The Pig and I

This was a really weird week for me. I broke down and needed some synthetic food, in the form of a Big Mac. So I got one. Then I went to a baby shower which was at a sushi restaurant. I didn't think I'd ever had food budget money again, but apparently the shower organiser had decided to cover the bill. So that was good and I was off the hook for another total potential fail this week. So, here's the business of the week. P gets back in town tomorrow. He tends to like for certain things to be on hand that don't necessarily fit into the $10/week budget. However, I'd intended to stay on this budget until the 21st. So what I'm going to do is reopen access to the Cave, in order to defray some of that increased cost, and also to try to stick with the budget. I'm not sure how well this will go, so it's possible I might go over. But I'll try not to. If it looks like going over is unavoidable, I might modify things to give me $10/week/person instead of just $...

This was an interesting week for me. I went to a birthday dinner, and got an $11 entree (and water). I figured this was going to put me way over budget, giving me grocery money of $8.88 for the next week (from the 12 cents of last week plus the dollar over the $10). But as an awesome matter of circumstance, I didn't actually pay for my meal. It was kind of neat eating out at a restaurant. I had forgotten how much I enjoyed doing stuff like that. One negative byproduct of doing a highly restrictive food budget is that unless you exempt eating out (which I don't), it's very isolating. Most of the time when my friends want to go out for dinner or do something that ultimately winds up resulting in eating out (such as going to the movies; because really, who goes to the movie and doesn't get popcorn?) I can't go. Well, I could, but then I couldn't buy food that week. It's a downside that anyone on a restrictive food budget is aware of, and I'm not convinced ...

This week was pretty good for me, in terms of using things up. I used up the blueberries (as you saw), and so my frozen fruit supply is dwindling. That's good; it means I'm making lots of progress there. I've still got the cranberries, the mango (which I just thawed, either to eat by itself or for mango muffins for my study group this afternoon), the mixed fruit bag, bananas and lemon rinds. I feel pretty comfortable with the way this has gone. However, it turned out I have quite a lot of canned fruit (I had completely forgotten how delicious canned pineapple is, by the way). Which I'm fine with, since I probably will not buy tons of fresh fruit as a result. Totally different animals, but that's okay. I put some fruit in the freezer, in the form of the grapefruit curd and blueberries. There's so much of it that there's no way I'll eat it all before it goes bad. So I portioned it out and froze the portions, leaving enough in the fridge for me to munch on ...

I wound up with 9, count 'em, 9 Extra Care dollars this week. Which, naturally, I did not use to buy real food. Instead, I spent them ALL on junk food. Hopefully that'll last me a while. Because really, it's a lot. New rule: Even when I have lots of CVS monies, I am only allowed to buy one junk food item per week. Period. My junk food addiction is getting out of hand, and I might actually be eating more junk than real food, so limiting it is the newest change to my rules. There wasn't anything I could think of off the top of my head that I needed to buy, so I decided to replace some things I was out of or running low on, this week. Naturally, I forgot I needed onions, so that's on my list for next week. Even though I had 40 cents to spare, you just never know with onions so I put it off. I found a couple shallots in the pantry, and I also have dried onions (not to mention some frozen whole onions) so I figured those could make up for the missing fresh ones. I'm ...

As I mentioned in previous posts this week, I wound up with a whole lot of extra food I didn't expect to happen. I feel really badly that my friend was ill and as such, didn't eat. I prefer it when people who're in my house (staying or just visiting for a bit) get to eat well, and of the types of foods they prefer. That didn't happen this time, and as a result I feel like I inadvertently cheated on my budget plan. It obviously wasn't intentional (although believe me I am not sad about having chips and crackers!), but I feel like I need to do something to compensate for it. So what I ended up deciding was to eliminate my access to the pantry overflow room (which I will now start calling the Aladdin's Cave, since I like that term so much more than overflow room). The way all my food storage is structured is that in the kitchen I have 2 large shelves that comprise my pantry. One shelf pretty much contains all that I might need for baking, home canned canned foods ...

Well, I'm actually in Chicago now. But I still wanted to let you know how things were going. I used up all the pita. Can you imagine? Despite the billion loaves that kept cropping up all over the freezer, I still managed to get through them all. Too bad so sad. I might need to get some more. There is some bread in there, though, so I probably won't get more pita until that's gone too (which means I'll likely be switching to odd grilled cheese type things instead of pita roll-ups). Originally I hadn't intended to spend any money this week on groceries, since I really didn't need anything. My intention was to load up on junk food OR to treat myself to an inexpensive meal out. But instead, I realised that I have an entire $10 that I could use to buy things that aren't in my budget during normal weeks (because they take up the entire $10). So that's what I did. Instead of getting junk food. I didn't buy myself a single bag of chips all week. It was hard....

Well, it seemed to me that cooking toward the end of the time I'd be here wouldn't be very sound. Mainly because it meant I'd be saddling the friend who's caring for my house and "kids" with some leftovers she may or may not want. Didn't seem fair. So instead, I cooked enough food on Monday to last a couple days and decided to rely on pita roll-ups for the remainder of my dietary needs. And so, that brings me to the purpose of this post. Since I obviously wasn't cooking anything, I really wasn't spending any money, either. Or was I? Well, as it turns out, I was. I was spending money stocking up on things for my friend! She didn't really want much; just some Dr. Pepper and pasta sauce. I felt like maybe that wasn't enough, so I got some other things too. A lot of other things. I also made sure that I got enough for more than just her, since she mentioned she might have her brother come over to play rough with Francis. Playing rough is hard w...

This week was not so good for me, in terms of planning. Also in terms of junk food. I completely spaced getting something out of the freezer to eat one day, but by the time I realised it there wasn't enough time left to deal with it and still get to work on time. So I stopped at McDonald's and got a happy meal. It was freaking delicious, but not a really good use of my available funds. Then I had a candy bar episode at CVS, except this time without the CVS monies to cover it. So that happened too. Both of these events happened on the same day at the beginning of the week (my budget week goes Saturday through Friday), so I ended up leaving me with only slightly more than $5 for the remainder of the week. Fortunately, there wasn't a whole lot I really needed to buy (especially since I'm still well-stocked on brined foods). And also I won a free massive jar of synthetic iced tea from the grocery store, which was good because it gave me a "treat" that I didn't...

I decided to switch this post from Friday to Saturday. Not for any real reason, but just because I felt like it. Keeps y'all on your toes and all. ;) It's been a weird week, food-wise, for me. Lots of "leftovers" to get through. I had taken some beef barley soup out of the freezer to eat, and it was WAY more food than I thought was in one bag. So that took a couple days to eat. Plus, I made a great deal of pasta with meat sauce when I had guests over, which resulted in lots of leftovers of that to eat as well (waa. Woe is me). So I think I cooked a little less than I'd intended this week, since some of my eating this week was all about NOT wasting food. Despite cooking less than I'd intended, I discovered that pita nachos are far, far more fabulous than regular nachos (not to mention a good way to use up stale pita). So that's a plus. I also discovered I've lost my taste for lox. This makes me sad. I've eaten it my entire life, and now I just don...

Since I last posted about this, I've done pretty well with my food planning and buying. As you've seen, I've been posting a lot - because I have been going to town making foods and then eating them. My food waste is even lower than it normally is, because nothing has been escaping me as I peer around looking for new things to make with things I've had for ages. I'm going to start doing an update every Friday, so that it posts on the same day as Food Waste Friday. Apparently Friday is my no-recipe-just-tell-you-guys-random-stuff day I've spent about $14 since that last post on food. And $6 on Vitamin Water. I'm not including those Vitamin Waters in my food budget, because they're a twice a week treat that I will stop having as soon as they stop being on sale 2 32-ounce bottles for $3. Plus, they're really not food. Aside from those (which I drink Friday and Saturday), I've pretty much just been drinking juice (yay POM!), water and tea (of which I ...

I go over this a bit in my post tomorrow for Food Waste Friday (and a massive, massive thank you to The Frugal Girl for getting me hooked on doing this!), but I wanted to talk a little about my summer plans, food-wise. P is out of town for the remainder of the summer doing an internship, so this leaves me on my own almost until the fall semester starts. I was poking about my freezer and pantry, and I realised that I have quite a lot more food than I think I do. And really, food that needs to be used up a little more frequently. There's a lot of meat and fish in the freezer (and not just meat that belongs to Francis) that I haven't really been using. So I'd like to go through it all and use it up, oldest to newest. I believe there's actually enough meat in there to last the remainder of the summer, given that I only eat meat a couple times a week. Today, I'm using up the remaining frozen shrimp in a tom yum (I have a mix for the soup, but it needs shrimp and mushroo...