Best Laid Plans

Remember how I posted our menu earlier this week?

Here's what actually happened:

Sunday: Scrambled eggs, blah blah blah
Monday: Spaghetti and garlic toast (E: What IS THIS on my bread? It's GROSS.)
Tuesday: Macaroni and cheese and baked beans
Wednesday: Scalloped potatoes and ham and pineapple
Thursday: French toast and pineapple and grapes
Friday: ??? Can't have nachos because SOMEONE SUPER ate all the tortilla chips and shredded cheddar. Can't have chicken nuggets because SOME LITTLE CHILDREN ate the chips that go on that.

And here's why. We've been overspending. And the overspending has been dipping into our grocery money. And the groceries haven't lasted the week. And so we eat out. And so we dip into next week's grocery money.

ARGH. Does this happen to everyone?

Trying to get back on track...

Gluten Free Travel on a Budget

We never (and by that I mean, occasionally, but not often) eat in restaurants. Three times a year, maybe four? With the kids, anyway. SuperDad and I do occasionally wrangle grandparents into babysitting.

We spent this weekend out of town. I find travelling gluten free to be a particular challenge, especially with little kids who are not used to eating out, and a budget that doesn't really allow for it anyway.

• I packed a whole bunch of stuff. Milk and hot dogs and cereal and raisins and peanuts and animal crackers and more. Enough so that we'd never be stuck without food.
• We hit the natural foods store as soon as we got to town. I pretty much let E pick out whatever she wants, within a $25 budget or so. She chose: Envirokidz Crispy Rice Cereal Bars in Berry, Envirokidz Amazon Frosted Flakes, three packages of Thai noodles, Ener-G Gluten Free English Muffins, Mi-Del Chocolate Sandwich Cookies, and an Amy's Rice Crust Cheese Pizza. This kept them fully stocked up on snacks for the whole weekend, plus E loves being able to go pick out "anything on this WHOLE wall!"
• Then I went to the grocery store and bought ingredients for two dinners and a breakfast, which came to $27.00.
• That got us through the weekend. Until we went out for breakfast and spend over $30 on one meal. (The kids shared hash browns and a ham steak, and they each got a milk.) Which is why we don't eat out.

How do you travel gluten free?

My Pantry and Your Pantry, Sitting By the Fire

So, I was recently super-inspired by an old post of Vegan Ruthie's, The Pantry Principle, a.k.a. how I grocery shop. (Please say I'm not the only one who finds a cool blog and then reads the WHOLE thing when I really should be cleaning my house?)

I've mentioned before that I like to keep an empty pantry. I like to use up every single thing we have, food or shampoo or whatever, before I deem to spend money on more. But the pantry principle was kind of making sense to me. Keep all the ingredients on hand to make all of our regular meals and we don't have to plan menus. We can make any of our regular meals at any time.

So I made a meal list. It looks like this (click to view larger):



Then I made a list of all of the ingredients we would need to make any of the items on this list.



I've made a few changes here and there - but for the most part, this system HAS worked.

But... I'm thinking I still need a menu plan. At least some idea of a menu. Because it seems to always happen that I get home from work and oh... nothing is thawed. So yeah.

On the other hand, it has really regulated our shopping expenditures, because we pretty much buy the same stuff every week. This is our 4th week on the pantry system, and our groceries have varied from $77 to $85 a week. Plus we're never OUT of food. Which has been nice and has cut down on the eating out somewhat.

If I had a third hand, which would bad really, I'd say, "Uh... our meals have been kind of boring lately."

So, in conclusion, I like the pantry system, and I think we'll keep it, with a few modifications, which would be A) a general idea of a menu for the week, and B) trying at least one new recipe a week.

Anyone else do a pantry system? I'd love to hear about it!

Menu and Grocery Shopping

I went grocery shopping last night with the kids. I think it's safe to say I've reached the point in pregnancy when it is not financially wise for me to do the grocery shopping. $12 over budget! Mostly on cake and pickles. ;)

This week's menu includes:

Taco Chicken Rice Bowls (like the giant burritos w/out the tortilla - rice, seasoned chicken, beans, cheese, etc.)
Meatloaf
Grilled Pork Loin
Creamy Potato Soup (trying another recipe, I will find the perfect one!)
Ham Not Fried Rice
BBQ Chicken Pizza (yeah, we still didn't make this, tonight, I swear!)
Polish Sausage, baked potatoes, creamed corn (watch out! The store recently started carrying Nathan's Polish sausage and they have wheat!)

Plus lunch stuff and breakfast stuff and snack stuff and stuff we couldn't afford last week and stuff the baby said I needed :).

Total: $98.82

$29.84 Grocery Week

I realized, shortly before hitting the grocery store, that we'd used up more than half of the food budget for the week already. Yikes. I had $30 left, so what's a girl to do?

First, I looked through our cupboards and fridge and noticed that we had:
Spaghetti sauce
Pizza crust mix
Shredded cheese
Canned beans
Sausage
Potatoes
Tuna
Various canned fruits and veggies

So I wrote a menu based on that:
Homemade sausage pizza (using spaghetti sauce)
Egg/potato/sausage/cheese casserole
Chicken/tomato/bean something in crockpot
Spaghetti
Chicken paprika
Tuna sandwiches on homebaked bread

And then I bought the following groceries:
Cat litter - 5.36
Hot dogs - .74 (I know...)
Eggs - 1.78
Frozen chicken breasts (on sale) - 4.99
Garbage bags - 2.88
Ground turkey - 1.62
Milk - 3.32
Canned tomatoes - .54
Cat food - 5.74
Whole wheat spaghetti noodles - 1.18
(Thanks to the shopping spree, we have the gluten free products to fill in the edges here, or we wouldn't have made it.)

Total, including tax: $29.84
Whew, that was a close one.

Buying Groceries

I bought groceries last night. I spent $67.54 for one week's worth of groceries (for the meals listed below, plus breakfasts and lunches) and supplies for the kids' birthday party, which is on Saturday.

Regular Supplies
Diapers - 7.97
Cat food - 5.74
Milk - 3.49
Bananas - .97
Strawberries - 1.98

Crockpot Sour Cream Salsa Chicken
(I already had some of the ingredients, including chicken.)
$2.99

Tuscan Soup
$6.50 (Yikes - and I have to admit to skipping the kale, because it was cost prohibitive.)

Cheesy Ham and Potato Soup
$5.17

Sloppy Joes and Baked Beans
(I also already have ground turkey.)
$2.13

Polish Sausage
I ran out of money before I got to this... But I expect we'll have lots of leftovers from the party.

Party Supplies
We're serving GFCF pizza, GFCF pasta salad, lettuce salad, and GFCF chocolate cake.
We're also serving Pizza Hut's Pizza Mias ($5 each), regular pasta salad, lettuce salad, and regular chocolate cake.
$21.76 (still need to buy soy cheese and the Pizza Hut, of course)

Lunch (one Michelina's Lean for me, mostly we eat leftovers)
.98

Breakfast Stuff
$4.04

And that's where all the money goes.

Dieting Gluten Free

My awesome friend Becky sent me this link today, and I thought maybe some of my readers might enjoy it.

http://www.hungry-girl.com/askhg/askhgdetails.php?isid=1379

Okay, so ignore that thing about the Cap'n Crunch shake there on the top (which sounds kind of gross even to me, and I'm the freak that actually thinks that glucose-intolerance-test soda tastes kind of good), and scroll on down to the low-POINTS gluten-free picks.

Of the things listed, we've tried the Larabars (the kids didn't really like), the Van's Wheat Free Waffles (good, but my kids prefer the taste of Lifestream's Buckwheat Waffles - these are actually yummy enough for me to steal), and the Blue Diamond Nut Thins - LOVE!

This post has absolutely nothing to do with budgeting, since all of these products are EX-PEN-SIVE. But, my theory is that when you're gluten intolerant, these little indulgences are worth it. I'd give up cable to buy my kids gluten free waffles, and I'm not even kidding about that.

A budget-friendly GF (and lite!) product we recently found (by accident) was Michelina's Lean Gourmet Creamy Parmesean Chicken. (Warning: This contains both maltodextrin and unidentified modified food starch, so proceed with caution, but we didn't have problems. Also, it totally contains milk and soy.) I can't say this was exactly my toddlers' cups of tea, but I thought it was yummy, and it was only .98. So. There it is.

A Gluten Free Shopping Spree

I'm still kicking myself for completely missing the bread. But, not too shabby for 60 seconds. Pretzels, anyone?

Valentine's Day

So we got a babysitter, and celebrated Valentine's Day on Saturday night. And what did we do? Oh, we went to the grocery store, of course. To plot out my shopping spree! (What, isn't that what you're supposed to do on your 14th Valentine's Day together? Jeeze. When did I get so old anyway?)

I have to start from a checkout. So SuperDad timed me, and it took 14 seconds for me to get from checkout 1 to aisle 1. (He claims I could run instead of walk really fast, but I have a feeling the cart may not exactly corner like she's on rails, if you know what I mean and have also seen Pretty Woman 10,000 times like I have.)

And this is the plan: Wipe out the entire gluten free section.

That's the end of the plan. After doing some timing, I don't think I'll make it past that much. The walk from the gluten free section to the diapers is probably too far, but if I've got time left, I'll try for it.

And then we went and saw Juno. And it was AWESOME! :)

Happy Valentine's Day this week, everyone!

How Expensive is Meat?

My awesome and vegetarian friend Jennifer recently asked, "So, is meat really that expensive?"

Hm. Good question.

I bought groceries last night for the week. And then I evaluated what I had bought. And here's the breakdown.

Junk
Pop and sweets and all of my 100-calorie packs of evil
$9.03

Cats
Food, litter, litter bags - Hi, most expensive category much?
$13.62

Fruit and Vegetables
Apples, pears, cataloupe, celery, raisins, mandarin oranges
$7.65

Dairy
Milk, cheese, evaporated milk, condensed milk, butter - Yikes! We might eat a little more dairy than the normal family. Cheese is an easy, gluten-free snack so we use a lot of it.
$11.92

Grains
Cereal, corn muffin mix - We use a lot a lot a lot of rice, but we didn't need to buy any this time.
$4.98

Nuts/Beans
Peanut butter and beans, basically non-meat protein sources - We're also all stocked up on lentils and quinoa, which will appear in the menu if not on the shopping list.
$3.24

Meat
Bacon, a whole chicken, sandwich meat, hot dogs, bulk sausage.
$11.93

So, there you have it. I don't know how much this exactly tells you, except that if we were vegan, we'd starve to death.

Better Budget Challenge #4: Budgeting Odds and Ends

Check it out here.
1. Request your credit report.
Check. It's been a few years since I've done this, so I was a little worried about what might be out there. But ours are pretty simple. Our mortgage. Our student loans. Our credit cards. And that's it. And, accurate, as far as I can tell.

The fear that we'll lose our minds some weekend and go way into debt is always at the back of my head. So I've decided I'm going to:
a) Keep only one credit card. And I'm going to lower that credit limit from $10,000 to $2,000. That should be enough to cover any real emergencies.
b) Cancel all of the other cards. There are three more. I'll let you know how that goes. Any tips?
Of course, it's easy enough to request new credit, but this is what I feel like doing right now.

2. How is our budget system working for us?
I do feel like my budgeting system works pretty well for us. Of course, it's always the *sticking to it* that's the problem, more than the actual method of planning and tracking. The cash system has done us well in this area. Our envelopes are looking kind of raggy, though. Wish I hadn't given my Crown Financial envelope system away a few years ago. (Um, the last time we did this, ha.)

3. How do I want to improve our spending habits?
Firstly, I don't want any surprises. We are already saving for next year's Christmas and tax fees and some other stuff that always seemed to catch us off guard and completely ruin our budget. Secondly, I want to stop running out of money before we run out of week/pay period/month. This has a lot to do with self-discipline, which is an area I'm continually working on (and continually falling short of my goals).

I've always had a policy of not stocking up on food. Firstly, clutter is my bitter enemy. Secondly, I like to use up what's in my cupboard because that reduces this week's grocery bill. But I think I need to rethink this policy, because if (ahem, when) we run out of money and food before the week is up, some food in the pantry would be pretty nice. During my last shopping trip, I added an extra jar of spaghetti sauce and 3 pounds of hamburger (at 1.49/pound - woo!) and 4 cans of veggies. I hope to keep doing this so that, little by little, I have a decent back-up system.

Of course my shopping spree should help this out too! :)

My Awesome Amazing Very Important Incredible News

Our bank manager just called and I



won a 60-second shopping spree



at the local grocery store! I don't even enter contests, but we were automatically entered every time we used our debit card (um... cash budget? what cash budget?).



The idea of running around with a shopping cart with "the media" in attendance sounds... embarassing?


But, the thought of cleaning out their brand new gluten-free section? Hmmm....

Or maybe I'll just fill the cart up with diapers. Freeeee diapers....

So tell me, kind readers, what would YOU buy if you won a 60-second shopping spree? (Okay, I can hear you shouting MEAT from here!)

60 seconds isn't very long, and unfortunately, I'm not a fast runner. Or... a runner at all. I mostly walk, with children hanging off my ankles. And it takes me 60 seconds just to read one label to see if the thing is STILL gluten free. So, it's quite likely I'll end up with a whole cart full of canned corn.

Also, to the little voice telling me that I should fill up the cart and then give it all away to charity? Shut up. No one wants to listen to you right now. La la la la la....

Ken's

For those of you who live near me, mark your calendars! As of the week of January 20th, Ken's will have an all-new gluten free section in their store. How do I know this?

I know because the manager called my house. To ask our opinion on how to do it! (I'm so famous! Squeee! Ahem, sorry.) So we suggested, please, to put all the gluten free items in one area. What they have now is scattered throughout the store, and as anyone with Celiac's knows, walking down the flour aisle is a risky proposition.

Also, please keep the tiny shopping carts. Because pushing those around is pretty much my kiddos' favorite thing to do. In the world. Additionally, you might want to avoid us, because they can't steer so well. I'm just sayin'.

$40 Grocery Budget

It happened that we only had $40 to spend on groceries this week. I know other people who are able to pull this off every week, but this is a very tight budget for us.

Here is my dinner menu:

Chicken ranch pizza (with homemade GF and non-GF crust) - recipe to come, maybe
Hamburger rice meal
Grilled cheese sandwiches (on GF and non-GF bread) and baked beans
Taco soup (made from leftovers)
Pancakes and peaches
Mashed Potato Pups

Thanks to SuperDad's supermarketing, we only spent $36 of our $40 budget.

We bought:
Chicken (a very small amount is really needed for pizza, which is nice)
Shredded cheddar
Ground beef
GF Bread
Baked beans
Hot dogs
Fruit
Veggies
Pop
Diapers

We already had:
All-purpose flour
GF flour
Ranch dressing
Rice
Beef bouillon cubes
Bread
Cheese slices
All ingredients for taco soup
Pancakes (frozen leftovers from last time)
Instant mashed potatoes

Groceries

My budget worked out that I had $60 to buy groceries (which includes everything that we buy, other than gas) this week.

1. I went through my cupboards to see what I had, which was:

• Spaghetti sauce
• Ingredients to make bread
• Pasta and GF pasta
• Lentils
• Brown and white rice
• Cannellini beans
• Home-canned chili sauce
• Instant mashed potatoes
• Shredded cheese
• Baked beans
• Ingredients for waffles

So, I centered my menu for this week around that:

• Spaghetti and toast
• Lentil/rice chili
• Mashed potato pups
• Mac & Cheese and baked beans
• Waffles and fruit (carryover from last week)
• Breakfast sandwiches (ditto)

I spent $59.59 at the store last night. But we still need cat litter, which will put us about $5 over budget.

The budget-busters for this shopping trip were:

• Laundry detergent $4.07
• Diapers $10.99
• Baby wipes $5.19

These are things that are cheaper at Wal-Mart. Not a lot cheaper, but maybe enough that I could have bought the cat litter.

I also didn't realize that we're out of both GF waffles and GF cereal for the kiddos, so we'll have to figure something out for breakfast.

That's about it.

NoLoBuMo - Week 2

Grocery Shopping!

I'm starting to realize how unbelievable it is that we have not only one, but TWO locally-owned grocery stores. The store I hit last night is a chain - a chain of seven stores in the nearby counties. And that fits my criteria as "local."

I haven't been to this store much lately, but I was under the impression that it was too expensive. Let's see what I actually found out, compared to the same items I bought at Wal-Mart:

• 0.57 more for a gallon of milk (and I was able to buy more locally - as in from North Dakota rather than Illinois. Choosing the more local option may be what I end up doing, as I haven't actually found local resources for things, though help on this would be much appreciated!)
• 0.42 more for ground beef (0.39 more than the local source I found last week)
• 0.23 more for waffles
• 0.29 less for apples
• 0.59 less for grapefruit
• 0.51 more for pasta sauce
• 0.15 more for tomato soup
• 0.27 more for baked beans
• 0.49 less for diapers, maybe? I'm not sure exactly on the cost per diaper comparison, but I was pleasantly surprised to find affordable diapers. Of course, I do have cloth diapers we could also use.

Overall, I spent 21 cents more to shop at the "expensive" store versus Wal-Mart. Overall, $2.57 cheaper than the "cheap" local store.

PLUS, really, truly, you cannot underestimate the customer satisfaction derived from the child-sized shopping card that kept my little one busy and happy for an entire hour. I was very impressed.

And, if anyone is interested, here is my dinner menu this week:

• Lasagna and lettuce salad (I usually make the kids corn noodles and cheese with sauce and cottage cheese for dipping)
• Macaroni and cheese and baked beans (again, corn noodles for the kids)
• Porcupine meatballs (recipe to come, if it turns out), green beans, bread
• Ring bologna, baked beans, cream corn
• Waffles and fruit salad
• Breakfast biscuits (probably just ham/egg sandwiches for the kids)

You may notice that we often have at least two meatless meals per week, and we often have two breakfast-for-dinner meals per week, which helps to keep costs down.

Budget Update

The second week of our pay period started yesterday. Woo! So, of course, I went grocery shopping. I spent $73.03.

I bought:
Milk
Yogurt
Hot dogs
Turkey slices
Ground turkey
Eggs
Cat food
Pancake mix (not GF)
Rice
*Pop
Gravy (not GF)
Soup (not GF)
Spaghetti sauce
Diapers
*Mop solution for the Swiffer
*Mop solution for the Clorox
Q-tips
Infusium 23 (I need this. I don't care how expensive it is. There are very few "products" I buy. This is it, pretty much.)
*Earrings
*Chips
Hamburger buns (not GF)
*Weight Watchers chocolate cakes (not GF, also I think their logo should be "everyone deserves a little cake" Get it? Because they're little cakes. Sorry. I really like them, so I think about these things.)
Tuna
Baked beans
Lettuce
Bananas

* Unneccessary budget busters accounting for $22.58 in extra expenses. Gah. Actually, I have no idea how to clean our wood floors without the Swiffer and wood floor solution. ?

Anyway, this should leave us with $40 to buy gas and everything else we need until pay day. Hopefully we can do it, as we're in better shape right now than usual.

Planning, Planning, Planning

Warning: This is likely very boring for you.

Dinners for the next two weeks (not to be eaten in this order):

French toast
Grilled cheese sandwiches
Pancakes
Breakfast Casserole
Homemade chicken nuggets w/honey mustard dipping sauce
Sunshine chicken
Beefy lentil soup
Tater tot casserole
Potato soup
Spaghetti
Polish sausage/potatoes
Sloppy Joes (known here as "BBQs")
Tuna noodle casserole
Hamburgers/hot dogs on the grill

I seem to go in spurts. Lately we'd been eating a lot of beans and rice, previously a lot of potatoes. Now I'm feeling kind of breakfasty/soupy/casseroley, apparently. Spell check loves me.

Lunches:

Leftovers
Lettuce salad (me mostly)
Bean burritos
Sandwiches
Ham
Hot dogs
Eggs

Breakfasts:
fruit
GF Waffles
GF Cereal
Toast
Fruit
Yogurt

Snacks:
fruit
veggies
GF animal crackers
GF cookies
applesauce
fruit snacks (we try to limit these, but of course the kids luuuuuurve them. We have the best luck with the Gerber brand, which doesn't have any artificial colorings)

Then I make the grocery list, which is helped by a fairly well-stocked pantry, and lots of fresh fruits and veggies that I just bought. The juices and the chips are all part of recipes, we don't normally buy those for snacking.

To buy, and each item's budget:
ham (2)
chicken breast (7)
sour cream & onion chips (2)
orange juice (2)
rice (1)
ground turkey (7)
V8 (2)
powdered nonfat milk (2)
instant chicken bouillon (2)
plain yogurt (2)
spaghetti sauce (1)
spaghetti noodles (1)
GF spaghetti noodles (3)
polish sausage (2)
tuna (1)
egg noodles (1)
hot dogs (2)
sandwich meat (2)
GF waffles (2)
GF animal crackers (3)
apple sauce (2)
fruit snacks (3)
whole milk (4)
diapers (15)
baby wipes (5)
cat food (10) - We do not buy cheap food. We buy Purina One, as recommended by our vet, after switching from Science Diet. Cheap cat food = sick kitties. Period.
litter (5)
litter bags (3) - Totally not environmentally sound. Totally not caring.
TP (5) - When I was a kid, I had the hardest time remembering if "TP" stood for toilet paper or toothpaste. Is that funny or does it just make me look stupid(er)?
pop for SuperDad (3)
flour (1)
butter (2)
Total = $105

I'll probably take about $115 in cash with me to the store, just in case.

I find that having a budget for an item gives me a way better chance of meeting my budget than trying to add up the total budget in my head.

Anyway, if you made it this far, YAY! ;)