The Mad Hatter: "Only if you believe it is." From the book Alice in Wonderland.
Money, Money, Money....people have a love/hate relationship with it but we must always deal with money one way or another! My Hubs and I had a couple of long discussions about our budget this past week. We both have the ability to be making more but that would mean he and I would have to give up the jobs that we both love. We aren't willing to do that, but we need to cut back and save more. So we have been tossing around some ideas. And I told him that when I was a single mother and then later a stay at home mom, when the children were very young, I got creative in my meal planning and menus to make the dollars stretch. I told him I felt I had let that slip away in the name of convenience and grabbing "meals on the run"...he nodded and agreed. Let's face it I'm wanting to lose weight and be healthy in my food choices, eating out a lot is NOT gonna help me or my family do that, it's impossible!
So I asked him to go through just the last month and add up all our eating out and drinks with friends expenses. Keep in mind this did not include any of the ones I had also paid for. The grand total came to just under $450.00! That is more than my truck payment! We both had a light bulb moment, it is too expensive to always eat out! So after I apologized for being a crappy wife, (I was kinda joking, but not) he assured me that he too was to blame and that pointing fingers would be ridiculous. We just needed to cut back and do better.
So Sunday I grabbed my cookbooks and iPad and sat down to look over some meal ideas and recipes. Then I remembered that a couple years ago because I wanted to clean out the pantry and freezer, I took "inventory" of both areas. I had challenged my self to not spend more than $100 a month on groceries for 3 months, that "saved grocery money" had become the down payment on our camper!
My thought is I can do it again, just for a longer time frame, say 6 months instead of only 3 months. So here's my plan:
Take inventory of freezers and pantry
Purchase only fresh fruits or veggies needed for meal plan
Purchase only needed staples
All grocery store purchases must not exceed a total of $100 per month, I realize this will be a challenge in the months of November and December but I am going to try to really stick to this!
Plan a weeks worth of menus
My goal is to use up freezer and pantry items first by "shopping" them before stepping foot into a grocery store. Case in point below is a picture of my Kitchen freezer, we have a full size one also in our garage, as you can see I have plenty of meat items and frozen vegetables to create some great meals. I'll share in next week's blog how I cleaned and organized it all. I'm meal planning to take the dreaded "what's for dinner" question out of everyone's vocabulary. I must admit there are days I hated that question and it would bring on frustration for me! I will also be pre prepping or cooking some items to help relieve the mad rush to "throw something on the table."
I will be sharing my weeks worth of menus and I will post some of my families favorite recipes and source where I got other recipes that way if you want to recreate some of the meals you know where to get them. I'm not wanting to type a bunch of recipes up! LOL.
One of the recipes I made this weekend was in my Crock pot. It was Italian Chicken Soup and I had ALL the ingredients already in my pantry and freezer. I actually cooked it on Sunday for Monday night's meal AND we have enough for leftovers or I can freeze the rest. That recipe is posted on my previous blog.
Is this impossible to accomplish? Nope, only if I believe it is! ;)
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