Still gotta get through the rest of the week, but I’m cautiously optimistic. Got hit with a nasty cold starting Friday, which means this weekend I was all “I’M SICK BRING ME JUNK FOOD,” bringing my total number of deliveries to the month up to 7. But that’s still within my goal!
Also, no food has gone to waste, but I did have to freeze more than I’d hoped.
Food spending this month is projected to be $100-$150 less than normal, which is… good, but I can do better. Maybe next month my goal will be to eat 1 meal from the freezer every day until I run out.
Ugh, you guys, my lunch was SO disgusting that I ate jalapeño chips out of the vending machine instead. Challenge: failed.
In my defense, it really was awful. Bean soup with too much rosemary. Not ground rosemary either, the little stems. So I was chewing on woody bits of herbs. It was literally like eating twigs. Yuck. Too many to easily pick out.
Also, Boyfriend brought home almond milk yogurt instead of the plain greek yogurt I asked him for, so I figured, OK, fine, can’t use it in the recipe (it’s sweetened) but I’ll take it for lunch. YUCK. Sour sour sour. And tastes vaguely off - but I haven’t actually had almond milk yogurt before. Just almond milk. So maybe it’s supposed to taste like that?
At any rate, this is the most FAIL lunch I have packed in some time.
#1. I meal-planned for 2 weeks! But it’s still not routine. This week we’re slipping into eat-whatever-we-want again. #2., #3., and #4. are all going okay, surprisingly! #5. we tried out a new handroll place in the neighborhood, and then went to a new ice cream shop that opened! It was a fantastic foodie adventure that made us very happy and appreciative of our neighborhood.
In my experience there are some good nondairy yogurts and quite a few bad ones. Almond milk ones are not good ones. But I don’t recall them tasting sour–certainly not if sweetened–so yours might actually be off.
I have made rice and roasted cauliflower and tahini dressing and chicken for lunch this week, so I should be in decent shape there.
Ate out on Saturday with a friend from high school (to give her the tea and chocolate I got for her when we were in Ireland), and hope to eat out on Wednesday with a former colleague.
The shadowy one has been doing a lot of the grocery shopping this month, which makes me uncertain about what our costs actually are. But asking for more visibility probably isn’t good for the Shadowy One’s sense of autonomy, so I’m going to keep it at the current level of just overall credit card spend for our tracking.
I’m in a similar situation, husband doing a lot of grocery shopping for the first time in many years. I’m trying to stay out of it for the most part, but there’s been an awful lot of frozen pizza here lately (like every other night).
ETA: however, Project Foraged Blackberries is complete, and we now commence Project Blueberries From Uncle’s Farm.
The long weekend here threw off my timing. I left the chicken in the fridge too long to cook it and it went gross and slimy and off and now I don’t have sufficient lunch protein. I give up, I’m buying food, but I’m pretty pleased it took ant infestation + illness + long weekend all at once to throw us off and we were doing pretty well before.
Didn’t overeat at parties (though because of how one was structured did spread out the eating somewhat)
Made a new recipe - yep, made some lentil curry.
This week has been really stressful, so goals are:
No eating food that I will feel bad about later (basically, it shuold be something that I feel has some long term nutritional value, even if it’s a treat)
Make easy freezer meals so I’m not tempted to buy frozen pizzas
I have the apples because I made pies. I really don’t need any more pie right now. I also use honeycrisps for applesauce, but I have a pretty good freezer stash of that.
I did eat one apple yesterday and I packed one to have with dinner today. Three left in the fridge!
h oh. so it’s almost the end of January but I’m right up at $300/$300 for my restaurant budget, thanks to the surprisingly delicious-but-expensive new ice cream shop that opened in my neighborhood!
I’m really struggling with how to balance the desire to eat out socially (as an opportunity to bond with friends) versus the benefits of eating at home. Gah.
Can you get the social aspect from cooking/hosting at home? Or from doing free/cheaper things? I know fancy food is like wildly more important to you than me, so maybe you’re just remembering that and that’s okay. Also $300 is pretty low for restaurants for you, right? (Am I wrong?)
My current dilemma is the two days of the week (8ish days a month) when I go to krav or yoga, and then afterwards my friends want to go out to eat. This is usually dinnertime (hard to eat before exercising), and it’s really hard to say no when I’m 1. hungry and 2. have to say no to these friends. I’ve been trying to eat less or only order a side, but I don’t know if I even have the willpower to do that every time.
you are . and this is for 2 people so for us it’s on the lower end.
I struggle enough to cook even on days we do eat in, so prepping and cooking after work before krav/yoga just seems VERY unlikely. Plus, everybody decides at the moment if they even want to go eat that day so it’s very much an after-class in-the-moment decision. I think maybe I gotta set a quota on how often I tag along and/or commit to only ordering 1 thing if eating out with no drinks when I do go out.
Nearly done with the month and pretty sure I’ll succeed at my goal of not buying snacks at work; I’m inspired to try to reduce grocery costs overall next month but not sure how yet, gotta take a closer look to see what the most expensive categories have been.
In related news, I had a nightmare last night that I ate a fancy steak at a restaurant and when the bill came it was $8,000.
. and this is for 2 people so for us it’s on the lower end.