I appear to be in vacation and I love it.
Last night indian food…I’m not sure, probably $70
This morning breakfast (takeout takeout takeout) $35
And starbucks after our hike 16
Worth it.
Also the breakfast place was delicious AND I just cleaned up the mess, and as well as ketchup packets they gave us these tiny tic tac packages which are the best thing ever
Week 1 check-in:
I had my one planned meal out this week on Friday instead of Sunday. It was good! Felt like a good balance of yummy and portion and price. So far so good.
Field peas are just another term for Crowder peas. Black Eyed Peas are one kind of crowd or peas, but there are lots and lots of kinds.
Used up some turkey meatballs from the freezer tonight and spaghetti and meatballs. It’s not part of the freezer challenge, but I also finished off a jar of pesto that have been in the fridge for a good long while, mostly in the sauce, but some on the bruschetta.
I still haven’t gone to the grocery store since December 22, but we’re nowhere near actually needing to go. I’m kind of curious to see what the limiting factor will be, but I suspect it will be convenience items for my husband to eat in the truck on his way to or from the college. That or ice cream…
I underestimated how tough my work week was going to be and so I am out of sweets! That and fresh fruit are our limiting factors.
I’m not buying anything but frozen fruits and vegetables anymore, largely because I’m still sterilizing my groceries. So I am thoroughly stocked, just nothing fresh. I make an exception for potatoes and onions, which can safely live in quarantine for a while. It does stretch out the time between trips. And I can always make brownies for sweets…
I love talking about groceries, and groceries are our biggest expense category because we don’t have a mortgage. I tracked grocery spending for years and years and years, but now… my categories are all muddled up.
I spent a month buying groceries for 6 people, with no pantry, and now I’m going to be back with only 2 people with a pantry we ought to start eating down.
So I don’t know how to track this transition. Maybe my goal is just to start tracking again, and stretch out my grocery trips.
I’m going to pick up a grocery order tomorrow and then go as long as possible, because we’re back in semi- isolation after being out of state.
We failed at going out to eat because my toddler got kicked out of a second daycare. It was 100% I cant even do anything so we are going to a drive through. We can do better the rest of the month.
We did go to the grocery store once. So we have 2 more trips for the rest of the month. DH wanted to go to the grocery store for only marshmallows today so we could make rice crispy bars. We resisted and I made pretzel bites instead which were delicious!
Groceries: $64.40/200
Takeaway: 1/5 using a gift card
Update:
I ate boxed soup from the cupboard, and a frozen meal and bread from the freezer.
$0/$40 spent on groceries.
0/5 takeout meals.
Week (end) 2 update. We didn’t need to get any groceries this weekend so the only change I have is in the eating out category. We got chipotle once and pizza once so that category has increased from $32 to $91.79 and overall food spending has increased from $279.49 to $339.28. Quoting isn’t working well on my phone, so posting a screen shot of the last update instead
Start of week 2 update:
Costco: $53.12 (eggs, almond milk, broccoli, avocados, romaine lettuce, some sliced meats)
Regular grocery: $17.75 (all fresh produce for the week)
Meal Plan:
Breakfast- chicken congee and/or eggs
Lunch- vegan butternut squash Mac+cheese
Dinner- salad w/grilled chicken+veg
sides: braised cabbage+ carrots
Total so far this month: $86.27/$150 goal
Feeling really good about my grocery spending so far, and definitely know I can make the spending goal for the month. Most of what I bought today at Costco will last 2+ weeks, so the next two weekends of shopping will be just fresh produce. I can’t believe I’ve meal planned 2 weeks in a row. It’s so annoying and I hate it, BUT it’s nice to be actually using things in my pantry and having a plan when I grocery shop.
incredibly immature meal used a lot from the freezer: hot dogs, buns, tater tots, broccoli (roasted with the tots).
This week’s Imperfect delivery:
At month’s end I think I am going to go through and categorize items by:
Only I eat
Only Boyfriend eats
We both eat
We eat pretty differently. I think his meat bill is very high but a vegetarian diet does not seem to agree with him (chiefly because beans and tofu and some fake meats do not agree with him (violently!) so protein would be an issue.
And I am trying to encourage him to be realistic about how much food he needs to buy. That’s been going a LITTLE better but yesterday he ended up with nothing to eat for lunch. The grocery delivery arrived at 5:30ish, so, it is going better in that he was only 1 meal short.
I do get a little frustrated because at this point I could eat entirely out of our food stash and not spend anything other than on a little fresh produce, but he cannot, and that’s driving our bill up. We do split it.
I am not sure I want to nickel and dime him as far as “you should pay in full for these items that I do not eat.”
I understand not wanting to nickel and dime, but a meat-based diet is a lot more expensive than a vegetarian one (unless you buy a ton of imitation meat; then the veggie diet might cost more).
I also understand not wanting to nickle and dime! But I actually split groceries in this way with SSO. Everything we share down the middle, everything I exclusively eat in my category and everything he exclusively eats in his category. We do every grocery receipt this way.
I appreciate it because he eats cheese and alcohol, and I don’t, but I also get ice cream and certain snacks that he doesn’t eat. So it makes both of us feel better. It takes a bit more work but we use an app that scans the receipts and makes it easy.
I like your spreadsheet and your categories!
OK reporting in because I finally have something to report! Finally got my grocery pick up yesterday (was supposed to go during the high-risk hour between 7 and 8 AM, but visibility was about 20 feet on the road, so I turned around and came home again).
Spent on groceries in January so far: $103.21. That may be all for January, or there may be another trip. A lot of things were just unavailable, and unfortunately the only food that girl kitty will eat was among them. Looks like I can get a giant 11 pound bag, but it’ll go stale before she eats it, and the trouble is that she needs soft centers because she’s 14 and her teeth are not what they used to be. If it goes stale, there’s no more softness.So I may make another order just for kitty food, and if I do that, I have to get enough to get us up to the $35 minimum anyway.
I don’t know what they just didn’t deliver yet, because I’ll check on that when I take stuff out of quarantine. But of the cold stuff that I sterilize instead of quarantine, it ended up a little better than I thought it would be; we definitely got chicken, and beef dogs. (We don’t eat pork because of husband’s gout rather than for religious reasons) and turkey smoked sausage, so not bad as far as meat goes, and a lot better than it looked like it was going to be when I was trying to place the order. I only managed two cans of beans, though, because stuff kept going out of stock faster than I could order it. Luckily, I still have most of a 20 pound bag of dried pinto beans.
I even got some juice, which has been hard to come by. Not much of the frozen vegetables I ordered, one bag only. So, I’m glad I stocked up earlier, and we’ll see how things go.
Didn’t realize my January challenge was going to turn into “acquire food challenge” rather than a use it up or lower expenses challenge, but here we go.
I am thinking about auditing our grocery bills for the next couple months to determine his/mine/ours and then presenting him with the info, in a curious tone, of “hey, did you know that in the past 2 months, x% is for food only you eat and y% is for food only I eat and z% is what we both eat?”
I expect, since I have a huge stash of beans and other ingredients, that it will come out that our groceries are largely his. We’ll see.
