Week 1 check in! I have started a price book and jotted down some of our most commonly purchased items from the Boy’s receipt. Unfortunately, I couldn’t figure out how to access our account through the website so I will have to look in the fridge for the sizes of things.
I’m concentrating on things that we use a lot of, that I can easily buy at Target/Sprouts/Costco if they are cheaper there, and that I have not already internalized the price of. I already know what’s a good price on milk, eggs, chicken, etc.
Check-in #1: Leisure Guy’s grocery tracker is working out so far! I spent $104.23 on food this week, $45.24 on groceries and $59.49 on takeout. (Not tracked: mom’s lasagna leftovers that she gifted to me today.) I’m trying not to care about spending more on meals out than groceries, because my first goal is just to track and observe.
I got takeout three times (two actual meals and one fancy coffee plus banana bread). True to my word, I walked to all three places. There’s a cold snap on the way, so I need to plan ahead a little with groceries. I don’t want to be out running errands in 20F/-7C temperatures if I can help it.
So this week I was not the best about not eating out. I got really scattered and forgot my lunch at work one day, so that meant an extra meal out.
So far I’m at $41 for meals out with people (including that lunch at work becuase I got ramen with a co-worker) and $32 for food out alone. Got a fancy coffee today so I can hang at this coffee shop and work and also got some asada fries mostly because I was too sad and tired to cook. Groceries are at $54 though I’m shopping for this week after I leave this coffee shop.
This week's meal plan
Not sure which day will be which, but the meals are:
Frozen fish and cous cous
Bean tacos (eat some of the older emergency beans from the cupboard)
Mushroom pesto pasta (pesto I made last summer from the freezer)
Avocado toast and fried eggs
Kimchi stew (Korean night!)
Out with a friend on Wednesday
Leftovers at some point
Okay, starting out on a somewhat weird week since I was skiing with friends over New Years, but breaking down as best I can.
$72 restaurants: $42 thank you dinner for the friend who came down to pick me up at the airport after my return flight (roughly $20 each for the meal, and this actually happened in Dec. but posted Jan. 1st), $15 for trivia night, $15 for happy hour
$45 ski groceries+alcohol for New Years: Purchases were again made in Dec. but I venmo’d in Jan. to cover my portion…I have no idea how this breaks down and am not too worried about it since we were staying at their place and didn’t have to pay for staying within walking distance of skiing.
$45 other groceries: Primarily fruits/vegetables/eggs/dairy since my fridge was basically empty after having been gone for 2+ weeks (the cat sitter has standing permission to clean out anything I leave behind if she wants anything in there). Also a couple pork loins from the scratch-and-dent section that were a really good deal. These purchases were ridiculously spread out since I kept forgetting random things (the eggs, the cheese, the onions, etc.) and having to walk back so my goal for next week is to put together an actual list for anything I need and then go once and not be ridiculous about it.
I am soaking the last of the mung beans to make curry tomorrow for the rest of my lunches this week. I will use the same approach as last time (using the discard spices from the curried cashews), but hopefully without burning the bottom of the pan.
Tomorrow’s dinner will be chicken in the mole poblano simmering sauce with roasted sweet potato home fries and an avocado cucumber salad. It won’t use the whole jar of sauce, but it will get us well on our way.
$157.95 for Instacart order from King Soopers (including tip etc)
$15.99 for street taco kit from Costco (excluding tax)
We were going to meal plan and cook this week, but sick baby had other plans for us. We kept it on super easy mode, so a prepped veggie tray, premade Home Chef meals, etc.
I spent $396.55 in groceries, which sounds like a lot but I did our monthly Costco run and we are going gluten free so there was a lot of substitute stuff purchased for that.
Just checked in our spending for last week:
$600/$1500 groceries
$150/$500 takeaway & cafes
Plenty of money left. That included nappies for the month, a delivery of pre-made pasta meals, and some VERY nice pizza from the new pizzeria ($25+/pizza and each slice is a meal. So, so good.)
So far between the two of us we have spent about $98 on groceries. So far so good.
I think I only cooked twice for the two of us. But he cooked at least twice, so we did not replace eating at home with eating out. I count that as fine.
Week 1 check-in:
The kitchen freezer has been defrosted and reorganized.
Freezer 2 and panty still need to be done.
Still used some odd ingredients in several meals:
Overripe banana in pancakes
Finished a big container of soup from the freezer
2 leftover Italian sausages in pasta sauce
Made soup from a huge pumpkin and added Chana dhal to bulk it up (part went back into freezer for work lunches)
Used some Peking duck Sauce to make a tofu marinade
Week one check in:
Have written out a menu plan based on what’s in the fridge and going to get a couple top up things today. Hard to avoid all food waste with a picky toddler but I’m aiming to go through the fridge more to avoid this.
Check in: I am continuing to add things to my price book. I even checked a couple of prices at Costco for things I did not need that day (eg, dishwasher tabs) so I can compare better.
Certain things it just doesn’t matter. Like ground turkey. The Boy likes to buy his own ingredients week by week and he is just never going to not do that, so… Is what it is. And he buys his own chicken no matter how many times I have begged him to use freezer chicken. But he is not exactly a profligate person so I will try hard to let this go!
Week two! Groceries are at $137. Eating out is $69 by myself and $102 for eating out with people. Less than halfway on the 13th feels pretty good!
I forgot I’m (hopefully) in New York City next week so no meal plan. When I travel I don’t count my food spending (groceries or eating out) towards my monthly budget. Instead they come out of my travel savings line.
Oof. Okay, what have we eaten from that freezer? Also tomorrow I have to move everything from the upright into the chest freezer and fill both freezers with water bottles so that if/when we lose power, things will hold a while.
We ate the chicken that was left in a 3-pound bag of breasts in a big stew (which we ate on all week, pretty much - root veggies, onions, chicken, barley, lots of Mexican oregano)
Turkey smoked sausage - though it had not been in there very long - was part of what we ate two days when we were tired of stew. Kraut, potatoes, sausage, cheese, applesauce baked in a casserole
Tonight I ate some leftover peanut sauce-veggies-and fish cakes stir fry that had been in there a while
Oh, we both put a fair number of homegrown peppers on a frozen pizza last night. Mine (mild ones) were from 2020.
And we ate that last frozen pizza because those things are a pain to wedge into the chest freezer with everything else because of their shape.
But the one big meal all week model almost meant we didn’t hit the goal this week since most of it was fresh veggies and pantry stuff. I really do want to get down into some of the less-convenience items so I can defrost that sucker eventually. I did find some turkey breakfast sausage in a fit of cleaning and straightening. That’s something.
If we lose power next week, which seems likely, I’ll either make very little progress (because of not wanting to open it/having no way to cook except a camp stove) or all the progress if the outage goes on for several days…
um, I did not do the shopping this week and $215 was spent. Probably a good chunk of this was wine, which I am happy to have… this is probably a good time to mention that I only tend to track money that I personally spend, but obvioiusly I am not the only one spending money in this household. So a household grocery budget of $400 would not fly for the month unless we quit alcohol or something.
A larger conversation about whether we want to stick to a serious budget could help, but so far I’ve found it helpful enough to track and keep tabs on my own spending. And usually, I am the only one who does grocery shopping.
I did cook three times. So on that side of things I’m still doing fine.
Mung beans were all cooked up, and about a third has been eaten, some is in the freezer for another week but I’ll declare that done. I could have finished the mole sauce on Friday, but I wasn’t thinking, so I’ve scheduled that for tomorrow. The flank steak seasoning is also planned for this week.
We went grocery shopping. We overbought, and looking at the card my estimate was about $350, based on past years and full carts.
Inflation and an extra person (who still wears nappies) meant it was $450
Anyway we have $200 left for the next 2 weekend shopping trips but also a very full food storage area so I will plan to just get basic consumables for those.
Check-in two! I’m at about $168 on grocery spending so far - not much change from last week other than a quick stop at the grocery store to get more soup. My partner has done most of the shopping this week. I didn’t have time to get their numbers before they left for work this morning, so I’m going to guess we’re at around $200 for the both of us so far. We’ve gotten into the routine of doing meal planning for about half of a week at a time - it just lines up well with when my partner can grab groceries on the way home from work. It’s also a bit less overwhelming than planning out a whole seven days.
Also, I finally, finally went through the emergency food box and checked all the expiration dates this week. It only took about five minutes once I got over the mental hurdle of actually starting, so that’s a win! We restocked a few things just in time for the cold to roll in last night.
My goals for this week are:
Figure out total grocery spending so far, including what my partner spent
