Hello, to get the Snackuary 2022 badge, please share your final check-in for the month. This can be lessons learned, your totals, or whatever makes sense for your own goals! You can’t “fail” the challenge as long as you check-in - even if you’ve gone over your budget or missed your goal. It’s about learning about your food costs, not just meeting an arbitrary goal!
I’ve already granted the badge to a few people who’ve done their final checkin. If I missed you, tag @anomalily and I’ll get you the badge.
use up what’s in freezer/fridge, - we did a pantry/freezer inventory. Using up what’s here is going to be a long term goal!
analyze grocery receipts monthly by dividing food into categories, - will be doing this Wednesday.
look at every item over $5 CAD and brainstorm ways to acquire it cheaper, make it, replace it with something else or drop it out of our diet altogether, - Finally have DH on board with this. The only things over $5 were cranberry juice, which we use for kidney issues, and instant milk powder, which I buy in bulk to make yogurt from scratch. Yogurt costs over $5/600-750 ml here. I did buy bulk flour this month on sale 2-5 kg bags (one white, one whole wheat) for $7.99 each…a steal of a deal.
try to stay under $500 CAD/month for food only, - DONE!
meal plan monthly. - DONE!
I had a momentary lapse in judgment and ordered HelloFresh mid-month. I thought I’d just keep the service for the month, but I didn’t like it for a variety of reasons…not the least of which was the cost. So I cancelled it after the second week. Thankfully I limited the damage to my grocery budget.
There might be more money spent tomorrow on Coke Zero by the shadowy one, and if things are very lucky & things are organized, rice, butter, olive oil. Regardless, we should end below $500, which gives us lots of flexibility.
Using the pantry things is harder than it seems it should be. But I have created a flavoured dried herb oil thing to mix with yogurt for lunches next week, and I thought of something to do with the pectin (ginger marmalade), so this objective is still moving forward. I guess it is a good reminder that they are languishing in the cupboard because they aren’t things that get used as easy parts of general habits.
Also, dried mint as an additive to lemon-ginger-honey tea is not how I’m going to use the rest of that jar.
I’m pretty pleased with my meal planning this month and want to continue next month. We tried two new recipes this month from a cookbook I got for Christmas and made each one again the week after as they were surprisingly easy so they might end up in our rotation. I’ve also realised I just need to rely more on easy, tried and true recipes, our weeks mostly went according to the meal plan but sometimes the day that each one was cooked on changed up mid-week. I think I’ve kick started myself back into the meal planning habit!
Final check in: went over on groceries by $23 but some toiletries were mixed in there so I think actually it’s a little under budget!
My eating out ended up being under budget by $37! Considering how bonkers this month was between getting sick, messing up my shoulder, and running a massive training last week, I think that went pretty well!
Ironically, last week I kind of rediscovered my love for cooking with a glass of wine (makes me feel like a classy Italian lady instead of the grubby granddaughter of a classy Italian lady that I am). I’m really hopeful that I’ll actually cook more on the weekends now that I’ve learned this. Made a really good creamy tortellini soup today and some homemade pasta sauce!
Final check-in (with noted request to tag @anomalily for badgey-type goodness )
Food and dietary talk as much as financial talk, and in relation to Mental Health
This week I have spent time looking for dried foods which will help me with my cooking problem. Ingredients keep going off when I don’t have the spoons to deal with them (which is relatively often at the moment, I’ve managed to cook just once in the last two weeks). So, I’m thinking dried or frieze-dried things could be good.
I like and seem to be able to manage to make smoothies. The washing up afterwards is relatively easy, and they get me proteins (in the form of powder), and all the lovely stuff which comes from berries, seeds, nuts and fruit and so on. So that’s one thing I can do. Which is good. I also stumped up for some ‘Green’ food supplement capsules this week, and have been taking one daily. Seems like a worthwhile investment for the days when not much vegetable action is happening, and just as a baseline in general. It’s stuff like wheatgrass, and other things with lots of nice complex nutrients. Otherwise, I wouldn’t get much of those things in at all right now.
Having done my detailed household budget last week, I can see I can afford a limit of £55 per month for household goods including food top-ups, which is actually more than I thought, so this week I bought in an order for two lots of a quality instant noodle brand I like, and some protein bars. Both of which are inexpensive ways of getting something warm/hearty in, and getting closer to hitting a more balanced set of macro nutrients. Otherwise some days it’s just… bread. Which isn’t ideal. I’m not on any particular diet by the way, it’s not that, it’s just I know my body and brain needs more than carbs, ideally, but when I’m struggling, only the super-duper easy stuff is possible.
I am considering an extra top-up of some dried leek or seaweed flakes, because I already have some excellent miso paste, and plenty of dried noodles, so if I can make up a simple noodles-in-broth dish some days, that will be better than the instant kind. And my hope is that in turn might then make me feel able to add the odd carrot or two sometimes. Stuff like dried leeks could be good to sprinkle in casseroles too (If I ever make one of those). So we’ll see. Trying to make it easier for me to climb the ladder back to more healthy eating, by giving myself things I like along the way.
With the free food I am given, I have realised I can take the ingredients out of the sandwiches, which get very boring after a while (more bread), and cook those sandwich fillings up with something like a baked potato for example. So I had that the other day, and it worked well. And tonight I’ve got some cheese sarnies I can do the same with. Tasty…
Also it seems I might be able to get some help with regaining my confidence with food prep, cooking etc. from some form of occupational health as part of the Psych team I’m talking to right now. Just even someone to tell me how best to arrange my kitchen for more efficiency would be beneficial, so let’s see if that can happen. Fingers crossed.
Onwards and upwards all. Well done with all your budgetings and doings this month. Doing well!!
We ate most of our meals at home, with probably about 2 meals out each week on average.
It was nice to see that our fruit/veg was the highest category, and snax were not nearly as much as I thought they might be. Holy shit though! more than I would like to spend on processed stuff, and I somehow did not realize we go through as much oil, spices, vinegar, what have ye as we do.
I was surprised at how little we spent on dairy, considering that we have it pretty much every day.
I failed miserably at hitting the grocery budget this month, but I am putting part of the blame on having 5 weekends, which meant we ended up with 2 Costco runs this month. I came in at $977/$600 budgeted. I was under budget in a bunch of other categories for the month though, so I ended up under budget overall by $116 for the month.
Final check-in:
I failed to stick to the meal plan last week because my estimates of how much two handymen could do in a day to redo my kitchen were not quite accurate. I technically had the kitchen in a working mode again on Wednesday, but most of my drawers were not yet assembled and installed, so all my leftover pantry items were spread all over the place until Sunday. So there was more takeout than anticipated.
Overall my goal of eating down pantry items was accomplished quite well. I got back to backing bread and discovered a nice flatbread recipe that I can do relatively quick instead of running to the Turkish grocery store.
What did I learn?
I realized I really don’t need much in terms of pantry backstock. It is often perfectly fine to substitute stuff with stuff already bought to get them into the rotation.
And seed crackers made with polenta/corn flour are delicious Might make those again
I tried 2 new places, and liked one and not the other. I found another 3 places to try low-contact pickup from in future. Spent $1500 on groceries and $500 on takeaway for a family of 4 humans (2 adults, 1 kid, 1 baby). Successful month.
Dairy: $68.74
Veg/Fruit: $89.01
Snacks: $5.07 (DH buys a treat for himself when he does the shopping)
Grains: $52.41
Meat/nuts/oils: $25.57
Beverages (juices): $21.25
Meal kit delivery service for 2 weeks: $209.98
Total January groceries = $472.03. Budget was $500 CAD. I call this a success.
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Might make those again