However many days into my most recent grocery purchase, and I’m discovering that even shopping on a budget, I’m over-buying. Or maybe over-cooking. Cooking too much at once. Whatever.
Let’s just say there IS such a thing as too much chili in our house, okay?
It’s actually going pretty well. For next week, I’m going to make an inventory of what we still have on hand and see how many meals I can put together with those ingredients, supplementing them with a few judicious purchases from the store.
PC ate a leftover chicken and cream cheese enchilada for dinner tonight after getting home late from helping a co-worker fix our car’s coolant system leak. I had to drive his truck to pick up Rabbit from day camp, and it was 95 degrees outside. The truck doesn’t have AC, and Rabbit and I got home windblown and sweaty and cranky.
On any other similar night, we would have just driven through a fast food place for a quick meal as compensation for our suffering, and thereby inflicted more suffering: on our digestive tracts and our budget. It didn’t happen tonight. Our “fast food” at home was a very light meal since we were not that hungry due to the heat. I’d cooked some hard-boiled eggs yesterday, so we each had one, along with some cut up raw carrots. Rabbit also had a bowl of cottage cheese. I did not. Seriously, I was not hungry. She was full afterward, and was excited that we hadn’t had to cook anything.
Lunch today was a treat, though. I was meeting a friend for lunch since we hadn’t seen each other forever. We ate at the Parthenon, which is great Greek food in Lincoln and VERY affordable. My friend had the dolmathes (sp?) platter, which was stuffed grape leaves. Her side dish was fresh sweet corn with mint feta butter. She shared one of the stuffed grape leaves with me and it was so good. I ordered from the ala carte menu, and got a “side salad” for $2.50 that turned out to be HUGE, a dinner plate filled with mixed greens, kalamata olives, cucumbers, tomatoes, green peppers, vinaigrette and tons of feta. For $1.50 I got a plate of warm pita bread, and for $1.50 I got a dish of roasted red pepper hummus.
Deb had pita with her meal and I shared the hummus with her – there was plenty to go around. My meal would have been $5.50 except I ordered iced tea. TWO BUCKS for iced tea? Stupid. I should have just had water. Overall, though, I thought it was an exceptional value, especially considering the food actually tasted great and we sat and visited for over an hour.
We currently have more than half of our groceries left from the beginning of the week. Of course, weekends are where we burn through the food. Tomorrow I will make pizza with the leftover spaghetti sauce from the other night. Sunday, we will probably have breakfast for supper, meaning I will make a batch of waffle batter and make about 15 waffles, most of which we’ll freeze to use for breakfast over the next week or two.
The fruit? Two bananas gone. The apples are still sitting there. We did make a dent in the grapes, and PC went to the store to buy a watermelon because we’ll eat that fast.
The goal next week is to spend less than $30 to supplement our existing stockpile of groceries into three meals a day for all of us. It won’t always be this inexpensive, but we’re trying. After consulting different frugal websites, I’ve determined that there is at least one thing my family won’t compromise on and that is milk. I just will not drink, nor will my husband or daughter drink, reconstituted powdered milk. No way. No how.
How cool! I’ve been immortalized in blog! :-)
ooh.. yummo! I love the parthenon. Last time I was there, I had a little lamb. I’m so going for the side salad and pita bread next time!
how funny that we don’t know each other and we posted about the same thing! :) Clearly I’m going to have to visit you more often. Thanks for visiting me today!
I’ve enjoyed reading about your food choices. We have been much more focused on eating what we buy and stretching our food dollars. If we aren’t very hungry, we just graze on whatever we have and skip the cooking. I find we also buy less and throw away less when we pay attention. Our saying is, “It’s paid for so let’s eat it” even if it’s not our #1 choice for a meal on that day. We rarely eat out anymore and really don’t mind. We also have chickens so very little goes to waste.
I’m right there with you on the milk thing. Must be fresh, cold, and the real thing or neither Hubby nor I will touch it.
Di
I remember spending vacations with my Grandparents and having to drink that horrible powdered milk! I used to put saccharin in it to improve the taste with only mild success, I might add.
Our issue is definitely cooking too much … then we never eat the leftovers.
During summer especially, we just aren’t as hungry … and if I would be more stringent on the rule of “if you think you’re hungry, eat an apple” … we’d be SO much better off!
Over the winter I made chili a lot because that’s when I go heavy on canned food, and it got so the kids moaned if we had it more than every other week, altho in the beginning I thought we’d eat it in various dishes over the week.
This week, I, too, decided to switch from drinking iced tea to water at restaurants. For two people, the cost of tea or pop adds (if you include the additional tax and tip) about $4-5 to the meal. And most the time, water is just as satisfying. If we eat out twice a week, that’s $8-10 savings per week; $32-40 per month.