So I read that it's time for the  February Food Challenge, where folks write in their plan for food shopping for a month, focusing on spending less than usually budgeted.  Some families plan on spending less than $200 for the month for a family of 4!  I'm lucky if I get away with that for a week with my family of 4.

Is it possible?  Can you spend less but still feed your family good, nourishing meals?  We prefer organic fruits, vegetables and meats, as well as organic milk and eggs.  Just the milk alone is $6.50 per gallon.  I wonder where the coupons for the organic world are hiding.

I decided to do some sleuthing, and found the following e-coupons for some typical organic foods:

• Organic Valley
• Mambo Sprouts (various products)
• Stonyfield
• Santa Cruz Organic
• Coleman Natural
• Barbara's
• Health-e-savers
• Earthbound Farm
• Guiltless Gourmet
• GlutenFree.com
• Brown Cow
• Delicious Living (various products)
• Seventh Generation
• Country Choice Organics
• Turtle Mountain
• Yogi Teas
• Horizon Organics

That's a good start.  If you find any others, please post them in the comments section below.  Obviously, what you do with the food you buy is as important to what you buy.  We have been purchasing more dry beans and rice over the past few weeks and have seen a dramatic decrease in our food bill.  I find that by boiling the rinsed beans for 10 minutes and leaving them for an hour off heat is easy enough to get them ready to cook with later.  Other people use the soak and cook all day method, while others use their pressure cookers.  Any method is fine, and definitely costs less than the canned variety.  Other things we do is make meals that imitate our favorite restaurant meals.  As a family who loves to eat out, we have been learning how to eat more at home.  We now know how to make many meals from the Mexican, Vietnamese and Thai cultures.   I will post some of those recipes in the coming weeks.

What do you do to make your dollar go farther?  Share your ideas here.