenses that pop up along the way.

Dave Ramsey taught me how to stop spending money I didn't have.

It took me another decade to learn that sometimes the hardest part isn't saying no to money you don't have. It's saying "not yet" to money you do.

Truthfully, grocery shopping on a budget is one of my greatest skills. It’s how I paid off $70,000 of student loan debt in just 27 months, thousands of people have taken my grocery-budgeting email challenges, and I’ve shared over 200 budget-friendly recipes on homecookedroots.com.

But during pregnancy and postpartum, our spending crept up.

Some of that was inflation. Some of it was an intentional decision to choose healthier (and more expensive) foods. But because I know how to shop well on a budget, I also know the truth: A good chunk of that increase has come down to poor planning, poor execution, and prioritizing convenience (namely almost exclusively shopping at Whole Foods — more on that later!).

So today, we’re reviewing exactly what we’ve spent, where I think we’ve gone wrong, and what we’re going to do about it. In August, I’ll put the same advice I’ve shared through my grocery-budgeting challenges to the test in real time.

The Numbers

I meticulously track our spending on a monthly basis, so thankfully, auditing it is fairly quick and easy.

If you are interested in tracking your own food spending, I recommend tracking on a micro level. Instead of lumping everything into one broad “food” category, I recommend separating your transactions into three to five categories, depending on your own lifestyle:

• Groceries

• Restaurants/Eating Out

• Coffee/Alcohol Out

• Supplements

• Work lunches

We also have a sixth category for the monthly get-togethers we host so those expenses don’t artificially inflate our grocery spending.

Here’s why: If every food related transaction is grouped together in one category, it becomes really difficult to figure out what is actually driving your spending.

Is your spending high because you’re eating out too often? Or is it groceries? If you are eating out too often, is it because you’re not packing a lunch? Or is it social outings with friends?

By separating your purchases into smaller categories from the start, it’s super easy to quickly look at the numbers and identify exactly where your weak spots are.

When I audited our spending, the individual categories made it very easy to see that groceries are our biggest problem. And honestly, considering how much we’ve been spending on groceries, our restaurant spending is too high, too.

Because if we’re buying that much food at the grocery store, we should not also need to eat out as frequently as we have. That tells me the problem is not only how much we’re buying, but how poorly we’re planning for and using what we bring home.

So without further ado here are our monthly totals:

• January: $762

• February: $910

• March: $420

• April: $1,013

• May: $906

• June: $706

• July: $1,026 and counting, since the month isn’t over yet!

We also spent an additional $678 in June on a bulk order of local, grass-fed ground beef that we’ll use throughout the remainder of the year. I kept that purchase separate from June’s regular grocery total because it wasn’t food we consumed, but it does contribute to our overall grocery spending.

Including the bulk beef purchase, our total grocery spending so far this year is $6,421, or an average of $917.29 a month.

Now, if you’re reading these numbers and you’re thinking, We spend this much (or more) and I never considered it a problem, please don’t take this as a sign that you need to change your spending. The beauty of personal finance is that it is, in fact, personal. Every family’s spending should reflect its own income, circumstances, values, and priorities.

I’ve watched our grocery totals creep higher month after month for the last couple of years, and while I’ve known we could lower them, our grocery spending wasn’t preventing us from meeting our other financial goals, so reducing it simply wasn’t a major priority.

But every purchase has an opportunity cost. Spending more in one area means having less available in another, even when you can technically afford both.

And lately, food waste has been bothering me more than the total itself. Every time we have to throw out food we bought with good intentions but never used, I can’t help seeing it as money that could have been put toward our future instead.

So I’m going back to the exact strategies I’ve taught for years. Here’s exactly what I’m changing in August.

The August Grocery Reset

Any time I’m helping someone else audit their spending, I generally look at a few things:

• Where are they shopping?

• Are they meal planning?

• If yes, how many meals are they planning each week?

• How many ingredients are they purchasing for each recipe?

• Do the meals they’re planning actually fit their current season of life?

The answers to these questions can tell you a lot about what is driving someone’s grocery spending. So, let’s go through my answers one by one.

Where am I shopping?

This past year, I’ve shopped almost exclusively at Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Costco.

Now you might be thinking…ummm duh. Of course your spending is higher. You’re shopping at the most expensive grocery stores.

And on its face, that’s true. Shopping at premium grocery stores is absolutely costing me more money. I’ve said myself, both in blog posts and in my grocery challenges, that switching from a store like Whole Foods to a budget grocery store like Grocery Outlet can instantly lower your spending without requiring much additional effort.

But I also know myself, and I don’t think shopping at Whole Foods and Sprouts is the sole reason our spending is high. I’d even argue that, in our situation, it isn’t the biggest problem.

To test that theory, I’m going to improve our grocery habits in August while continuing to shop at Whole Foods, Sprouts, and Costco.

Because here’s the deal. I’ve chosen to shop at these stores over the past year for a few practical reasons:

• I can get everything I need in one stop. I LOVE Grocery Outlet and my Walmart Neighborhood Market, but I can never get everything on my list at either store. That means making at least one additional stop, which is not ideal with an infant in tow.

• I can use free curbside pickup. Not having to wake a sleeping baby to go inside a grocery store is priceless.

• I can schedule recurring weekly staples. This has significantly reduced the time I spend placing grocery orders and helps ensure we always have our regular items on hand.

I know that if I had expected myself to shop in person at a cheaper store every week, it more than likely wouldn’t have happened. And in that case, we likely would have spent even more by eating out several times instead.

By the end of the year, I’d like to get back into the habit of checking Grocery Outlet and Walmart first, then filling in the gaps at Whole Foods and Sprouts. But as you’ll see in my answers to the next few questions, I think my other habits have had a much bigger impact on our budget.

Have I been meal planning?

More often than not, no. And here’s why I think this is the real ship sinker…

When we grocery shop without a plan, we WAY OVERSPEND. We overcompensate for not knowing what we’re going to make by buying a little bit of everything and telling ourselves, I don’t know what I’ll cook but at least we’ll have options.

The problem is that “options” often means a cart full of ingredients that don’t necessarily turn into complete meals. It’s done with the best of intentions, but it often leads to overspending, food waste, and even more spending in the form of takeout.

Before having a baby, I was a very detailed meal planner. I even prepared a well stocked freezer for postpartum. But once that food ran out, things started going downhill fast.

I could give plenty of valid reasons why meal planning fell by the wayside, but the fact remains that it hasn’t been happening regularly, and our spending has suffered because of it.

Now, I think it’s important to call out another kind of meal planning that can be just as detrimental as not planning at all and that’s planning way too many meals.

I’m talking several breakfasts, several lunches, and several dinners. That creates a grocery list that’s too long, a bill too high, and more food than most families can realistically use before it goes bad.

After years of grocery budgeting and meal planning, I’ve found the sweet spot to be planning one or two breakfasts and four or five dinners, with leftovers used for lunch.

I also recommend choosing recipes that require you to buy only three or four ingredients. Ideally, the meals you plan should be built around food you already have on hand in your pantry, fridge, and freezer.

For example, if you have spaghetti noodles and frozen meatballs, you could make spaghetti and meatballs by buying only marinara, bread, and a salad kit if desired.

On the other hand, if you find a recipe on Instagram that requires 15 new ingredients, it may look delicious, but it is also going to cost you a lot more.

Over the course of a week, this could mean adding 16 new items to your cart instead of 60.

Have I been planning realistic meals?

In addition to considering how many ingredients a meal requires, it’s also important to be realistic about how much time and energy you actually have to cook.

And once again, this has been a downfall for me.

I love cooking, and I generally don’t mind trading my time for more labor intensive from-scratch meals. But doing that while caring for an infant and running on chronic sleep deprivation has been much harder than I expected.

I’ve been regularly humbled by how difficult it is to cook my usual favorites in this season of life.

August Goals

Looking at all of these answers together, the problem is clear. I’ve been shopping without a plan, buying way too many ingredients, and choosing meals that don’t always fit the amount of time and energy I realistically have.

So for August, I’m not overhauling everything at once. Instead, I’m focusing on 5 goals that I think will make the biggest difference:

1. Weekly meal planning is a non-negotiable. I will plan one to two breakfasts and four to five dinners for the week based around ingredients I already have on hand.

2. Update my freezer inventory. Early in the month, I’d really like to take inventory of what we already have in the freezer. This will help me build meals around food we’ve already paid for and give me something I can quickly reference when I’m meal planning each week.

3. Clean out the fridge once a week and take stock of what needs to be used. We have one of those older fridges with the fridge on the bottom and the freezer on top. The great thing about it is that it has a ton of storage. The downside is that it’s so deep, food regularly gets pushed to the back and forgotten about until it smells bad enough to demand our attention. I’d really like to get out of that cycle.

4. Complete my quick dinner index. I’ve been slowly building a list of realistic dinners I’ve successfully made in this season of life. Alongside each recipe, I keep notes about what we liked, what I changed, and anything I would do differently next time. I regularly browse this list when I don’t have a plan and need to figure out something to make quickly.

5. Freeze three recipes for the future. One of my bigger goals is to restock the freezer with easy meals I can rely on when I’m too busy or tired to cook. I’m not expecting to rebuild the entire freezer in one month, so for August, I’ll challenge myself to double three recipes and freeze the extra portion. That way, I can slowly build a stash of homemade convenience meals without adding a separate meal prep day to my schedule.

Hopefully, by the end of August, I’ll have a lower grocery bill and a much more functional system for feeding our family!

Welcome to my new cozy corner of the internet where I’ll be keeping you up to date on ALL THE THINGS.

Since this is technically post number one, I figured I should start by telling you exactly what’s changing around here. So grab your coffee, this one’s a bit of an update!

If you didn’t know, I’ve been sharing recipes on homecookedroots.com for coming up on 7 (!) years now — tested recipes, styled photos, the whole polished, blogging shebang.

And after a longer break than I had anticipated to have a baby, I’m retiring from recipe blogging.

Because here’s what I’ve realized: the polished version of blogging was never actually the good part.

Several rounds of recipe testing. Photography shoots with tons of artificial lighting. Writing and rewriting so Google (and now AI) could find it.

It’s a lot of production, and honestly? I don’t think all that production makes the recipes any more helpful.

A styled photo of the recipe plated in perfect lighting doesn’t look like anyone’s actual Tuesday dinner table. It looks like a magazine.

And let’s be honest, most of us are still looking for the “jump to recipe button” anyway.

So instead, I’m going casual.

Real grocery receipts, iPhone photos of what’s actually happening in my kitchen and freezer that week. Straight-up recipes without the fluff.

No styling. No elaborate photo shoots. Just useful ideas from my real life.

I think this version is going to be more helpful, more personal and more fun for both us. You’re getting me in real time, without an entire food blogging production wedged in between.

And if you know me, you know that always includes a lot of thoughts on budgeting.

Home-Cooked Roots was never just about cooking. It was about the budgeting underneath it: managing money well, spending wisely, making a dollar stretch further than you might think possible.

I just happened to talk about it through recipes.

So, what can you actually expect from me here?

If you loved my Budget Eats and Receipts posts, I think you’re really going to love this newsletter!

You’ll get:

• Real grocery budgets and receipts — This coming month I’m going to expose exactly how much we’ve spent year to date on food. Spoiler — it’s not pretty. I’ll be using every trick I know to reset our spending and get it back in line for the second half of 2026.

• Casual cooking —iPhone photos of what we actually ate that week, including the freezer restock I promised you.

• What I'm loving lately — Kitchen gear, budgeting tools, and random finds that are actually worth the money, from someone who thinks hard about nearly every purchase.

• Broader budgeting thoughts — What it’s like living on one income in a HCOL area, budgeting gray areas, our personal savings goals, and everything else I can’t stop thinking about.

• SAHM life, unfiltered — Sharing the budget without sharing the life behind it would only be half the story. How we spend our money and how we feel are so intertwined.

I’ll be sharing the day-to-day stuff on Substack from now on. The budgets, groceries, casual cooking, and real life. The blog isn’t going anywhere. If something feels more like an evergreen resource than a real-time update, it may still land there.

But this is where you’ll find me regularly.

Okay, that’s the update.

I’ll be back very soon with a real time look at our YTD grocery spending and exactly what I’m doing to lower it for the second half of 2026!