$100 Grocery Budget- Week of 5/13/14

There was a time when I despised grocery shopping, but now both of my sons are in school and I can do my grocery shopping without them. Isn't it awful how an everyday task like grocery shopping can feel like a mini-vacation when you are by yourself? And it does. When I walked out of the grocery store yesterday, I sighed at how quiet and peaceful the last hour and a half had been; it was enjoyable.

Now that I am trying to stick to a $100/week budget, I also find myself enjoying the challenge of planning meals that keep me within budget. This means using items that I already have, and to be sure to incorporate leftovers into new meals, and using produce before they go bad.

Last week, my meals didn't go according to plan, which I suspected would happen. It was the first week of practices and I wasn't sure how well each meal would work with our time frame. On Wednesday we were supposed to have slow-cooker garlic chicken and pasta salad. We ended up having pasta salad and hot dogs because I realized that by the time we arrived home after baseball practice, it would already be 6:30, and the chicken required extra steps after it finished cooking, so I went with something easier.

I made the southwestern chicken casserole on Friday, however, at the last minute, I decided to use only one of the two chicken breasts that I had thawed out, and make half of the casserole meatless (for me). This left me with an extra chicken breast, so I decided to bump the meatloaf and potatoes from Saturday's plan and made the slow-cooker garlic chicken that night instead. I paired it with brown rice. Monday's meal was supposed to be the hamburger roll-ups, however, I ran into the same problem as I did on Wednesday-the 5:15-6:15 baseball practice does not allow for any meals that require a lot of prep work, especially since it takes us 10-15 minutes to drive to practice (and back again). So I ended up making french toast sticks for the boys, I had cereal, and The Man had leftovers. Quick and easy.

On the plus side, these changes left me with 3 lbs. of ground beef on hand that I could use for this week's meals instead, which meant that I wouldn't have to buy anymore at the store. This was helpful because I was over budget last week, which takes money out of this week's budget. I have also decided to allow myself a $20 budget for non-food items (i.e. tissues, soap, toilet paper, etc.).


Here is how things look for this week:

Hole in One

My husband is obsessed with golf and what I mean by that is, he golfs every single day from Open until Close. He not only golfs once a day, but, more often than not, 2-3 times a day. We even have yellow practice balls scattered around the house, because snow is an awful thing for a golfer and where I live, we have long winters. 

A box arrived at our door step two weeks before Christmas last year. The box gave away all its secrets with a large picture plastered on each side, revealing a golf set. At first I was furious, thinking he did not just buy a whole new golf set for himself two weeks before Christmas, and then I noticed.....it's pink! Oh joy......

Redefining Ourselves (Breaking Free of the Numbers)

The world we live in is obsessed with defining ourselves by numbers. Numbers are everywhere, consuming us; they are our way of life. We define our age, weight, height, relationships, time, everything by numbers. We are all guilty of defining ourselves this way and I can honestly say I've been a slave to numbers ever since I can remember. Who hasn't counted down the minutes until their next vacation, religiously measured our bodies, judged people by their dress size and rushed around as to not be late for that 2:00 doctor's appointment?

As women there is one number we guard and hide, more than any other, with our lives; as if someone found out they would not like us anymore, we would be shunned, a disgrace, gross, disgusting, not good enough, our husbands would no longer look at us, our houses would burn down, the guy on the bus would give us strange looks, the stars would no longer shine and our lives would be over. At least this is how I feel about the number we use to measure our weight.

I am currently learning one very important thing and that is - numbers are just numbers. Like everything, we (people) are what give numbers their power. If this is true, why then do we choose to give something that can be so harmful to our being such power? I don't know the answer to this, but, what I do know is my weight is not my truth and I refuse to let it define me any longer.

We must face our fears head on and only then we will be granted freedom. We are who we choose to be.

$100 Grocery Budget Breakdown- Week of 5/6/14

There was a time when I was really good at planning out my weekly meals. I had a fancy calendar and everything. I would pull the recipes that I was going to use and put them altogether, ready for the week. But then summertime came and we started traveling more than usual and I fell out of the habit for a while. ("A while" being two years...). There are many blogs out there that rave about the benefits of meal planning, from saving money, to cutting down on the stress of coming up with a meal the day of, and I agree with them all, I just haven't had the motivation to start it up again.

Spring sports have started this week, and now that we live farther away from the school (15 minutes, as opposed to a 5-minute walk), I realized that I really need to start planning my meals again, especially since we have some kind of practice M-Th, all at or around dinnertime. In an effort to avoid a last-minute scramble to plan something to eat immediately before or after practices, I have decided to try my hand at meal planning again.

I usually only plan out dinners, but I will occasionally plan something different for breakfast or lunches. Otherwise, we are all creatures of habit in this house, and eat the same things every morning. I will include all three meals, just to show how they fit in with my grocery list planning.

Here is how it looks for this week:

$100 Grocery Budget Breakdown- Week of 4/29/14

 I recently came across this blog called One Income Family Living, where this stay-at-home mom details her weekly $50 grocery budget and how she spends it. I am very impressed that she is able to spend $50 for a family of four (or is it five now?). I haven't explored the blog thoroughly yet, but I imagine that they must grow a lot of their own food too. Although I would love to be able to grow our own vegetables, it isn't really something that we have been able to do before. We recently moved into a new home, and we are still busy getting things settled inside the house and haven't even begun to think about what to do outside, so the garden will probably have to wait until next year when I am a little more organized.

For our family of four (sometimes five), my goal is to keep our weekly grocery budget below $100. Most weeks I come in under budget, but there are the occasional weeks when we need something extra that puts me over. I'd like to try to lower the budget a bit more, but for our lifestyle right now, I think that $100 is a reasonable amount. If I were to start getting into coupons and shopping the sales, then I could probably get it lower, but that just sounds like a lot of work that I don't have the time (or rather the patience) to sit down and figure out.

I do my grocery shopping on Tuesdays, so my week starts on that day. Here is my breakdown for this week. Items marked with (*) indicate items that I only buy for school lunches. Anything that is italicized is an item that wasn't originally on my list, but I picked up because they were a special buy, or on sale this week. I am choosing to include non-food items in the budget only if they are food related.