Finally categorized my last Fred Meyer trip, AND did the gigantic Trader Joe’s trip. Lucked out with a long baby nap so I was able to do the trip, put away the food, AND do the receipts. And she’s still asleep 
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February challenge question:
There’s a round perfect 28 days in February this year, and they line up with the weeks.
Does anyone want to do a habit challenge? Do X every day for 28 days?
(open to other suggestions)
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trying to decide what our special food thing is this week. I feel like alternating between ingredients and takeout might be good to help us narrow down the options.
Week 1 was the fancy fajitas
Week 2 was takeout from our favourite local diner
Week 3 fancy sandwich fixings with deli meat and cheese and sourdough each from their own speciality shop?
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Weekly produce is subscribed. Hope I don’t regret it
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Week 2 late check in: $122.68 spent plus some on a gift card that I forgot to track. Might need 1 more grocery trip for the month plus I’m doing some stocking up so there’s been a bit more packaging than I’d normally like and I haven’t made it to the bulk store yet. I will be happy if I can get there before the end of the month.
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Yes please
Okay, fruit and veggies works well
I did another trip to supermarket because I couldn’t get everything I wanted to be delivered. I went yesterday and it was fairly empty (smaller supermarket with 3 other customers in). Bought all snacks and cheese/deli meat for at least 4 weeks.
Today I went for meat due to good circumstance, I have a day off and went there after the dentist appointment. As planned it was really empty and I stayed with meat as planned. Now I should be fine until the end of February with meat.
Tracking expenses went well.
Overall, I am fairly happy with progress and money spent. 
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I am realizing that our grocery bill is up this month because we vowed not to do any baking during January, due to excessive baking/sugar consumption over the holidays. Normally if I wanted a snack I would throw some quick baked good together. Now that that is not an option, we’re buying more other things to snack on. Healthy stuff, like fruit and nuts - but this is raising our overall bill. I find myself also eating more at meals because I am not eating sweets, which, again, raises the bill as I’m going through food faster.
Oh well, about a week left and then I can bake again.
We decided to skip Imperfect Foods in the coming week because we need some household and drugstore stuff so we are doing a Jewel order instead. Yikes. $$$. This is what happens when you only buy household/drugstore stuff once every month or 2 in one big trip. I totally have sticker shock though, after tip this is going to be like $200.
Are you guys breaking out stuff that’s on your grocery store bill that is not food? That certainly would make this number look better, haha.
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I’m only listing costs for food for humans. Well, and alcohol, so I guess costs for things humans will consume. So no toothpaste or cat food or motor oil even though we get them in the same grocery pickup as people food.
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30.35 groceries
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And speaking of the above, Husband went actually inside the Walmart earlier this week since we were almost out of both beer and wine. He wore his respirator, but also said mask compliance was much better - all the employees and about half the customers had one on. That county of about 25K people is losing 2-3 a day to Covid right now, so maybe it’s finally making an impession.
- So, on beer and wine: $29.46
On salad (!), Bananas (!) and the nutty bars they didn’t bring at our last pickup:
$8.34
With last week’s $103.21 pickup, that brings the January grocery total to
$141.01
Don’t know if we’ll have any more this month - I did find another bag of girl kitty food, so it’s not urgent. Except I’m almost out of cheese, so it could get urgent.
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I don’t categorize much any more, but when I tracked closely, only food is food. Toothpaste is “household”. Cat food is “pet”. Blah, blah, blah.
If I buy underpants at the grocery store, which I do, that doesn’t make it part of my food budget.
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I may have given up 
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Not far behind you, buddy. This was not a good month for me to try to track something in smaller pieces than I normally would, or with more care than normal.
So, we’ve spent:
$880 on "Groceries"
We feel good about stuff bought from our local shops, but it is easier to get a large load of all the groceries delivered from one of the two major grocery stores
$370 on "Meals out/Takeaway"
Best enjoyment comes from trying new places, “date” meals, and maybe 1 family night of takeaway a fortnight. We’ve been buying extra because our kitchen was unusable for a week, and that didn’t feel fun but it was important for getting us through that week.
$380 on "Work lunches"
I prefer to make my lunch but this is survival food. I will have to check in with Ponder, but I recall him saying he prefers to buy freshly made rolls and such, but many places are closed over January.
I haven’t broken it down much into enjoyment categories, just broadly outlined what I’ve noticed feels good and what feels “meh”. I don’t think we’ve had much that fell into “bad”, maybe the salad greens I bought this week that went off really fast.
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Month to date
$459 for all grocery and special occasion eating
$389 for regular grocery spending
(This week the butter, cheese, coffee, coke zero, and vitamins were all on sale)
I thought I’d be able to compare with Jan 2019, but I just looked back at my entries then, and it seems I didn’t actually share back the grocery amount, so I’d need to get the shadowy one to pull out credit card statements. Also, I certainly had a lot of coffees out and lunches away during the before times. Which is funny, because my self image is someone who brown bagged all the time.
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instead of eating out on a whim mr.flan is making me a quesadilla instead. It smells like success
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Food/drink items from Instacart yesterday totaled $167.63.
Total for the order was $203.16. (Additional non-food items include toothbrushes, dishwasher cleaner, laundry detergent, shower gel, ziploc bags, hair product for Boyfriend.)
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I used my meal plan system and groceries were only $62 this week. Also it was done in like 15 minutes versus the agony of meal planning again. This is a win.
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Nice! What were your meal plan wins that took 15min? I may want to borrow
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