Oh, and for reference, I made 3# of ground beef taco meat on Sunday with 2 cans of black beans and a bag of frozen corn. We made tacos on Sunday night for dinner and then added rice and the plan is to eat it for burrito bowl lunches Monday through Thursday this week, with tortilla chips. There might not be enough on Thursday.
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Teen boys are bottomless pits. My brother used to house food so hard my mom would hide food for me in the produce drawer under stuff he didn’t like 
so I could get some. If she didn’t do that I’d go to get food and it would all be gone.
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Yes, also teen athletes. I was a competitive athlete who trained 24-30 hours a week, and I honestly have no idea how my parents afforded to feed me. I drank a half gallon of soy milk EVERY SINGLE DAY
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I think we are going to need to increase our budgets. Grocery spend is still under, but we need another trip. And our freezer, fridge and pantry are much emptier than the start of the month.
Biggest tragedy is restaurant leftovers that would have been fine in the fridge or car overnight were left on the counter.
Also really missing my ubereats lifestyle
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I distinctly remember tracking calorie intake for my health education teacher at age 16, 6’1 skin/bones and peak activity of my life thus far. She didn’t believe it actually averaged over 5500 calories/day but it was no joke.
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You were probably also in the process of developing a more filled-in adult physique, and growing larger takes a TON of calories! I have a weight-lifting book that suggests drinking a gallon of whole milk per day.
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One of my best friends is a large, 6"3’ man who is completely ripped with huge muscles. His family is Scandinavian and he is like a real life Thor. When he started college he was a scrawny bean pole and he credits his muscle gain to drinking a gallon of whole milk per day. I’ve heard him tell many teenage boys to do that 
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Teen boys eat a lot!! We never bought less than 3 gallons of milk. My husband did the grocery shopping and we had 3 boys and his entire little ford escort would be full of food including the trunk:)).
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Not amazing, but better than I thought. When I was wild ass guessing my 2023 budget to see how many vacations I could afford, I put in $900 for food. JUST TO BE SAFE. I had no idea.
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I created a new thread for 2023 groceries all year! Thanks for the interest 
it’s pending mod approval but I’m pretty confident we’ll get the grant.
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It’s up! Feel free to join the fun
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I have a debacle. There is $195 left in my grocery budget for the month, so I can spend $195 this weekend on groceries. Unfortunately, the Costco list has grown and grown throughout the month and there is at least $250 if not $300 on the list. As of this morning we have run out of all breakfast items: oatmeal, cereal, waffles, eggs. I definitely have to make a trip to Costco tomorrow to get these staples, and if I’m there I might as well get everything on the list to avoid doing another trip the following weekend. Doing 2 trips would help me meet the arbitrary “goal” I set for this month ($700) but it seems stupid to me to do back to back trips just to spread the cost over 2 months. Especially since it’s not like I’m out of money in reality, just on the spreadsheet.
Getting a small amount at King Soopers to tide me over would also be dumb because then I’m paying a higher price per ounce. I think I’m just going to get it all at Costco tomorrow and say screw the budget for this month.
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Oooh, I just took a closer look at the list. Over half is non-food items. We still might make it under budget this month!
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The Boy accidentally threw away the receipt, even though he has ones going back to August! Well, I met my goal of trying! Another accomplishment is that I sourced a lot of baby food from Buy Nothing. I think a lot of people who use WIC wind up with tons, and people over shop for it.
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I’ve been considering making a big batch of bolognese - because it makes no sense to have a small one, and I’m currently trying to decide whether to buy the ingredients for this weekend, or wait until the 1st, just for the month to roll over.
On the one hand it is a meaningless game to move it to next month, otoh, deferred spend across the board does make a difference, and the freezer is still pretty full. Also, I’m trying to decide if bolognese even makes sense since the shadowy one doesn’t like pasta. But there used to be a local restaurant that served it on top of fries/potato, so I figure I should be more open as to what goes with what.
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Welp, I have covid so no batch cooking got done and I threw out some rotten lemongrass that I intended to use for soup.
On the plus side, no carnival food/drink expenses. Thpppppppppppt.
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I’m at $219.72 for the month and hopefully won’t need anything else before Wednesday. Sweaty did another regular shopping trip, but looking at all the mini runs I’ve done, we decided I didn’t owe him anything for that as I’ve spent a little more than him on food for the household.
On Tuesday I was really anxious and had slept terribly and I bought $8.95 worth of Kombucha and protein bars. Total for those for the month is $19.93. Hopefully won’t go up in the next couple days!
Will probably join the food tracking for 2023 thread just to track overall expenses.
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I think we’re doing a good job with the containers, next up I need to be more intentional about the freezer ziplocs.
Summary of the prepped containers
red containers (2 cups)
- corn chowder x2
- cheesy soup
x2x1 - coco mung beans
- onion soup
- butter chicken
- unknown probably roast pork in jus?
- roast tomato halves
1 cup
- butter chicken x6
- beef curry x2
- half & half
- beef jus
- cilantro lime sauce
- stock x3
- pinto beans x 2
- bbq pork x 3
- tomato ginger chutney x 2
- cooked salsa
Currently at $661 for the month, 178 is restaurants, 483 is grocery. So reasonable, esp if we remember that week 1 was in Vancouver with limited kitchen access and week 2 had a bunch of kitchen start up spending.
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I pointed out to my husband this morning that he had leftovers in the fridge. Unfortunately they turned out to need to be tossed. But they’re no longer taking up space in the fridge and they’re leftovers, not veggies, so they don’t count against my goal!
I’m pleased to find this week that we have thrown out no more vegetables or fruit, and I have planned the rest of the week’s meals for myself based on what is already in the fridge. Since we’re going out of the country in a week, I don’t want to buy anything that’s just going to sit there!
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So sorry I missed this comment Katscratch. Can’t promise, but I can try. Might be a reasonable time before I get anything locked down to the point where I can share it though.
That said, I steamed a pre-prepared pack of fresh stir-fry veggies in the steamer on top of the rice yesterday, and that came out great! So perhaps that could be my first recommendation…
Thank you for the encouragement too, as ever…
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