Food budget challenge - end of week one

Week one is successfully in the books!

A bug hit our house this week, and made it really difficult not to just call for take-out one night, but I controlled the urge, and powered through.

This week's spending:

Tuesday:

Girl Scout Cookies. What more can I say? Got a message from my friend that her daughter was working hard at finishing up a goal, so I had to oblige, right? $20

Thursday:

Hubby stopped on the way home to pick up two bottles of Sprite, because I had a sick stomach and needed something simple to keep down. $2.54

Saturday:

The kids wanted to bake cookies and I hadn't come anywhere near spending my food budget for the week, so I thought a splurge would be OK. They bought two packages of chocolate chips, a box of raisins, a loaf of bread, and another bottle of Sprite (now little B has the bug). $11.61

Total spent this week: $34.15

Under budget: $15.85

Reading this, it seems like our house has a definite cookie problem! We also have an empty snack box, so I'm going to have to find something creative to do in order to fill that for the coming week's afternoon snacks.

The big challenge this week is that I plan to be out of the house four days for work, so evening meals will need to be planned ahead of time in order to keep from relying on an old stand by and blowing the budget.

Food budget challenge

Our food budget is completely out of control.

I have seen the benefits of setting a menu and shopping to it. I do so periodically, and when we stick to it – gasp – we save money! But it isn’t easy. We are a busy family, with people always going in different directions, and it is just too convenient to deviate from the plan.

Even worse, we go through terrible phases of eating out a LOT, and our checkbook really reflects it. When I can look back over the month and see more restaurants than anything else, I know we have fallen off the rails!

I went through our checking account and found that our food spending for the past three months (December, January, and February) averaged about $1,550. In the first two weeks of March, we are at $731.92. Yikes!

I would really get that budget to $250 per week, keeping “out” eating to a minimum, and focusing on a plant-based, whole foods menu. I am also thinking of moving to a cash system for grocery shopping, putting cash in an envelope each week and limiting grocery shopping (and restaurant eating) to the money in that envelope. I know it certainly makes it easy to overspend when I'm just whipping out a card at the end of the transaction, no matter what the total comes out at.

So, I was spending a Saturday morning working on my menu and shopping list while chatting with a friend online when she made a comment that totally got me thinking. What about all the food already in my house? Why is it that I go shopping every week or two for this big pile of food, and then proceed to move around what is already there in order to make space?

Here’s a thought.

What if we eat the food that is already in the cupboard?

I know, I know, it’s a tall ask. And, to be honest, some of the food probably doesn’t fit with our current eating practices. You know, the processed food picked up on a whim or the cans of soup you can’t remember the reasoning behind buying? But there is lots and lots there that is probably perfectly fine to eat, I just haven’t bothered to use it. How wasteful!

As I got to thinking about it, a project brewed in my head. I wonder how long we could live off the food that is already in our house. A week? A month? Longer?

I poked around in the cupboards, discovered a few things I had clearly forgotten about, and decided to give it a shot. And I set a goal – five weeks.

We have two freezers in our basement, a refrigerator/freezer upstairs, and dry storage food in several cupboards, as well. At the end of the five weeks, if we haven’t eaten it, I am fairly confident we don’t have any plans to! With that in mind, we will clean out the cupboards and donate anything uneaten at the end of this “challenge,” thus starting fresh in the days to follow.

(I am hoping this will help me make a transition to healthier foods easier, too! We can start from scratch!)

So the plan is to start on Sunday, March 18, and end Saturday, April 21. I am on call that entire time, so we won’t be venturing far from home, which will help a bit. (One place where we really tend to fall down on food budgets is while traveling, but that is a separate issue to attack another time!)

We did our last meal out on Saturday night, so we’ll be all ready to dive in! I think. We’ll see how challenged I feel in a few days!

Rules (Simple, to the point):

*The budget is $50 per week. This will allow us to buy fresh milk, eggs, butter, and the occasional bit in order to pull a meal together.

*Everything else must come from food already in the house!

*No eating out.

A good challenge should have a reward, right?

We have wanted to buy a new bed for a while now, so my plan is to put $200 toward our “bed fund” for every week we stick to this challenge. I’ll put cash in an envelope every Sunday for the previous week.

When we do the full five weeks, we’ll be almost there, and we'll kick in what remains. But only if we do the full five weeks!

http://www.waterbedoutlet.com/LEGACY-BRISTOL-SOFT-SIDE-WATERBED-MATTRESS-p/ss-l-bristol.htm

Homemade Granola

When a blogger friend shared this granola recipe she saw on another blog, I decided to try it out – it sounded super yummy! Right away my family fell in love, and we started making variations on the original, sometimes making a batch every day! Through months of experimenting, we have come up with a version we love even more than the one we originally read. We make a double batch, and store it in a cereal container. Enjoy!

Homemade Granola

• 4 c. old fashioned oats
• 1 c. sliced almonds
• 1/8 tsp. cinnamon
• 1/2 c. dried fruit – usually raisins, but we have also used mixed fruit
• 1/4 c. coconut
• 1/3 c. vegetable oil
• 1/3 c. plus 1/2 c. agave nectar
• 2 Tbs. vanilla extract

In a large bowl, mix together the first five ingredients. Next, in a small saucepan, combine the oil and agave. Heat over medium heat until simmering. Remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the vanilla. Pour this mixture while still hot over the oats and stir well, making sure to coat all of the dry granola.

Spread the mixture on a large, greased cookie sheet. Bake at 300 for about 20 min. (or until light golden brown), stirring the mixture after the first 10 min.

Remove from oven and cool for several minutes before stirring again. Allow to cool completely then store in an airtight container. Thanks Kendra for the recipe! We are getting a lot of miles out of it!

Play time

There was a really interesting article in the New York Times this week about a movement to "restore" children's play time. Definitely worth sharing!

Bria's hair-do

I have been watching with anticipation as baby's hair gets longer and longer, because I can't wait to do fun things with it! I wanted to have a few fun things to do with it while we are on vacation, so I thought I'd try a few styles and see what we liked.

Two days ago we decided to try out this 'do from Curly Hairdo Ideas.

It didn't go perfectly, but I was pretty pleased for a first try! I did discover as the day went on that one side was FAR more secure than the other, so I'll keep that in mind for next time.

Today we made attempt number two. It's improving!

Washing lamby

Bria got a beautiful lambskin as a baby gift, and has slept on it since she was quite small. She loves it very much, and doesn't sleep with drinks or anything like that, so I have managed to put off cleaning it a lot longer than I probably should have! Yesterday I decided it was looking well past time to do something about it, so I did some searching around for the best practices for cleaning her beloved bedding (shh, I didn't understand the instructions on the label!).

After finding a few great sources for buying them in the states (I was pleased to discover that Lamby Baby Products is just down the road from my home town), I also found several sets of cleaning instructions, and set my mind on what I was going to try. I was admittedly very nervous to ruin it!

First, I put lamby in the washing machine on the gentle cycle, warm. It came out looking like a wet cat, and holding water like a bathroom sponge.

Next, I laid it out on a big, thirsty towel on the dining room table.

I rolled it up inside the towel and squeezed a bit to suck some of the water up, and instantly the towel was drenched! There was a lot of water there, and the table was soaked, as well.

I got out a dry towel and rolled it up again.

This time, the towel didn't soak through, so I left it rolled up for a few hours, periodically squeezing it a bit to soak up as much water as I could.

Next I took a skirt hanger (the kind with the two clips at the bottom) and hung lamby up in the laundry room to dry overnight.

Then in the morning -- voila! A clean, dry lamby! Hooray!

(I took photos, but they don't seem to be cooperating. So maybe I can get them to play nicely later!)

Indian Food = Comfort Food

The snow has been coming down outside all day, and I was noticing everyone around my place was starting to get into a funk! We're halfway through Christmas break now, and with three feet of snow on the ground, there has been a lot of sitting on the couch watching movies. A lot of it. This afternoon I decided to fight the drafty dull day with some comfort food -- Indian style.

My husband and I LOVE ethnic food, and Indian is always one of our favorites. When ever we spend a few days in a city, we always look for a good Indian place (along with Thai and sushi). Among our favorites is a good curry, and samosas! Curry has long been a staple around our house, as our grocery store used to carry a good starter product that we liked the taste of. But considering we were cooped up inside and had plenty of time, I decided to branch out and try something different.

The samosa recipe is a variation on one I found online, but unfortunately the link no longer works, so I have posted it below.

For the curry, I picked up a jar of Jalfrezi curry starter ($3.89). Check next to the Asian foods in your grocery store. My store used to have one that was more like a block of chocolate and melted in the pot, but they don't carry that one anymore. The jar was nice -- we got a medium and found it quite tame, will probably go for a hotter version next time, though this was a perfectly acceptable choice for the baby, who chowed down on every last bite!

Just follow the directions on the jar, it's very easy. I added a pound of cut up pork, some chopped onion, and a bag of chopped frozen broccoli. Very simple and tasty. Usually I add a lot more vegetables, like red and green peppers, carrots, etc., but we were snowed in, so I used what ever I had handy!

Simple Samosa

1 Tbs olive oil

1 small onion, finely chopped

4 garlic cloves, minced

2 cups cooked diced potatoes

1 cup cooked diced carrot

½ cup frozen sweet peas, thawed

5 tsp. soy sauce

1 tsp. curry powder

½ tsp. cumin

¼ tsp. dried cilantro

¼ tsp. ground ginger

¼ tsp. turmeric

¼ tsp. salt

1 dash red pepper flakes

1 Tbs. water

3 (8 oz.) packages crescent rolls

(I highly recommend using the Pillsbury crescent rolls. For one, they are much easier to pinch together to form a flat piece of dough. Besides, there always seems to be a great coupon or two floating around to make them cheaper than the store brand ones, anyway.)

To prepare:

Saute onion and garlic in oil for about five minutes until the onion is soft. While cooking, combine remaining ingredients (except crescent rolls) in a bowl. Add contents of bowl to onion and garlic mixture, stir gently over medium heat for several minutes until well incorporated. Set aside.

Heat oven to 375 F. Unroll the crescent rolls and separate each package into four rectangles, pinching the triangular perforations to seal. Cut each rectangle in half crosswise to make two squares. You will have a total of 24 squares. (It may take a little coaxing with your hands to get the dough to cooperate, but make sure you take the time to seal up the perforations before moving on.)

Place a heaping spoonful of filling into the center of each square and fold up to make a little package. (It seems to work best if you fold the opposite corners in, pinch them together, and then do the other two corners.)

Spray a baking sheet with cooking spray and bake for 12-15 minutes until golden. Cool slightly, serve warm with Honey Dipping Sauce.

Honey Dipping Sauce

1/3 cup honey

1 Tbs. lemon juice

1 Tbs. soy sauce

1 Tbs. water

2 garlic cloves

1 pinch red pepper flakes

Combine ingredients in small bowl. Stir well, then microwave for 30 seconds or until just warm. Serve.

I had to replenish my spice cupboard a little bit in order to pull this one off, but I was lucky enough to find all the herbs I needed for $1.37 each. I was pretty excited about that! The crescent rolls were on sale for $1.57 a can, then I had two coupons for $1/2, so I ended up paying $1.07 each for four cans. I will use the spare to make pinwheels for a quick lunch for the kids. I used canned carrots to save some time ($.97). The potatoes came from the produce section ($1.27), I boiled them until the peels started to fall off, then chopped them up. All in all this was a simple meal, made up mostly of things I had on hand. And the family was happy!

((photo of Bria loving her curry))