Menu Planning

Okay, this is WAY outside my box!!! But I wanted to try to see how long we could go without grocery shopping and on how little we could live (grocery wise). I really didn't do any grocery shopping in January, with the exception of milk and bread. I wanted us to eat up everything in our pantry (for the most part) and our freezer. We were able to go all of January this way! So now I have a clean freezer and a clean pantry. I made a list of what food I wanted to buy based on my Nourishing Traditions book and our regular family favorites and I went to Costco. The Albuquerque Costco has a surprising amount of Organic food, much more than my old store in VA (although maybe they do now). So I bought a lot of our food in bulk at Costco, and the rest at Walmart (UGH) but I had a gift card to use up and only bought their organic stuff so hopefully I did my little part to promote organic purchases from the Titan store. It was hard for me though!!!! Anything else I can get at the coop.

So I was able to get all our shopping done for the entire month of February and sat down and did the menu planning for the month. I feel like a cafeteria lady... today's lunch will be pasta with cheese and apple slices..... LOL But hey, until we can get into the habit, it will have to work.

I want to be more frugal with our monthly spending, especially in the area of groceries. I watched a show "Kids By the Dozen" and the Jeub family feeds a family of 13 with a household income of less than $40,000.00 per year. They live off less than that. Now they do live in CO and I don't know about the cost of living scenario, but we don't live far from them, so hey, surely we can do this with our tiny family of five!!!

I like the menu planning too because it takes the "what's for dinner tonight" question out of my head. I can actually just know that tonight is salmon with rice and veggies, and somehow it takes the dread out of the chore for me. I don't have to think, I just have to do! I like that. It seems that it is the thinking part that gets me tied up in dread and procrastination. I'm learning........

Anyway, I love this so far this month, and I'm excited to see if we can make it. I just have to keep ME out of the cheese and I need to bake about two loaves of bread per week to meet our needs.

Wish us luck!