Snackuary: January Food Budget Challenge

[flan]

@flan

Goals:

1. try out meal-planning for 2 weeks (eMeals free trial or self-plan)
2. no food delivery
3. $300 budget for eating / drinking out (coffee, bars, restaurants, delivery, take-out all included)
4. no eating out by myself
5. do try out one new restaurant for fun

1. Still going okay. Slipped up and ate second dinner at Popeyes just because it was on the way and we are on that chicken sandwich fad. It was around 9pm, and we immediately realized the sandwich had been sitting under a heat lamp for a while. Not worth it!
2. Still strong on this one.
3. We’re at $60/$300 for our restaurant budget, but I’ve got some eating out planned so it’s still going to take attention!
4. Only ate meals out socially so far.
5. Today’s the day! Our friend is celebrating his birthday at a new food hall, so we’re going to get to try something new!

[Qristy]

@Qristy

• no more than two delivery meals a week
• no letting meal kits go to waste: use or freeze!

I think I’m winning! I’ve ordered delivery 4 times, which is womp, but still less than normal, which is good! I actually even got groceries and made a batch of food this week. No meal kits have gone to waste, but mostly that’s because I put a hold on deliveries until I put a dent in the freezer. I don’t know what it is about frozen food that makes it so much less appealing, but boy, is it unappealing, especially when I’m tired and willpower is low.

[mirepoix]

Week 3 check in:
$111.77 spent on food and drink this month
I’ll be honest I hate tracking this.
I find myself sticking to the same foods a lot and actually want to increase that so I think about that less, but maybe alternating what my mainstay is every month. So, butter browned corn quesadillas for lunch for the rest of this month, then switch to… rice noodles and peanut sauce?
I usually eat oatmeal for breakfast but I keep forgetting.
I also keep forgetting to buy fruit.
I had boba tea this Friday and honestly I should treat myself more it is legit my favorite.

[bucketsofrain]

Week 3!

Groceries: $137.78/$350.00 for groceries. Not much movement in this area this week – I think my husband just got some yogurt and sandwich stuff. He is going grocery shopping tonight, but I anticipate that being small as well. I still have some fresh veggies in the fridge and stuff in the freezer and pantry. Dare I say we might even stay under in this category!

Restaurants: $134.92/$125.00. Whoooops. I had a lunch meeting for work, and even though I only got a salad, it still put me over. The rest of this I feel okay about – my husband and I had a morning date at a new to us local coffee shop, and it was really nice (we works nights, and we haven’t been seeing each other much). I just need to focus on quality of experiences in this category. I don’t have anything else planned coming up.

[Panda]

Week 3!
-Food spending: $296.93/$300. Clearly I’m going to go over, but I’m really happy with my grocery spend so far (a good chunk of this is a bday dinner for boyfriend)
-Veggie goal of 2 a day: met it this week wooooooo

[Illathrael]

Week 3 Update:

• Prep lunches for work week: Did not do this. Was snowed in on Monday, drove to town in the evening once roads were cleared, stayed with siblings/friends all week. I did make a batch of green beans and helped a friend make a lovely soup and we ate leftovers, so that was good. Make dinner twice for my sister and her partner, ate leftovers.

• Eat more fruit: Done! Not habitual yet. Getting there.

• Buy less prepared food: Bought pasta, cheese, cream of mushroom soup. Also bought LOTS of veggies.

• Only eat out if necessary or planned with company: Snow really screwed with my plans here. Ended up having coffee/breakfast/lunch “out” (work cafe) at least three days this week. Dinner out only once.

[Clare-Dragonfly]

@Greyweld

I could make homemade bagels, but I would much rather spend those 3-4 hours on my running or gardening or cleaning.

I wish we lived near each other. I would totally trade homemade bagels for cleaning or gardening!

[Gdogg]

UPDATE - Week 3:

@Gdogg

• Eat down the pantry - including freezer - To date have used salsa verde, fish sticks, beans from freezer, roasted tomato sauce, some of the shredded mozzarella and shredded cheddar jack, hamburger, canned beans from cupboard, partial can of corn from fridge, salsa from fridge;
• Eat at least 2 salads / week - still on track (woohoo);
• Make at least 2 pots of soup - one down, one to go. Got ingredients for next pot of soup (potatoes for chicken & veg). I have lots of frozen tomatoes, so might make a tomato soup.

[krmit]

Grocery money spent total:$185/$200

Plus some Whole Foods gift card money that I’m not tracking. (Primarily using it for eggs and dairy.)

This includes the food part of the Costco run but not the home/pet stuff. I miiiight just make it under the $200 budget goal!

Been pretty good about pantry cooking, including but not limited to:

• smoothies with frozen and canned fruit (turns out canned pear is a great substitute for banana)
• Lots of beans - baked lentils and bean stew and burritos
• Cabbage salad

Mr krmit is out of town until Tuesday. I’m planning to treat myself to some takeout pad thai tomorrow, which comes out of my fun money account, not groceries.

[Ms_Terror]

@Ms_Terror

Hmm i may need to tweak this as the month progresses but i want to limit our supermarket convenience food (and consequently, plastic), Meal planning will help here. Stick to our grocery budget under $400. Eat down the freezer and pantry stocks as there are some old stuff there that needs something done with it. Find my kitchen mojo again and get a bit more experimental

Week 3: grocery spend $181.40 / $400. Still no convenience food bought, I made another meal plan that is just vegetarian for the week and made a new recipe last night to start getting back into the kitchen. Freezer has a bit more room and we’re working our way through the pantry stash of random teas/drinks etc. Pretty pleased with this so far.

[Greyweld]

If only my online community was my local community!

[daffodil2001]

@daffodil2001

• Do a lot of meal prep/batch cooking and stock the freezer with easy meals while I’m unemployed, so that we can do less cooking for a while once I get another job lined up.
• Use up our freezer banana stash. I keep buying bananas to make a chia seed pudding for breakfasts, and we keep not making it and then tossing the bananas in the freezer when they start to go bad.
• Actually make at least one batch of chia seed pudding because we have a lot of chia seeds. Or figure out something else to do with the seeds.

1. Grocery shopping and meal prepping has been going well. I normally get groceries on the weekend but we’re still eating some leftovers including a new to us jambalaya recipe that made a ton of food, so I won’t make another meal plan or get groceries again until the fridge is closer to empty.
2. I haven’t made anything with the freezer bananas yet because my husband wants to eat healthier, and everything we usually make with freezer bananas doesn’t work with that.
3. I made chia pudding this week and added blueberries and lemon juice, which I like a lot more than just plain banana.

[esme]

@esme

My goals for this month:

• $400 food budget (this is $100 less than normal/average)
• No supermarket runs to ‘fill in’ between official food shopping trips
• one restaurant meal (when my dad visits in a couple weeks)
• no spending my own money on coffee (we have a gift card to the local coffee place - that can be used)

• I have one more store to go to in order to finish this month’s shopping. So far, I’ve spent $455.05. I think the final number will be around $500.

• I did one run to BJs to mostly pick up cleaning supplies, but I grabbed some oat milk as well, so I’m counting it as a between-trips run. That makes 2 this month

• One restaurant meal when my dad was here

• Still stretching out that gift card to the coffee shop. We’ve gone… three times on this gift card and once with my dad when he was here (he paid). I’m confident we can get through the month without spending our own money.

[rural]

We’re having whole wheat spaghetti with both TVP and more of the frozen meatballs from the freezer because husband worked on building a new tractor shed out in the cold most of the day and was craving extra protein. Sauce is leftover from meatball subs the other night, augmented with a can of tomatoes and extra spice to balance out the TVP.

Pup had some spaghetti noodles, too - his were from the freezer. I may or may not have warmed a little bit of Alpo lamb and rice in the microwave to make a sauce for him…

[Gdogg]

Did you just invent Spaghetti doganara?

[rural]

I did!

[kenner]

And onto the beans I like–this week is roasted red peppers and onions with cranberry beans and Italian sausage (or whatever frozen sausage I had that I added a bunch of Italian herbs to while I was cooking it). Groceries are at $81/$150 for the month, but ~$20 of that was actually household supplies rather than food (new toothbrush, medicated toothpaste, razors, etc) so I think it should be pretty doable to keep it under $100 for actual food for the month.

[plainjane]

I just looked in the freezer and it turns out what I thought was several bags of frozen berries is actually frozen broccoli, brussel sprouts, bell pepper fajita mix, and green beans.

New goal for January is to open up some space in the freezer by eating those down.

[katscratch]

…so how did that smoothie taste?

[anomalily]

So…is a time tracking challenge (a la Lauren Vanderkam) too niche for a monthly challenge on the forum? I’m doing it already and would love community support, but I realize it might be too EXTRA for a monthly challenge?