Day 1

Today is the first day of us sticking to our family food budget, and we started the adventure with a challenge. Scott had to head to Chicago for a lunch meeting. We didn't have food options that he could take with him (unless he wanted to eat uncooked oatmeal and bread) so Scott had to eat what was provided. Fortunately, the food was catered from a sandwich shop with an online menu, so we determined the cost and applied it to our budget. Surprisingly, it didn't break the bank, which means that Scott was probably hungry. I can only imagine how hard it was to turn down chips, cookies, sodas, and salads because of their cost.



Now that day #1 is complete, here is what we ate...



Breakfast

- Scott & Kellie (S&K): oatmeal w/ brown sugar

- Connor & Grant (C&G): toast w/ margarine, banana, milk

- Total cost for breakfast: $0.95



Lunch

- S: small turkey sandwich, 2 bottles of water

- K: soup, crackers, tea

- C&G: soup, crackers (note: crackers were a hit!), string cheese, milk

- Total cost for lunch: $7.03



Dinner

- S&K: pasta w/ oil & margarine, braised carrots, tea

- C&G: pasta w/ oil, braised carrots (note: the boys loved the carrots!), milk

- Total cost for dinner: $1.86



Dessert

- All: 3 generic Oreo cookies each

- Total cost for dessert: $0.56



All Meals Total = $10.40



This is pretty great, considering that Scott was eating outside of the home and had to "buy" the catered meal. Thank goodness they catered sandwiches instead of barbecue!! The meals that we ate today are safety meals, filling and relatively inexpensive. I hope to find a few meals that I can serve cheaply to open up space in the budget for more extravagant meals. I don't think we would be satisfied by 31 lunches of soup, crackers and cheese, and I look forward to trying to create meals that only taste expensive. But that might take a while. I'm still struggling with panic at seeing near-empty shelves. I don't feel comfortable knowing that we only have meals for less than a day. I went to the grocery store today because Scott thought we needed to have cookies for the boys who really look forward to dessert. I went in planning to buy only cookies and walked out with $11 of food, including sweet potatoes, and canned beans, tomatoes and a packet of chili mix. Maybe we'll have chili and cornbread tomorrow.



Tomorrow is Wednesday and I can use some of the coupons that I have for yogurt and soup. I'm also going to buy ground beef and maybe a ham. They're pretty big investments, but I know I can get 3 meals out of the beef and if I freeze it, we'll have ham for the entire month. Neither boy eats much meat, but ham is something they like.

Tomorrow, board meeting blues