Can you moisten the kibble?
My 18yo cat has exactly one tooth left and she eats crunchy kibble just fine and turns her nose up at canned food. The vet said that cats use their teeth to tear not to chew.
Hm. I haven’t tried that since we still have some of the soft-centers stuff in a smaller sealed bag. But I will if I need to. Girl cat won’t eat canned food either, which is a damn shame, because we have a lot left over from Mr. obnoxious.I had just bought him a major food resupply before he went downhill fast.
Am I allowed to join midway? I have felt overwhelmed so I didn’t wnat to commit.
My goal is to get a meal plan system set up so I stop eating out so much. Making it a system instead of slapdash is important for my brain; otherwise I get overwhelmed and I just order out.
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Yup Join now!
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My goal was to keep grocery spending below $150 and to eat from the freezer and pantry. Right now I’m at $103.99 and should be good until January 25 or so, so I think I can make the monthly goal easily. I’ve been somewhat successful at using from the freezer and pantry, but need to step that up. Figuring out what’s left and what could be made from those ingredients needs to happen.
My secondary goal was to try two new recipes and also make an attempt at figuring out a meal rotation plan. No progress there and I may bail on those two goals until February. Political unrest and a pandemic are not really helping my focus at this time. But I can wait on these goals until I have more emotional and physical energy to deal with them. In the meantime, I’m just focusing on getting 5 fruits and veggies each day.
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Did my second grocery shop of the month and so now I’m at $187 so far. I should have enough groceries now for at least a week and a half, maybe 2 weeks.
Minor irritations: the most expensive thing I bought was a bottle of bay leaves (it was the only one - are bay leaves in scarce supply now too?!?). Also I wanted only 1 lime, but they only had 2 lb bags lol. At least I won’t get scurvy now 
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Week two ended for us yesterday.
We mostly kept to plan, except that my DH bought us hot breakfast from the grocery store, and tacked on a snack for himself at “my” weekly take out order. He had his separate takeout meal a different day. The breakfast bagel from the grocery store was one of the tastiest things I’ve had recently.
I was gifted prepared food by my parents, and we were gifted prepared food from a neighbor. (Neighbor likes to cook, but her husband has a very narrow selection of stuff that he will eat, so she often gifts us her excess).
All food and alcohol consumed by me tracked. It’s been a dryer, but not dry, January. We are keeping to our commitment not to purchase any alcohol.
Spent 28 at fast/casual drive thru for me, including a snack for DH (cost was higher due ordering error, and we did not take action to rectify the overcharge… I think the cost should have been 22)
Spent 73 on groceries (including the hot breakfast)
Spent 15 on coffee beans from the coffee shop
DH got take out for him only, approx 15. Apparently he did not consider his snack his take out allotment for the week!
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Which app do you use?
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Week 2
My goal was to track how much we’re enjoying food. We made a huge dusty mess in the kitchen when we cut off part of our bench so we 3nded up eating a lot of takeaway and I didn’t have the energy to set up a “meal enjoyment tracking sheet”. Instead I’ve added a note on whether the takeaway meal was tasty or mediocre. It’s also prompted me to try takeaway from some local restaurants instead of chains, and so far they’ve been delicious.
It also prompted me to turn some chicken we cooked into a curry instead of eating all of it plain in sandwiches. So good. Experiment is therefore a success.
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T hortons 12.66
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We use an app that’s actually designed for splitting checks at bars called Tab:
(all our actual accounting is entered into YNAB, where we have one another as credit card accounts and enter all transactions that way, then double check/reconcile about once every 6 weeks of so).
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ahh I love it! My other financially minded friend loved to use Tab, as we often joke and complain about how the non-drinkers often end up essentially buying everyone else 2 mimosas 
great idea to use it to split non-tab receipts as well!!
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Month to date
$286 on food total
of that, $62 was on special meals/takeout
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Yea, I like tab because it makes it easy to say “this person did not split this item, these people did”
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Updated total: $68.88/$300. I think we are going to be just fine; this has actually been easier than I expected. I guess I really had been stocking up on food…
I made the mistake of telling my husband we hadn’t spent much on groceries this month so he decided to buy the fancy expensive coffee beans instead of our usual 
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Week 2 check-in: surprisingly, we have only ordered out once this month so far! Credits to easily reheatable batch cooking and having some prepared foods in the freezer, as well as “better” outlets for frustrations and stress than ordering out.
I am here to add in one planned meal for next Thurs - gonna do takeout and eat at a park with a friend!
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We did a Costco run yesterday got a few things from the regular grocery store today. We were out of a lot of high $$$ things from Costco so it was REALLY expensive this time. We got frozen fish, frozen shrimp, canned salmon, 50# rice, etc. Here is the updated pivot table for the month. I don’t think we will need to get anything else, but maybe one small trip to the grocery store for <$20.
| Category | SUM of Cost |
|---|---|
| Breakfast | $45.20 |
| Coffee Shops | $4.50 |
| Condiment | $15.76 |
| Dairy | $40.02 |
| Dining Out / Delivery | $170.47 |
| Drinks | $80.46 |
| Fees | $43.19 |
| Healthy Snack | $69.13 |
| Junk Food | $1.49 |
| Pantry | $11.96 |
| Pantry Item | $74.10 |
| Prepared Food | $37.35 |
| Produce - Canned | $23.47 |
| Produce - Fresh | $99.12 |
| Produce - Frozen | $13.07 |
| Protein | $95.54 |
| Spices | $10.99 |
| Grand Total | $835.82 |
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This week’s new recipe: Instant Pot chicken vindaloo - yum!
Spent: $15.97 (dairy/egg weekly delivery)
Kale: salad with miso dressing. Possibly my favorite way to eat our winter greens.
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Okay! So my system is in effect. I am planning 2 weeks of meals, making a grocery list for each week, and just alternating weeks. This way I never have to meal plan again and only have to check our ingredients against the lists for the week. And the prep cooking, of course. if my family gets tired of the same two weeks worth of meals, I will add another week.
This may seem boring to foodies but… I just want good, warm meal and not have to reinvent the wheel all the time 🤷
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FYI, Army dining facilities operate on a 21-day rotating menu. Your two week or three week plan reminded me of that.
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