Just under the wire

The last few months have welcomed some fun and exciting treats for us. We invested in some new toys and spent a few dollars on a mini-vacation as well as a big birthday celebration for Allison. Just last week reality hit. Hmmm...the budget sort of flew out the window there for a bit. Sooo, it was time to get back to reality.

I evaluated the budget and realized that we needed to reign in our spending significantly. So I set myself up with a budget that seemed to work - although it did make this week and next week a grocery challenge. While spending freely at the grocery store gave us lots of yummy snack foods it left our savings account a victim of nickel and dime spending.

Here's my plan on how to stick to my very tight budget this week and next week - well, and make it a habit for life I suppose!

- The old adage that you don't need meat at every meal? I'm now a subscriber. When we don't have meat I will make some other protein like beans. In dishes that I do have meat I will be halving the meat and replacing it with beans. (i.e. sloppy joes)

- Each meal will be homemade with the occasional treat out. No more convenience lunches, like tv dinners or premade soups. One of my goals is to create a lunch menu since this tends to be my most challenging meal of the day to keep homemade.

- Baking breads and rolls is a new priority. Not only does it takes a hundred times better than store bought, but the effort keeps me from letting it get stale or go to waste. Whether the cost is lower to make it homemade I'm not sure but it does keep me from going to the store when I don't REALLY need to.

- Buying ingredients not food.

- I have learned how to make cream of chicken and cream of mushroom soups from scratch. So a goal of mine is to see if there is a way I can make my own mixes or soups instead of buying them. I just bought onion soup mix for $2 at the grocery store and then the next day found a recipe for it that I had all the ingredients for. That $2 could have been spent on fruit for the girls.

- Homemade breakfast - no more cereal. After eating a bowl of cereal, Sarah is hungry within an hour. But since I've been making pancakes or waffles or oatmeal, she's full until lunchtime. I have been trying to make a large amount of waffles or pancakes and freezing them for future use.

- Each dinner I make during the week piggybacks the meals before it. This week for example - Monday I made burritos and served it with lettuce and tomatoes. Last night I used the leftover lettuce and tomato to make a small salad that Joel and I shared.

- Food storage is a fantastic investment. I'm setting aside $10-15 a week in grocery money for stocking up a 3 month food supply. This means foods we eat normally. The other day I bought 15 cans of vegetables for $.49 each at Albertsons. Now I have a good basic stock in case I can't get to the store for fresh stuff.

- I'm thinking of this as a personal challenge to utilize what is in my pantry and actually eat it. I cleaned out my cupboards and took random ingredients and searched them on Allrecipes. I came up with some tasty recipes and we all enjoyed eating the meals.

- I'm renewing my love for coupons and have installed the little program necessary to print out coupons from coupons.com. My local Walmart accepts printed coupons and I've found some winners there.

And so there it is. Laying it all on the line. Next week, my food budget is about $20. I feel like this is achievable because I have quite a bit of food in my cupboards already but also because I only choose to make meals that I have ingredients for or that require minimal ingredients. What's my dinner menu you ask? Well, here it is - I will need to buy just 2 or 3 things for the whole week but that does not include milk, fruit, or veggies for the meals and lunch/pantry items.

Monday - Honey Ginger Salmon
Tuesday - Spaghetti
Wednesday - BBQ Chicken Quesadillas
Thursday - Perfect Pork Chops
Friday - 'Fend for yourself' night (Sarah has a ballet recital)
Saturday - Same as Friday, ballet recital and my marathon, I'm guessing I'll be eating pasta.
Sunday - Chicken Taco Soup

I'll keep y'all posted on our progress.